Hypoglycemic events and glycosylated hemoglobin values in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus newly initiated on insulin glargine or premixed insulin combination products.

Purpose: Rates of hypoglycemic events and their associated costs were compared among patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus newly initiated on insulin glargine or a premixed insulin fixed-combination product.

Methods: Patients newly initiated on insulin glargine or premixed insulin fixed-combination products (including pen delivery systems) between June 1, 2001, and February 29, 2004, were identified using an administrative claims database. Hypoglycemic events were identified from International Classification of Diseases, 9th Revision, Clinical Modification codes.

Health care resources and costs for treating peripheral artery disease in a managed care population: results from analysis of administrative claims data.

Objective: Peripheral arterial disease (PAD) is associated with high rates of morbidity and mortality and serves as an important marker for advanced systemic atherosclerosis accompanied by symptomatic or asymptomatic ischemia of the coronary, cerebral, and visceral vasculature. There are little published data on the use of health care resources and costs attributable to PAD. The objectives of this study were to evaluate, from a societal perspective, PAD-related health care resource utilization and to determine the total annualized costs and cost components for patients with PAD, with particular attention to the key outcomes of myocardial infarction (MI), transient ischemic attacks (TIA), stroke, and amputations.

Use of radial density plots to calibrate image magnification for frozen-hydrated specimens.

Accurate magnification calibration for transmission electron microscopy is best achieved with the use of appropriate standards and an objective calibration technique. We have developed a reliable method for calibrating the magnification of images from frozen-hydrated specimens. Invariant features in radial density plots of a standard are compared with the corresponding features in a "defocused" X-ray model of the same standard.

Analysis of the multi-channel epileptiform EEG using the Markov chains formalism.

A multi-level scheme of syntactic reduction of the epileptiform EEG data is briefly discussed and the possibilities it opens up in describing the dynamic behaviour of a multi-channel system are indicated. A new algorithm for the inference of a Markov network from finite sets of sample symbol strings is introduced. Formulae for the time-dependent state occupation probabilities, as well as joint probability functions for pairs of channels, are given.

The use of a multi-channel Kalman filter algorithm in structural analysis of the epileptic EEG.

An extension of the Kalman filter algorithm to the multi-channel case is presented and its application as a segmenting procedure in the analysis of the epileptic EEG is discussed. An analytical example of structural analysis, using the segments extracted by the proposed filter, is presented for a particular set of 4-channel EEG recordings. This analysis is shown to be especially fruitful if the autoregressive coefficients - a byproduct of the filtering procedure - are used to estimate the information flow between the channels by the calculation of partial as well as directed coherences for the representative segments.