UNLABELLED Intravenous (IV) arginine invokes an increase in growth hormone (GH) concentrations, however, little is known about the impact of oral arginine ingestion on the GH response. OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to determine the dose of oral arginine that elicits an optimal GH response and to determine the time course of the response. DESIGN Eight healthy males (18-33 years - 2...

Peginterferon beta-1a reduced annualized relapse rate as compared with placebo and was approved to treat multiple sclerosis patients. A population pharmacokinetic and an exposure-efficacy model were developed to establish the quantitative relationship between pharmacokinetics and annualized relapse rate. The pharmacokinetics was well described by a 1-compartment model with first-order absorptio...

OBJECTIVE To develop a mathematical model for the determination of total areas under curves from various metabolic studies. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS In Tai's Model, the total area under a curve is computed by dividing the area under the curve between two designated values on the X-axis (abscissas) into small segments (rectangles and triangles) whose areas can be accurately calculated from ...

We propose efficient nonparametric statistics to compare medical imaging modalities in multi-reader multi-test data and to compare markers in longitudinal ROC data. The proposed methods are based on the weighted area under the ROC curve, which includes the area under the curve and the partial area under the curve as special cases. The methods maximize the local power for detecting the differenc...

This study seeks to validate a search protocol of ill health-related terms using Twitter data which can later be used to understand if, and how, Twitter can reveal information on the current health situation. We extracted conversations related to health and disease postings on Twitter using a set of pre-defined keywords, assessed the prevalence, frequency, and timing of such content in these co...

OBJECTIVE To cross-culturally adapt the Short Form of the McGill Pain Questionnaire (SF-MPQ) into Brazilian-Portuguese and test the clinimetric properties of the newly developed SF-MPQ and the previously cross-culturally adapted Brazilian-Portuguese Long Form of the McGill Pain Questionnaire (LF-MPQ). STUDY DESIGN AND SETTING The SF-MPQ was translated and adapted into Brazilian-Portuguese fol...

Predictive models of species distributions are typically developed with data collected along roads. Roadside sampling may provide a biased (nonrandom) sample; however, it is currently unknown whether roadside sampling limits the accuracy of predictions generated by species distribution models. We tested whether roadside sampling affects the accuracy of predictions generated by species distribut...

Ensemble classifiers have been shown efficient in multiple applications. In this article, the authors explore the effectiveness of ensemble classifiers in a case-based computer-aided diagnosis system for detection of masses in mammograms. They evaluate two general ways of constructing subclassifiers by resampling of the available development dataset: Random division and random selection. Furthe...

We aimed to estimate the cutoff value of glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c, A1c) for fasting plasma glucose (FPG) of 126 mg/dL in the Korean adult population, using the 2011 Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. A total of 5,421 participants without a history of diabetes and over 19 years of age were included in the analysis. A point-wise area under the receiver operating characteris...

OBJECTIVE The Finnegan scoring list (FSL) is widely used to screen for poor neonatal adaptation in infants exposed to anti-depressants in utero. However, the large number of FSL-items and differential weighing of each item is time consuming. The aim of this study was to shorten and simplify the FSL yet preserving its clinimetric properties. METHODS This observational study examined infants ex...