Identifying Predictors of Spatiotemporal Variations in Residential Radon Concentrations across North Carolina Using Machine Learning Analytics.

Radon is a naturally occurring radioactive gas derived from the decay of uranium in the Earth's crust. Radon exposure is the leading cause of lung cancer among non-smokers in the US. Radon infiltrates homes through soil and building foundations.

Sociodemographic Factors and Utilization of Pediatric Oncology Satellite Clinics in Ontario, Canada.

Importance: Pediatric cancer care services in high-income nations are mainly centralized in metropolitan cities. To allow treatments closer to home, patients across Ontario, Canada, a geographically large province, are offered decentralized care via satellite clinics; however, it is unclear whether the utilization of these pediatric oncology satellite clinics differs by area-level sociodemographic factors.

Objective: To examine whether sociodemographic factors, such as area-level income and rurality, are independently associated with the odds of satellite clinic visit and the hazards of time to first visit among pediatric oncology patients receiving cancer treatment.

Run-in periods and treatment outcomes in asthma trials: A narrative review.

Background: The run-in period is an important element of randomized controlled trials, and is often used in respiratory disease trials. The design of the run-in period can greatly impact results and data interpretation, and as such should be designed carefully.

Methods: In this review, we describe the design of run-in periods across six phase 3A trials of triple therapy in asthma, and discuss how differences in run-in period design (specifically the duration, treatment, and reporting of run-in results) may have the potential to alter the interpretation of study outcomes.

Abnormal breathing pattern features in chronic refractory cough.

Background: Chronic refractory cough (CRC) is a challenging condition that responds to speech pathology intervention. Clinical observation suggests abnormal breathing patterns occur in CRC and may be indirectly addressed as part of behavioural treatment, yet breathing pattern changes in CRC are poorly understood. The aims of this study were to 1) describe breathing patterns in patients with CRC, 2) compare breathing pattern features between patients with CRC and inducible laryngeal obstruction (ILO), and 3) estimate the effect of breathing pattern features on clinical measures of laryngeal sensory and motor dysfunction.

Approaches in landscape fire smoke pregnancy research and the impact on offspring: A review of knowledge gaps and recommendations.

The increase in wildfires and bushfires due to climate change means that more people, including pregnant women and their fetuses will be exposed to landscape fire smoke. Although there is evidence to suggest that pregnancy landscape fire exposure is associated with lower birth weight, preterm birth and pregnancy loss, there is a lack of information on many other perinatal outcomes, as well as information on subsequent respiratory outcomes in children. Furthermore, due to the generally short term (hours/days) and intermittent nature of landscape fire smoke exposure, the knowledge to date has largely relied on natural experiments and ecological studies which can be subject to misclassification of exposure and a lack of precision.