This review provides the basic principle and rational for ROC analysis of rating and continuous diagnostic test results versus a gold standard. Derived indexes of accuracy, in particular area under the curve (AUC) has a meaningful interpretation for disease classification from healthy subjects. The methods of estimate of AUC and its testing in single diagnostic test and also comparative studies...

In 1900, Ernst Overton found that the entry of anilin dyes through the cell membranes of living cells depended on the lipophilicity of the dyes. The brain is surrounded by barriers consisting of lipid layers that possess several inward and outward active transport systems. In the absence of meningeal inflammation, the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) penetration of anti-infectives in humans estimated ...

BACKGROUND Prostate cancer (PCa) diagnosis requires improvement with the aid of more accurate biomarkers. Postejaculate urethral washings (PEUW) could be a physiological equivalent to urine obtained following rectal prostatic massage, the current basis for the prostate cancer antigen 3 (PCA3) test. The aim of this study was to investigate if PEUW contained prostate-based material, evidenced by ...

To compare the diagnostic accuracies of the Revised Hasegawa Dementia Scale (HDS-R) and Mini-Mental Status Examination (MMSE) for Alzheimer's diseases (AD), we administered them simultaneously to 82 AD patients and 82 age- and sex-matched nondemented control subjects. The area under the receiver operator curve (AUC) for AD of the HDS-R (AUC(HDS-R)) and MMSE (AUC(MMSE)) were bigger than 0.90 ind...

BACKGROUND Expiratory flow limitation (EFL), determined by the negative expiratory pressure (NEP) technique, can exhibit overlapping patterns in COPD, obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and non-OSA obesity. We assessed the ability of a quantitative method to assess EFL to discriminate COPD from obese and OSA patients during NEP (-2 to -3 cm H(2)O) testing. METHODS EFL was quantified by measuring t...

Results For the IR assessed by the clamp, the HOMA-AD demonstrated a stronger coefficient of correlation (r=0.64) compared with the HOMA-IR (r=-0.56); p<0.0001. In the ROC analysis, compared with the HOMA-IR, the HOMA-AD showed higher values of the AUC for the identification of IR based on the clamp test (AUC: 0.844 vs. AUC: 0.804) and on the metabolic syndrome (AUC: 0.703 vs. AUC: 0.689), resp...

Sorafenib, an oral multi-kinase inhibitor, is the final therapy prior to palliative care for advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). However, due to its adverse effects, 20% of patients must discontinue sorafenib within 1 month after first administration. To identify ways to predict the adverse effects and administer the drug for longer periods, we explored the relationship between the duratio...

Previous studies have demonstrated that fluoroquinolone area under the curve (AUC)/MIC ratios of 30 to 50 are sufficient to eradicate pneumococci from in vitro pharmacokinetic models (IVPMs). However, more systematic studies of the impact of AUC/MIC ratios on the antipneumococcal activities of fluoroquinolones are needed. In the present study, a two-compartment IVPM was used to evaluate the imp...

Purpose To determine whether gross tumor volume of resectable gastric adenocarcinoma on multidetector computed tomography could predict presence of lymphovascular invasion and T-stages. Results Gross tumor volume increased with the lymphovascular invasion (r = 0.426, P < 0.0001) and T stage (r = 0.656, P < 0.0001). Univariate analysis showed gross tumor volume could predict lymphovascular inv...

Objective To assess clinical value of fluorine-18-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT) for differentiation of malignant from benign focal thyroid incidentaloma. Materials and Methods This retrospective study included 99 patients with focal thyroid incidentaloma of 5216 non-thyroid cancer patients that had undergone PET/CT. PET/CT semi-quantitative param...