BACKGROUND The conventional method for modeling of the five-level EuroQol five-dimensional questionnaire (EQ-5D-5L) health state values in national valuation studies is an additive 20-parameter main-effects regression model. Statistical models with many parameters are at increased risk of overfitting-fitting to noise and measurement error, rather than the underlying relationship. OBJECTIVES T...

PURPOSE To develop an algorithm for mapping the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy-Breast (FACT-B) to the 5-level EuroQoL Group's 5-dimension questionnaire (EQ-5D-5L) utility index. METHODS A survey of 238 breast cancer patients in Singapore was conducted. Models using various regression methods with or without recognizing the upper boundary of utility values at 1 were fitted to predict ...

Recently, we demonstrated that a polymorphism in exon 2 of the serum carnosinase (CNDP1) gene is associated with susceptibility to developing diabetic nephropathy. Based on the number of CTG repeats in the signal peptide, five different alleles coding for 4, 5, 6, 7, or 8 leucines (4L-8L) are known. Diabetic patients without nephropathy are homozygous for the 5L allele more frequently than thos...

AIMS To investigate the feasibility of discrete choice experiments for valuing EQ-5D-5L states using computer-based data collection, the consistency of the estimated regression coefficients produced after modeling the preference data, and to examine the similarity of the values derived across countries. METHODS Data were collected in Canada, England, The Netherlands, and the United States (US...

Welding quality control is an important parameter for safe operation of oil and gas pipes, especially for high-strength steel pipes. Size control of welding defect is a bottleneck problem for current pipe construction. As a key part of construction procedure for butt-welding of pipes, pore defects in girth weld is difficult to ignore. A three-dimensional non-linear finite element numerical mode...

Dual active bridge (DAB) converters have been popular in high voltage, low and medium power DC-DC applications, as well as an intermediate high frequency link in solid state transformers. In this paper, a multilevel DAB (ML-DAB) has been proposed in which two active bridges produce two-level (2L)-5L, 5L-2L and 3L-5L voltage waveforms across the high frequency transformer. The proposed ML-DAB ha...

Purpose The aim of this study was to assess the quality of life, number of diseases and burden of morbidity of multimorbid primary care users and whether a simple disease count or a multimorbidity burden score is more predictive of quality of life. Patients and methods Primary care patients with at least 1 of 11 specified chronic conditions were invited to participate in a postal survey. Part...

AIM To describe health status and psychological distress among in-hospital cardiac arrest (IHCA) survivors in relation to gender. METHODS This national register study consists of data from follow-up registration of IHCA survivors 3-6 months post cardiac arrest (CA) in Sweden. A questionnaire was sent to the survivors, including measurements of health status (EQ-5D-5L) and psychological distre...

Poly(A) binding protein 1 (PABP1) plays a central role in mRNA translation and stability and is a target by many viruses in diverse manners. We report a novel viral translational control strategy involving the recruitment of PABP1 to the 5' leader internal ribosome entry site (5L IRES) of an immediate-early (IE) bicistronic mRNA that encodes the neurovirulence protein (pp14) from the avian herp...