BACKGROUND To evaluate if plasma levels of midregional pro-adrenomedullin (MR-proADM) improve prediction of functional outcome in ischemic stroke. METHODS In 168 consecutive ischemic stroke patients, plasma levels of MR-proADM were measured within 24 hours from symptom onset. Functional outcome was assessed by the modified Rankin Scale (mRS) at 90 days following stroke. Logistic regression, r...

New approaches have been developed in recent years to quantify the improvement in prediction performance gained by adding a novel marker to a set of baseline predictors of risk. The paper by Tzoulaki et al. concerns risk reclassification techniques and focuses specifically on the net reclassification improvement (NRI) index. Their review shows that use of risk reclassification analysis is extre...

BACKGROUND Measures of clinical utility (net benefit and event free life years) have been recommended in the assessment of a new predictor in a risk prediction model. However, it is not clear how they relate to the measures of predictive ability and reclassification, such as the c-statistic and Net Reclassification Improvement (NRI), or how these measures are affected by differences in mean ris...

BACKGROUND It is well established that cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) is inversely associated with cardiovascular and all-cause mortality. However, little is known regarding the association between CRF and incidence of heart failure (HF). METHODS AND RESULTS Between 1987 and 2014, we assessed CRF in 21 080 HF-free subjects (58.3±11 years) at the Veterans Affairs Medical Centers in Washington...

BACKGROUND The objective of this study was to evaluate the added predictive ability of the CHA(2)DS(2)VASc prediction rule for stroke and death in a nonanticoagulated population of patients with atrial fibrillation. METHODS AND RESULTS We included 1603 nonanticoagulated patients with incident atrial fibrillation from a Danish prospective cohort study of 57 053 middle-aged men and women. The N...

BACKGROUND Treatment strategy for early gastric cancer depends on the probability of lymph node metastasis. The aim of this study is to develop a nomogram predicting lymph node metastasis in early gastric cancer using clinicopathological factors and biomarkers. METHODS A literature review was performed to identify biomarkers related to lymph node metastasis in gastric cancer. Seven markers we...

Circulating levels of sTNFaR1 were assessed in 429 patients with type 1 diabetes and overt nephropathy from the Finnish Diabetic Nephropathy (FinnDiane) cohort study. Predictors of incident ESRD over a median of 9.4 years of follow-up were determined by Cox regression and Fine-Gray competing risk analyses. The added value of sTNFaR1 was estimated via time-dependent receiver operating characteri...

BACKGROUND Current heart failure (HF) risk prediction models do not consider how individual patient assessments occur in incremental steps; furthermore, each additional diagnostic evaluation may add cost, complexity, and potential morbidity. METHODS AND RESULTS Using a cohort of well-treated ambulatory HF patients with reduced ejection fraction who had complete clinical, laboratory, health-re...

Methods All CE-MARC patients underwent annual follow-up for 3 years to assess the occurrence of MACE (cardiovascular death, acute coronary syndrome, unscheduled revascularization or hospital admission for any cardiovascular cause). Time to MACE was assessed by univariate (log-rank test) and multivariate (Cox proportional hazards regression) analysis after adjustment for major cardiovascular ris...

Decreased lumbar spine trabecular bone score (TBS), a dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA)-derived image texture measurement, is a risk factor for major osteoporotic fracture (MOF) and hip fracture (HF) independent of 10-year fracture probability estimated using FRAX. We determined how often applying the TBS adjustment to fracture probability altered treatment qualification. Using a populatio...