BACKGROUND A serum galactomannan (GM) assay has been approved for diagnosing invasive aspergillosis (IA). However, the role of the BAL-GM assay has not been well established. Therefore, we conducted a metaanalysis to determine the overall accuracy of BAL-GM in the diagnosis of IA. METHODS After a systematic review of English-language studies, the sensitivity (SEN), specificity (SPE), and posi...

UNLABELLED The aim of this work was to assess the overall value of (18)F-FDG PET/CT in the diagnosis of residual or recurrent nasopharyngeal carcinoma using a metaanalysis. METHODS The literature published between January 1990 and September 2014 was searched in the PubMed, EMBASE, Cochrane Library, EBSCO, VIP, CNKI, and Wanfang databases to identify eligible studies on PET/CT of residual or r...

EGF and its receptor EGFR serve as a paradigm for signaling in cell, molecular and tumor biology. EGFR inhibitors, drugs targeting the intracellular kinase activity and antibodies targeting the extracellular ligand binding, are used to treat breast, lung, colon and other cancers. Nominally affecting the same target, inhibitors have different effects, suggesting that use of inhibitor combination...

We compared the antihypertensive efficacy of available drugs in the new angiotensin-II-antagonist (AIIA) class. The antihypertensive efficacy of losartan, valsartan, irbesartan, and candesartan was evaluated from randomized controlled trials (RCT) by performing a metaanalysis of 43 published RCT. These trials involved AIIA compared with placebo, other antihypertensive classes, and direct compar...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE The Third European Cooperative Acute Stroke Study (ECASS-3) demonstrated a benefit of treatment with intravenous tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) for acute stroke in the 3- to 4.5-hour time-window. Prior studies, however, have failed to demonstrate a significant benefit of tPA for patients treated beyond 3 hours. The purpose of this study was to produce reliable and pre...