BACKGROUND Systematic Reviews (SRs) of experimental animal studies are not yet common practice, but awareness of the merits of conducting such SRs is steadily increasing. As animal intervention studies differ from randomized clinical trials (RCT) in many aspects, the methodology for SRs of clinical trials needs to be adapted and optimized for animal intervention studies. The Cochrane Collaborat...

This research focuses on the associations between interactive processes of early childhood classrooms and gains in children's cognitive self-regulation (CSR) across the preschool year. Data from 803 children (45.8% female; M = 54 months; 39.1% Caucasian, 26.3% African American, 24.6% Hispanic, 9.9% Other) were collected at fall and spring of the preschool year, and classroom observations were c...

BACKGROUND The pan-Canadian Oncology Symptom Triage and Remote Support (COSTaRS) team developed 13 evidence-informed protocols for symptom management. AIM To build an effective and sustainable approach for implementing the COSTaRS protocols for nurses providing telephone-based symptom support to cancer patients. METHODS A comparative case study was guided by the Knowledge to Action Framewor...

In the case of manufactured products, there are situations where some components of a product are produced over a period of time by collecting items from different vendors, using different raw materials, machines, and manpower. The physical characteristics and the reliabilities of such components may be different, but sometimes it is difficult to distinguish them clearly. In such situations, mi...

While GWAS identify many disease-associated SNPs, using them to decipher disease mechanisms is hindered by the difficulty in mapping SNPs to genes. Most SNPs are in non-coding regions and it is often hard to identify the genes they implicate. To explore how far the SNP may be from the affected genes we used a pathway-based approach. We found that affected genes are often up to 2 Mbps away from ...

BACKGROUND In adults, body weight tends to be underestimated when based on self-reported data. Whether this discrepancy between measured and reported data exists in healthy young children is unclear. We studied whether parental reported body weight and height of 4-year-old children corresponded with measured body weight and height. In addition, we studied the determinants and the consequences o...

DNA methylation is a well-established epigenetic biomarker for many diseases. Studying the relationships among a group of genes and their methylations may help to unravel the etiology of diseases. Since CpG-islands (CGIs) play a crucial role in the regulation of transcription during methylation, including them in the analysis may provide further information in understanding the pathogenesis of ...

This study was conducted to investigate innovative solutions to a measurement problem pertaining to self-reported body weight data as a key component of the Stepped Approach Model (SAM) of service delivery. Subjects (n = 223) were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: Informed Group (of self-report and weight measurement) + six body weighing habit items (IG, n = 113) and Uninformed Group ...

Tattooing and body piercing are now worldwide fashion crazes. The health risks associated with these procedures are as yet unclear. This article examines the prevalence of body decoration and the associated health risks within the Australian population using a random sample survey of individuals aged 14 years and over, collected between June and September 1998 (n = 10,030). The results show tha...

Evidence-based medicine (EBM) stresses the examination of evidence from clinical research and describes it as a shift in medical paradigms, in contrast to intuition, unsystematic clinical experience, and pathophysiologic rationale. While the importance of randomized trials has been created by the concept of the hierarchy of evidence in guiding therapy, much of the medical research is observatio...