BACKGROUND Public payer reimbursement for non-oncology drugs in Canada, including orphan drugs, is based on recommendations by the Common Drug Review (CDR) (with the exception of Quebec). CDR has been criticized for negative recommendations for orphan drugs and contributing to delays in patient access to these drugs. However, it is unclear how CDR makes recommendations for orphan drugs and the ...

OBJECTIVE This study aimed to examine the usefulness of each subscale score of the Clinical Dementia Rating (CDR) for predicting Alzheimer's disease (AD) dementia progression in amnestic mild cognitive impairment (MCI) elderly subjects. METHODS Fifty-nine elderly MCI individuals were recruited from a university dementia and memory disorder clinic. Standardized clinical and neuropsychological ...

Schizosaccharomyces pombe mutants have been selected on the basis of an altered response to nutritional stimulation of cell division (changed division response, cdr). Two new loci (cdr1 and cdr2) were identified and characterized. When suspended in nitrogen-free medium wild-type cells underwent stimulated rates of division and became reduced to approximately 30% in protein content with a concom...

In this paper we discuss the use of distributed intelligent agents for building a system incorporating the tasks control, diagnosis and repair. We rst discuss general problems associated with distributed systems and with distributed CDR-systems speciically. We then describe the general operations, which a CDR-system has to perform and the relations existing between the control-, diagnosis-and r...

The role of microglia-mediated inflammation in the progression of Alzheimer's disease (AD) neuropathology remains unclear. In this study, postmortem brain sections from AD and control cases were subjected to Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA)-DR immunohistochemistry to examine microglia activation in the progression of AD assessed by pre-mortem clinical dementia rating (CDR) and postmortem pathologi...

Study Design Cost-effectiveness analysis. Objectives To determine the 7-year cost-effectiveness of cervical disc replacement (CDR) and anterior cervical discectomy and fusion (ACDF). Methods We analyzed 7-year Short Form-36 Health Survey data collected from the Prestige Cervical Disc investigational device exemption study (IDE). The SF-6D algorithm was used to convert this data into health ...

Consistent with the worldwide demographic trend of population aging, dementia is expected to become a burgeoning public health problem in Asian populations.Thus, there is a pressing need for reliable and valid methods of dementia diagnosis and staging that are applicable in heterogeneous Asian populations. The Clinical Dementia Rating (CDR) is an informant-based global assessment scale with est...

PURPOSE To investigate the feasibility of constant dose rate volumetric modulated arc therapy (CDR-VMAT) in the treatment of nasopharyngeal cancer (NPC) patients and to introduce rotational arc radiotherapy for linacs incapable of dose rate variation. MATERIALS AND METHODS Twelve NPC patients with various stages treated previously using variable dose rate (VDR) VMAT were enrolled in this stud...

Study Design Health utility analysis. Objectives To determine the health state utility (HSU) of 1- and 2-level anterior cervical discectomy and fusion (ACDF) and cervical disc replacement (CDR). Methods Data from the Medtronic Prestige Cervical Disc investigational device exemption studies was used. Four groups were defined: 1-level ACDF, 1-level CDR, 2-level ACDF, and 2-level CDR. The 36-i...