Assessing the Impact of Analytical Error on Perceived Disease Severity.

Context: The perception of the severity of disease from laboratory results assumes that the results are free of analytical error; however, analytical error creates a spread of results into a band and thus a range of perceived disease severity.

Objective: To assess the impact of analytical errors by calculating the change in perceived disease severity, represented by the hazard ratio, using non-high-density lipoprotein (nonHDL) cholesterol as an example.

Design: We transformed nonHDL values into ranges using the assumed total allowable errors for total cholesterol (9%) and high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (13%).

Temporal relationship between vitamin D status and parathyroid hormone in the United States.

Background: Interpretation of parathyroid hormone (iPTH) requires knowledge of vitamin D status that is influenced by season.

Objective: Characterize the temporal relationship between 25-hydroxyvitamin D3 levels [25(OH)D3] and intact iPTH for several seasons, by gender and latitude in the U.S.

Increased regional cerebral perfusion by 99mTc hexamethyl propylene amine oxime single photon emission computed tomography in post-traumatic stress disorder.

Objective: Because of the treatment resistance and chronic affective lability of many post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) patients and the hypothesized association of these behaviors with temporal and limbic structures, a study was conducted to determine whether these patients would exhibit alterations in regional cerebral perfusion in the temporal and limbic regions compared with age-matched normal volunteers at rest.

Method: We studied 17 patients using 99mTc hexamethyl propylene amine oxime single photon emission computed tomography. Seven of the patients were on a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, five were on a tricyclic antidepressant, and five were on no medication at the time of the study.

Neurometric subgroups in attentional and affective disorders and their association with pharmacotherapeutic outcome.

To determine if quantitative electrophysiologic measures correlate with pharmacotherapeutic response, we conducted a retrospective analysis of treatment outcomes in sequential patients with attention deficit disorder and affective disorders. One hundred medication-free patients meeting DSM-III-R criteria for attentional and affective disorders underwent pretreatment EEG, quantitative Neurometric EEG, and physical/laboratory examinations. Attention-disordered patients were first treated with a stimulant, secondarily with an antidepressant, and tertially with an anticonvulsant.

Prediction of cervical neoplasia diagnosis groups. Discriminant analysis on digitized cell images.

The purpose of this study was to develop discriminant analysis models for predicting cervical dysplasia/neoplasia case diagnoses using cytometric features derived from the digital image analysis of cell monolayers. The data base consisted of 925 cells from 27 cases diagnosed either as moderate dysplasia (n = 10), severe dysplasia (n = 5), carcinoma in situ (n = 8) or invasive carcinoma (n = 4) on both tissue biopsy and monolayer preparations. Cell features examined were cell diameter, nuclear diameter, nuclear mean optical density (OD), nuclear integrated OD (IOD), nuclear OD standard deviation, normalized IOD, nuclear texture and nuclear-cytoplasmic ratio.