INTRODUCTION Many epidemiological methods for analysing follow-up studies require the calculation of rates based on accumulating person-time and events, stratified by various factors. Managing this stratification and accumulation is often the most difficult aspect of this type of analysis. TUTORIAL We provide a tutorial on accumulating person-time and events, stratified by various factors i.e...

Residual dipolar couplings (RDCs) are NMR parameters that provide both structural and dynamic information concerning inter-nuclear vectors, such as N-H(N) and Cα-Hα bonds within the protein backbone. Two approaches for extracting this information from RDCs are the model free analysis (MFA) (Meiler et al. in J Am Chem Soc 123:6098-6107, 2001; Peti et al. in J Am Chem Soc 124:5822-5833, 2002) and...

OBJECTIVE A case-cohort study is an efficient epidemiological study design for estimating exposure-outcome associations. When sampling of the subcohort is stratified, several methods of analysis are possible, but it is unclear how they compare. Our objective was to compare five analysis methods using Cox regression for this type of data, ranging from a crude model that ignores the stratificatio...

This study was designed to select molecular markers associated with prognosis, and to propose a prognostic scoring scale for patients with primary WHO grade III gliomas based on these molecular predictors. A series of 83 grade III glioma patients surgically treated and pathologically confirmed in Beijing Tiantan Hospital between May 2009 and December 2010 were retrospectively reviewed in the st...

Systemic inflammation and hematological markers have prognostic value in patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC). The objective of this study was to evaluate the neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR), platelet-to-lymphocyte ratio (PLR), combined neutrophil-platelet (CNP) score, and hemoglobin (Hb) to inform treatment decisions and predict outcomes in patients with locally advance...

OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to identify biomarkers with prognostic value in the setting of surgically treated endometrial cancer. METHODS Medical data for 282 patients with surgically treated endometrial cancer were reviewed retrospectively. Preoperative concentrations of six serum biomarkers (CA125, CA15-3, C-reactive protein [CRP], D-dimer [D-D], platelet-to-lymphocyte ratio [PLR], ...

Objective The clinical impact of neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) on oncological outcomes in patients with locally advanced upper tract urothelial carcinoma (UTUC) remains unclear. We investigated the oncological outcomes of platinum-based NAC for locally advanced UTUC. Results Of 234 patients, 101 received NAC (NAC group) and 133 did not (Control [Ctrl] group). The regimens in the NAC group in...

Background: Serum parameters as prognostic parameters are studied widely. We aim to examine the prognostic significance of the serum alkaline phosphatase (ALP) level and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) level in triple negative breast cancer (TNBC). Methods: Total of 253 TNBC patients from Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center who underwent treatment between January 2004 and December 2009 was conduct...

Background The prognostic benefit of regular follow-up to detect asymptomatic recurrence after radical nephroureterectomy (RNU) remains unclear. We aimed to assess whether regular follow-up to detect asymptomatic recurrence after RNU improves patient survival. Materials and Methods We retrospectively analysed 415 patients who underwent RNU for upper tract urothelial carcinoma at four hospital...

Over the last few decades, machine learning and data mining have been increasingly used for clinical prediction in ICUs. However, there is still a huge gap in making full use of the time-series data generated from ICUs. Aiming at filling this gap, we propose a novel approach entitled Time Slicing Cox regression (TS-Cox), which extends the classical Cox regression into a classification method on...