Percutaneous Coronary Intervention versus Coronary Artery Bypass Graft in Acute Coronary Syndrome patients with Renal Dysfunction.

ACS patients with renal dysfunction tend to have a poorer prognosis than those with normal renal function. This retrospective cohort study was performed using The Second Drug-Eluting Stent Impact on Revascularization Registry, a retrospective registry, to evaluate the time-dependent relative risk of revascularization strategies in ACS patients with renal dysfunction. The study demonstrated that the short-term MACCE rate was lower after PCI than CABG.

Efficacy and safety of SQJZ herbal mixtures on nonmotor symptoms in Parkinson disease patients: Protocol for a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial.

Background: As a multisystemic neurodegenerative disorder, Parkinson disease (PD) has a broad spectrum of symptoms including motor and nonmotor symptoms (NMS). As shown in studies, NMS can also impact patient's quality of life, and many of them often go untreated. Chinese herbal medicines with multiconstituent may alleviate NMS in PD patients.

Adding Chinese herbal medicine to conventional therapy brings cognitive benefits to patients with Alzheimer's disease: a retrospective analysis.

Background: Conventional therapy (CT) such as donepezil and memantine are well-known short-term treatments for the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease (AD). The efficacy of them, however, drops below baseline level after 9 months. In China, herbal therapy as a complementary therapy is very popular.

Efficacy, acceptability and tolerability of 8 atypical antipsychotics in Chinese patients with acute schizophrenia: A network meta-analysis.

Objective: We aimed to create hierarchies of the efficacy, acceptability and tolerability of eight atypical antipsychotics in the treatment of Chinese patients with acute schizophrenia.

Method: We systematically searched for RCT articles published between January 1st 2005 and December 31st 2014 in electronic databases (Medline, Pubmed, Embase, the Cochrane Library and ClinicalTrial.gov for studies in English and the China National Knowledge Infrastructure, Wan Fang, and VIP Information/Chinese Scientific Journals Database for studies in Chinese).

SORL1 rs1699102 polymorphism modulates age-related cognitive decline and gray matter volume reduction in non-demented individuals.

Background And Purpose: SORL1 rs1699102 is associated with the risk of late-onset Alzheimer's disease. However, the effects of this single nucleotide polymorphism on cognition and brain structure during normal aging are unclear. This study aimed to examine the effects of the rs1699102 polymorphism on age-related cognitive decline and cortical gray matter reduction in the Chinese Han population.

[How to scientifically estimate sample size in physiological research].

Objective: To bring about physiological researchers' attention of the importance of sample size estimation.

Methods: The significance as well as the current problems of sample size estimation were illustrated and the commonly-used sample size estimation methods were introduced.

Results: The basic concepts and necessary premises of sample size estimation were stated.

[Appropriate application of statistical methods in physiological research].

Objective: To offer a series of efficient methods to physiologists in appropriate selection, and application of statistical techniques.

Methods: We bring about two questions as follows:What's the role of statistics in the process of a physiological research? How to make sure the results produced in a physiological research can be repeatable in practice in the long run. From the answers to these two questions, we highlight the importance of the discipline of statistics to research work, explain why it is difficult, how to choose a suitable statistical method in a specific situation, and offer the critical methods to use statistics accurately and appropriately.

The therapeutic effect of Xueshuan Xinmai tablets on memory injury and brain activity in post-stroke patients: a pilot placebo controlled fMRI study.

Objective: The purpose of this study was to explore the effects of Xueshuan Xinmai tablets (XXMT) for the treatment of cognition, brain activation in the rehabilitation period of ischemic stroke patients.

Methods: 28 adults patients, aged 50-80 years, in the rehabilitation period of ischemic stroke were divided into XXMT treatment group and placebo control group. Patients received 3 months treatment (oral 0.

Sex moderates the effects of the Sorl1 gene rs2070045 polymorphism on cognitive impairment and disruption of the cingulum integrity in healthy elderly.

The SORL1 rs2070045 polymorphism was reported to be associated with SorLA expression in the brain and the risk of late-onset Alzheimer's disease (AD). However, the influence of this polymorphism on cognitive functioning is likely to be moderated by sex. This study aimed to examine the sex moderation on the effects of rs2070045 on neuropsychological performance and the cingulum integrity in Chinese Han population.

MLST-based inference of genetic diversity and population structure of clinical Klebsiella pneumoniae, China.

Multilocus sequence typing was applied to a collection of 327 clinical isolates of Klebsiella pneumoniae from China, which was proven to be a good representative of the global diversity of K. pneumoniae. Three lineages L1 to L3 are presented in the population with limited genetic flow across different lineages.

Clinical progression and predictors of death in patients with severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome in China.

Background: Severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome (SFTS) is an emerging infectious disease of which the clinical progression and factors related to death are still unclear.

Objective: To identify the clinical progression of SFTS and explore predictors of fatal outcome throughout the disease progress.

Study Design: A prospective study was performed in a general hospital located in Xinyang city during 2011-2013.

Multifactor designs able to examine the interactions.

Multifactor designs that are able to examine the interactions include factorial design, factorial design with a block factor, repeated measurement design; orthogonal design, split-block design, etc. Among all the above design types that are able to examine the interactions, the factorial design is the most commonly used. It is also called the full-factor experimental design, which means that the levels of all the experimental factors involved in the research are completely combined, and k independent repeated experiments are conducted under each experimental condition.

Three-factor designs unable to examine the interactions (part 1).

Three-factor designs that are unable to examine the interactions include crossover design and Latin square design, which can examine three factors, namely, an experimental factor and two block factors. Although the two design types are not quite frequently used in practical research, an unexpected research effect will be achieved if they are correctly adopted on appropriate occasions. Due to the limit of space, this article introduces two forms of crossover design.

Two-factor designs unable to examine the interactions (part 1).

Two-factor designs are quite commonly used in scientific research. If the two factors have interactions, research designs like the factorial design and the orthogonal design can be adopted; however, these designs usually require many experiments. If the two factors have no interaction or the interaction is not statistically significant on result in theory and in specialty, and the measuring error of the experimental data under a certain condition (usually it is one of the experimental conditions which is formed by the complete combination of the levels of two factors) is allowed in specialty, researchers can use random block design without repeated experiments, balanced non-complete random block design without repeated experiments, single factor design with a repeatedly measured factor, two-factor design without repeated experiments and two-factor nested design.

How to choose an appropriate experimental design type (Part 1).

How to choose an appropriate experimental design type to arrange research factors and their levels is an important issue in experimental research. Choosing an appropriate design type is directly related to the accuracy and reliability of the research result. When confronting a practical issue, how can researchers choose the most appropriate design type to arrange the experiment based on research objective and specified situation? This article mainly introduces the related contents of the single-group design and the paired design through practical examples.

Estimation of sample size and testing power (part 7).

Two-factor factorial design refers to the research involving two experimental factors and the number of the experimental groups equals to the product of the levels of the two experimental factors. In other words, it is the complete combination of the levels of the two experimental factors. The research subjects are randomly divided into the experimental groups.

Estimation of sample size and testing power (part 2).

This article introduces definitions of three special tests, namely, non-inferiority test (to verify that the efficacy of the experimental drug is clinically not inferior to that of the positive control drug), equivalence test (to verify that the efficacy of the experimental drug is equivalent to that of the control drug) and superiority test (to verify that the efficacy of the experimental drug is superior to that of the control drug), and methods of sample size estimation under the three different conditions. By specific examples, the article introduces formulas of sample size estimation for the three special tests, and their SAS realization in detail.

Estimation of sample size and testing power (Part 1).

This article introduces the general concepts and methods of sample size estimation and testing power analysis. It focuses on parametric methods of sample size estimation, including sample size estimation of estimating the population mean and the population probability. It also provides estimation formulas and introduces how to realize sample size estimation manually and by SAS software.

The control principle in scientific research.

The control principle is one of the four basic principles of research design. Without a control group, the conclusion of research will be unconvincing; furthermore, if the control group is not set properly, the conclusion will be unreliable. Generally, there is more than one control group in a multi-factor design.

Methods and analysis of realizing randomized grouping.

Randomization is one of the four basic principles of research design. The meaning of randomization includes two aspects: one is to randomly select samples from the population, which is known as random sampling; the other is to randomly group all the samples, which is called randomized grouping. Randomized grouping can be subdivided into three categories: completely, stratified and dynamically randomized grouping.

The principle of randomization in scientific research.

Scientific research design includes specialty design and statistics design which can be subdivided into experimental design, clinical trial design and survey design. Usually, statistics textbooks introduce the core aspects of experimental design as the three key elements, the four principles and the design types, which run through the whole scientific research design and determine the overall success of the research. This article discusses the principle of randomization, which is one of the four principles, and focuses on the following two issues--the definition and function of randomization and the real life examples which go against the randomization principle, thereby demonstrating that strict adherence to the randomization principle leads to meaningful and valuable scientific research.

How to appropriately choose research subjects.

The research subject is the first key element of the three key elements in the research design. An appropriate selection of research subjects is crucial to the success of the research. This article summarizes the general principles for the selection of research subjects, the types and numbers of research subjects and the common mistakes that researchers tend to make in the selection of the research subjects.