OBJECTIVE To compare leisure activities and associated factors in a group with recent onset RA and matched community derived controls, to examine whether leisure activities are altered during the early years of disease and to seek predictors. METHODS One hundred and forty-seven consecutive persons with early RA were followed for 0.9-5.9 yr. One hundred and forty-four RA patients were compared...

BACKGROUND Early identification of patients who need post-acute care (PAC) may improve discharge planning. The purposes of the study were to develop and validate a score predicting discharge to a post-acute care (PAC) facility and to determine its best assessment time. METHODS We conducted a prospective study including 349 (derivation cohort) and 161 (validation cohort) consecutive patients i...

Abbreviated kinetic profiles can reduce the number of phlebotomies and drug assays, and thereby the cost of area-under-the-curve (AUC) monitoring. In the present investigation, we used two independent data sets: group 1, 101 AUC profiles from 77 stable renal-transplant patients, which included a 5-h sample in addition to the usual 0-, 2-, 4-, 6-, 10-, 14-, and 24-h samples; and group 2, 100 pro...

This article considers receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis for bivariate marker measurements. The research interest is to extend tools and rules from univariate marker to bivariate marker setting for evaluating predictive accuracy of markers using a tree-based classification rule. Using an and-or classifier, an ROC function together with a weighted ROC function (WROC) and their con...

An open-label, nonrandomized study was conducted to assess the effect of ravuconazole on the pharmacokinetics of concomitantly administered nelfinavir. Healthy volunteers received 750 mg nelfinavir on day 1, 750 mg nelfinavir and 400 mg ravuconazole on day 2, 400 mg ravuconazole on days 3 to 28, and 750 mg nelfinavir and 400 mg ravuconazole on day 29. The geometric means of C(max) and area unde...

OBJECTIVE To determine whether fractional exhaled nitric oxide (FENO) has a utility as a diagnostic or predictive maker in acute exacerbations of asthma in children. DESIGN Analysis of data collected in a pediatric asthma cohort. SETTING Pediatric Chest Clinic of a tertiary care hospital. METHODS A cohort of children with asthma was followed up every 3 months in addition to any acute exac...

OBJECTIVES The aim of the study was to determine which of three two-parameter fitting functions (exponential, linear-log, and negative-power function of time) most accurately models early chromium-51-EDTA (51Cr-EDTA) plasma concentration data prior to 120 min in patients with cirrhosis and ascites and understand how these fitting functions affect the calculation of the area under the plasma con...

PURPOSE To examine whether apparent advantages following training in meditation over exercise can be attributed to specific symptoms, functional impairments, or quality-of-life indicators assessed by the Wisconsin Upper Respiratory Symptom Survey (WURSS-24). METHODS Results from the randomized controlled trial "Meditation or Exercise for Preventing Acute Respiratory Illness" showed mean globa...

[Purpose] To evaluate the sensitivity and specificity of the Safe Driving Behavior Measure and the Driving Habits Questionnaire in community-dwelling older self-drivers. [Subjects and Methods] Forty-five older participated in this study, to measure the Safe Driving Behavior Measure and the Driving Habits Questionnaire. Sensitivity and specificity were calculated along with cut-off values and ov...

OBJECTIVE To describe measles vaccination patterns in a cohort of Swiss children aged up to 3 years insured with a single health insurer. METHODS A dynamic cohort study evaluating measles immunizations patterns in children born between 2006 and 2008 was conducted. Time-to-event analysis was used to describe timing of measles immunization. Effective vaccine coverage was calculated by using an ...