Development and validation of a predictive model of drug-resistant genetic generalized epilepsy.

Objective: To develop and validate a clinical prediction model for antiepileptic drug (AED)-resistant genetic generalized epilepsy (GGE).

Method: We performed a case-control study of patients with and without drug-resistant GGE, nested within ongoing longitudinal observational studies of AED response at 2 tertiary epilepsy centers. Using a validation dataset, we tested the predictive performance of 3 candidate models, developed from a training dataset.

Exact inference on the random-effects model for meta-analyses with few studies.

We describe an exact, unconditional, non-randomized procedure for producing confidence intervals for the grand mean in a normal-normal random effects meta-analysis. The procedure targets meta-analyses based on too few primary studies, , say, to allow for the conventional asymptotic estimators, e.g.

Loss of antinociceptive efficacy in rat pups infused with morphine from osmotic minipumps.

We determined the susceptibility of two ages of rat pups to become tolerant to and dependent on morphine infusions from osmotic minipumps. Neonatal rats (postnatal day 6; P6) were infused for 72 h with morphine at 0.175 or 0.

Embryo-fetal developmental and reproductive toxicology of vinyl chloride in rats.

Vinyl chloride (VC) exposure is primarily via inhalation in the workplace. The primary target organ of VC toxicity is the liver and occupational exposure to VC leads to hepatic angiosarcoma. However, based on epidemiological studies, researchers have been unable to ascertain the effect of occupational VC exposure on embryo-fetal development or reproductive function.