Optimal designs for health risk assessments using fractional polynomial models.

Fractional polynomials (FP) have been shown to be more flexible than polynomial models for fitting data from an univariate regression model with a continuous outcome but design issues for FP models have lagged. We focus on FPs with a single variable and construct -optimal designs for estimating model parameters and -optimal designs for prediction over a user-specified region of the design space. Some analytic results are given, along with a discussion on model uncertainty.

Predicting the Impact of Diffuse Alveolar Damage through Open Lung Biopsy in Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome-The PREDATOR Study.

The aim of this retrospective and international study is to identify those clinical variables associated with diffuse alveolar damage (DAD), and to explore the impact of DAD on hospital mortality risk. Inclusion criteria were: adult patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) undergoing open lung biopsy (OLB) during their intensive care unit (ICU) management. The main end-points were: DAD and hospital mortality.

A web-based tool for designing experimental studies to detect hormesis and estimate the threshold dose.

Hormesis has been widely observed and debated in a variety of context in biomedicine and toxicological sciences. Detecting its presence can be an important problem with wide ranging implications. However, there is little work on constructing an efficient experiment to detect its existence or estimate the threshold dose.

Prevalence of orthorexia nervosa in university students and its relationship with psychopathological aspects of eating behaviour disorders.

Introduction: Orthorexia nervosa (ON) is characterized by an obsession with healthy eating, which may lead to severe physical, psychological and social disorders. It is particularly important to research this problem in populations that do not receive clinical care in order to improve early detection and treatment.

Objective: The aim of this study was to research the prevalence of ON in a population of Spanish university students and to analyze the possible associations between ON and psychological traits and behaviors that are common to ED.

Adaptation and validation of the Spanish version of the ORTO-15 questionnaire for the diagnosis of orthorexia nervosa.

The aim of this study was the validation and analysis of the psychometric properties of a Spanish translation of the ORTO-15 questionnaire; an instrument designed to assess orthorexia nervosa behavior. Four hundred and fifty-four Spanish university students (65% women) aged between 18 and 51 years (M = 21.48 ± 0.