BACKGROUND The comparative safety of dabigatran versus warfarin for treatment of nonvalvular atrial fibrillation in general practice settings has not been established. METHODS AND RESULTS We formed new-user cohorts of propensity score-matched elderly patients enrolled in Medicare who initiated dabigatran or warfarin for treatment of nonvalvular atrial fibrillation between October 2010 and Dec...

BACKGROUND Several measures using prescription data have been developed for estimating medication refill adherence. Few studies have made direct comparisons, and little is known about the accuracy of these measures in patients on a multiple-drug regimen. PURPOSE To compare different calculation methods using prescription data for assessing refill adherence. METHOD An observational cohort st...

OBJECTIVE To determine levels of athero-protective IgM antibodies against phosphorylcholine in mothers and term-born normal or low birth weight infants. APPROACH Twenty three mother-infant pairs were studied, of whom 16 infants were within the normal weight range for gestational age (NGA; 3652[504] g) and 7 were small for gestational age (SGA; birth weight: 2715[255] g), the latter <2SD below...

INTRODUCTION The rising prevalence of chronic disease is leading to an increase in the demand for primary care services and a shortage of primary care physicians globally. Addressing these challenges calls for innovations in the healthcare delivery model with greater use of healthcare technology tools. We previously examined the feasibility of using an automated healthcare kiosk for the managem...

Sir, Two of the four papers that you noted in your Editorial (September 2009 issue, page 2715) had created ‘some confusion among. . .readers’ were authored by us. You appropriately called attention to an editorial in Kidney International. An additional, highly relevant article is the award-winning ‘The (Political) Science of Salt,’ by Gary Taubes, published in Science in 1998 [1]. The criticism...

In the first half of 2021, we have had mixed news from field gene therapy. March saw a halt in bluebird bio's therapy trials after two patients developed serious conditions (acute myeloid leukaemia and myelodysplastic syndrome). The company's investigation concluded that BB305 lentiviral vector was unlikely to caused these conditions. However, for sickle cell disease thalassaemia using not resu...

Man-made habitats in central Europe can be broadly divided into arable land with weed vegetation, and settlements and their surroundings, harbouring ruderal vegetation. The former is a predictable environment with frequent, regular and large-scale disturbances, while the latter is an unpredictable environment with irregular disturbances of varying spatial extent producing heterogeneous mosaics ...

A previous study (Savoie et al, Blood 83:2715, 1994) identified eight transplant patients who acquired Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) infection during the peritransplant period. Three of these patients subsequently developed B-cell lymphoproliferative disease within 4 months of transplantation. Among these, there was a 16-year-old liver transplant patient who was negative for EBV at the time of trans...

De Costa et al. (FEBS Lett. 223, 335; 1987) recently described the synthesis of optically pure enantiomers of (+)-trans-3•4-dich••r•-N-methy•-N-[2-(•-pyrr••idiny•)-cyc••hexy•]benzeneacetamide (U50,488). In the present study we examined the in vitro opioid receptor selectivity of (-)-(1S,2S)-U50,488, (+)-(1R,2R)-U50,488 and (___)-cis-3,4-dichloro-N-methyl-N-[2-(1-pyrrolidinyl)-cyclohexyl]benzene...