J Allergy Clin Immunol
September 2025
Background: Disentangling preschool wheezing heterogeneity in terms of clinical traits, temporal patterns, and collective healthcare burden is critical for precise and effective interventions.
Objective: We aimed to collectively define contributions and distinct characteristics of respiratory phenotypes based on longitudinal wheeze and atopic sensitization patterns in the first 5 years of life.
Methods: Group-based trajectory analysis was performed in the CHILD Cohort study to identify distinct wheeze and allergic sensitization trajectories.
Background: Obesity is a major public health concern affecting millions of people globally. Early identification of individuals susceptible to obesity is crucial for reducing the burden of obesity. Obesity is often defined based on body-mass-index (BMI), and tracking BMI trajectories from early childhood offers a valuable tool for risk stratification.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Cardiogenic shock (CS) is a heterogeneous clinical syndrome, making it challenging to predict patient trajectory and response to treatment. This study aims to identify biological/molecular CS subphenotypes, evaluate their association with outcome, and explore their impact on heterogeneity of treatment effect (ShockCO-OP, NCT06376318).
Methods: We used unsupervised clustering to integrate plasma biomarker data from two prospective cohorts of CS patients: CardShock (N = 205 [2010-2012, NCT01374867]) and the French and European Outcome reGistry in Intensive Care Units (FROG-ICU) (N = 228 [2011-2013, NCT01367093]) to determine the optimal number of classes.
BMC Med Res Methodol
November 2024
Background: The hazard ratio of the Cox proportional hazards model is widely used in randomized controlled trials to assess treatment effects. However, two properties of the hazard ratio including the non-collapsibility and built-in selection bias need to be further investigated.
Methods: We conduct simulations to differentiate the non-collapsibility effect and built-in selection bias from the difference between the marginal and the conditional hazard ratio.
BMC Med Res Methodol
November 2024
Background: Severe exacerbation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a trajectory-changing life event for patients and a major contributor to health system costs. This study evaluates the real-world impact of a primary care, integrated disease management (IDM) programme on acute health service utilisation (HSU) in the Canadian health system.
Methods: Interrupted time series analysis using retrospective health administrative data, comparing monthly HSU event rates 3 years prior to and 3 years following the implementation of COPD IDM.
Recent advances in engineering technologies have enabled the collection of a large number of longitudinal features. This wealth of information presents unique opportunities for researchers to investigate the complex nature of diseases and uncover underlying disease mechanisms. However, analyzing such kind of data can be difficult due to its high dimensionality, heterogeneity and computational challenges.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: One in five Canadians lives with chronic pain. Evidence shows that some individuals experience pain that fluctuates in intensity following a circadian (24-hour) rhythm. Endogenous molecular rhythms regulate the function of physiological processes that govern pain mechanisms.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: Multiple hospitals in Alberta implemented the End PJ Paralysis - a multicomponent inpatient ambulation initiative aimed at preventing the adverse physical and psychological effects patients experience due to low mobility during admission. To inform a scale-up strategy, this study assessed the impact of the initiative based on select process and outcome measures.
Materials And Methods: Clinical and administrative data were obtained from the hospital Discharge Abstract Database, Research Electronic Data Capture (Redcaps), and Reporting and Learning System for Patient Safety.
Background: Implantable cardioverter-defibrillators (ICDs) reduce the risk of sudden cardiac death in patients with left ventricular dysfunction. While short-term mortality benefit of ICD insertion has been established in landmark randomized controlled trials, little is known about the long-term outcomes of patients with ICDs in clinical practice. In this paper, we describe the long-term survival of patients following ICD implantation for primary prevention in clinical practice and determine the factors which help predict survival after ICD implant.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFClustering longitudinal features is a common goal in medical studies to identify distinct disease developmental trajectories. Compared to clustering a single longitudinal feature, integrating multiple longitudinal features allows additional information to be incorporated into the clustering process, which may reveal co-existing longitudinal patterns and generate deeper biological insight. Despite its increasing importance and popularity, there is limited practical guidance for implementing cluster analysis approaches for multiple longitudinal features and evaluating their comparative performance in medical datasets.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPediatr Pulmonol
January 2024
Background: Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is a heterogeneous disorder with a prevalence of 25%-60% in children with obesity. There is a lack of diagnostic tools to identify those at high risk for OSA.
Method: Children with obesity, aged 8-19 years old, were enrolled into an ongoing multicenter, prospective cohort study related to OSA.
Background: Each Grapholita molesta female only copulates once during its lifetime and thus must maintain the viability of stored eupyrene sperm for male reproductive success. The male ejaculate comprises abundant accessory gland proteins produced by the male accessory gland (AG), and many of which are major effectors for sperm storage and maintenance.
Results: Here, we reported that an antioxidant protein, peroxiredoxin 1 (GmolPrx1), secreted by the male AG, is essential for protecting eupyrene sperm from oxidative stress and maintaining their quality during storage in the female bursa copulatrix (BC).
Int J Environ Res Public Health
December 2022
Objective: To systematically evaluate the effectiveness of mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) on rumination among patients with depression and their efficacy across countries and year of publication and control conditions. Methods: Web of Science Core Collection, Medline, BIOSIS Citation Index, KCI-Korean Journal Database, SciELO Citation Index, PubMed, Cochrane Library, and Embase were searched to include randomized controlled trials of MBIs for depressive rumination that met the criteria. The Rumination Scale was used as the primary outcome indicator; Depression, mindfulness, and anxiety indexes were selected as the secondary outcome indicators.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: To systematically evaluate the effectiveness of exposure and response prevention (ERP) combined with medication on obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).
Methods: PubMed, Web of Science, EBSCO, Cochrane, Embase, and Science Direct databases were searched to include randomized controlled trials of ERP combined with medication for OCD that met the criteria. The Yale Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale was used as the primary outcome indicator, and Depression scales were used as secondary outcome indicators.
Objectives: Bipolar II depression (BD-II) is a subtype of bipolar disorder with recurrent depressive, manic, and frequent depressive episodes as the main clinical manifestations. This study aimed to compare the cognitive function of patients with BD-II with those of healthy siblings and controls to explore the internal phenotype of BD-II in the field of cognitive function.
Methods: 66 BD-II patients, 58 healthy siblings, and 55 healthy controls were assessed with the Trail Making Test (TMT), Digit Symbol Coding Test (DSCT), Category Fluency, Hopkins Verbal Learning Test-Revised (HVLTR), Brief Visuospatial Memory Test-Revised (BVMT-R), Wechsler Memory Scale 3rd ed.
Pediatr Allergy Immunol
January 2022
Background: The lung clearance index (LCI) is a measure of pulmonary function. Variable feasibility (50->80%) in preschool children has been reported. There are limited studies exploring its relationship to respiratory symptoms and how it predicts persistent wheeze.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn biomedical research, cluster analysis is often performed to identify patient subgroups based on patients' characteristics or traits. In the model-based clustering for identifying patient subgroups, mixture models have played a fundamental role in modeling. While there is an increasing interest in using mixture modeling for identifying patient subgroups, little work has been done in selecting the predictors that are associated with the class assignment.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn clinical and epidemiological studies, there is a growing interest in studying the heterogeneity among patients based on longitudinal characteristics to identify subtypes of the study population. Compared to clustering a single longitudinal marker, simultaneously clustering multiple longitudinal markers allow additional information to be incorporated into the clustering process, which reveals co-existing longitudinal patterns and generates deeper biological insight. In the current study, we propose a Bayesian consensus clustering (BCC) model for multivariate longitudinal data.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground & Aims: Mixed oil intravenous lipid emulsion (MO ILE) that contains 30% soybean oil (SO), 30% medium chain triglycerides, 25% olive oil and 15% fish oil can benefit hospitalized patients receiving parenteral nutrition (PN) but there are very few studies on its long-term use. Our goal was to evaluate the clinical outcomes of adults receiving home PN (HPN) with MO versus those receiving SO ILE over a 2-year period.
Method: This is a retrospective analysis of data collected prospectively from a cohort of patients recorded in the Canadian HPN Registry over a 2-year period.
Objectives: Olive oil (OO)-based intravenous lipid emulsion (IVLE) may have biological advantages for nutrition and inflammation status compared with soybean oil (SO)-based IVLE. We aimed to compare prealbumin levels during infusion of OO- or SO-based IVLE in patients receiving parenteral nutrition in the acute-care setting.
Methods: In this prospective, noninferiority, double blind randomized controlled efficacy trial, patients received either OO-based or SO-based IVLE after providing consent.