Effect of Hydrocortisone on Mortality and Organ Support in Patients With Severe COVID-19: The REMAP-CAP COVID-19 Corticosteroid Domain Randomized Clinical Trial.

Importance: Evidence regarding corticosteroid use for severe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is limited.

Objective: To determine whether hydrocortisone improves outcome for patients with severe COVID-19.

Design, Setting, And Participants: An ongoing adaptive platform trial testing multiple interventions within multiple therapeutic domains, for example, antiviral agents, corticosteroids, or immunoglobulin.

Why do patients agree to a "Do not resuscitate" or "Full code" order? Perspectives of medical inpatients.

Background: The majority of patients who die in hospital have a "Do Not Resuscitate" (DNR) order in place at the time of their death, yet we know very little about why some patients request or agree to a DNR order, why others don't, and how they view discussions of resuscitation status.

Methods: We conducted semi-structured interviews of English-speaking medical inpatients who had clearly requested a DNR or full code (FC) order after a discussion with their admitting team, and analyzed the transcripts using a modified grounded-theory approach.

Results: We achieved conceptual saturation after conducting 44 interviews (27 DNR, 17 FC) over a 4-month period.

Pre-B cell colony-enhancing factor (PBEF)/visfatin: a novel mediator of innate immunity.

Pre-B cell colony-enhancing factor (PBEF), also known as visfatin, is a highly conserved, 52-kDa protein found in living species from bacteria to humans. Originally a curiosity identified serendipitously in microarray studies but having no obvious functional importance, PBEF has now been shown to exert three distinct activities of central importance to cellular energetics and innate immunity. Within the cell, PBEF functions as a nicotinamide phosphoribosyl transferase, the rate-limiting step in a salvage pathway of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD) biosynthesis.

Variables associated with medication errors in pediatric emergency medicine.

Objective: Medication errors are a common cause of iatrogenic morbidity and mortality. The incidence of medication errors in pediatric emergency departments (EDs) has not been described. The objective of this study was to describe the incidence and type of drug errors in a pediatric ED and determine factors associated with risk of errors.