A phase II clinical study to assess the feasibility of self and partner anal examinations to detect anal canal abnormalities including anal cancer.

Objective: Anal cancer is a common cancer among men who have sex with men (MSM); however, there is no standard screening protocol for anal cancer. We conducted a phase II clinical trial to assess the feasibility of teaching MSM to recognise palpable masses in the anal canal which is a common sign of anal cancer in men.

Methods: A clinician skilled in performing digital anorectal examinations (DARE) used a pelvic manikin to train 200 MSM, aged 27-78 years, how to do a self-anal examination (SAE) for singles or a partner anal examination (PAE) for couples.

Implementing Optimal Allocation in Clinical Trials with Multiple Endpoints.

Modern clinical trials are often complex, with multiple competing objectives and multiple endpoints. Such trials should be both ethical and efficient. In this paper, we overcome the obstacles introduced by the large number of unknown parameters and the possible correlations between the multiple endpoints.

Autonomic and electrocardiographic findings in Parkinson's disease.

Parkinson disease (PD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder characterized by motor and non-motor symptoms and signs. Many reports suggest that diminished heart rate variability occurs early, even prior to the cardinal signs of PD. In a longitudinal study of PD, we evaluated whether heart rate variability (HRV) obtained using a 10-second ECG tracing, and the electrocardiographic QT-interval would be associated with PD severity and progression.

Caffeine, creatine, GRIN2A and Parkinson's disease progression.

Caffeine is neuroprotective in animal models of Parkinson's disease (PD) and caffeine intake is inversely associated with the risk of PD. This association may be influenced by the genotype of GRIN2A, which encodes an NMDA-glutamate-receptor subunit. In two placebo-controlled studies, we detected no association of caffeine intake with the rate of clinical progression of PD, except among subjects taking creatine, for whom higher caffeine intake was associated with more rapid progression.

Correlation-based iterative clustering methods for time course data: The identification of temporal gene response modules for influenza infection in humans.

Many pragmatic clustering methods have been developed to group data vectors or objects into clusters so that the objects in one cluster are very similar and objects in different clusters are distinct based on some similarity measure. The availability of time course data has motivated researchers to develop methods, such as mixture and mixed-effects modelling approaches, that incorporate the temporal information contained in the shape of the trajectory of the data. However, there is still a need for the development of time-course clustering methods that can adequately deal with inhomogeneous clusters (some clusters are quite large and others are quite small).

Lay health supporters aided by a mobile phone messaging system to improve care of villagers with schizophrenia in Liuyang, China: protocol for a randomised control trial.

Introduction: Schizophrenia is a severe, chronic and disabling mental illness. Non-adherence to medication and relapse may lead to poorer patient function. This randomised controlled study, under the acronym LEAN (Lay health supporter, e-platform, award, and iNtegration), is designed to improve medication adherence and high relapse among people with schizophrenia in resource poor settings.

Independent Spanish Validation of the Unified Dyskinesia Rating Scale.

The Unified Dyskinesia Rating Scale (UDysRS) assesses the severity and disability caused by dyskinesias in Parkinson's disease (PD). As part of the UDysRS development plan, the International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society (MDS) established guidelines for official non-English translations. We present here the formal process for completing this program and the data on the first officially approved non-English version of the UDysRS (Spanish).