Children with rheumatic oligoarthritis and polyarthritis frequently establish persistent parvovirus B19 infections that may be associated with the production of antiphospholipid antibodies (anti-PL IgG). In this study we analysed the influence of high-dose intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) therapy on virus load, on the level of anti-PL IgG and its potential capacity to improve the patients' cli...

In this paper, a new I/O-aware load-balancing scheme is presented to improve overall performance of a distributed system with a general and practical workload including I/O activities. The proposed scheme dynamically detects I/O load imbalance on nodes of a distributed system and determines whether to migrate the I/O requests of some jobs from overloaded nodes to other lessor under-loaded nodes...

most published results about the characteristics of niti wires are based on the mechanical laboratory tests on the as-received wires.the purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of saliva on load-deflection characteristics of superelastic niti wires.in this experimental study, 15 wires of three kinds of superelastic niti wires (sentalloy, force i and truflex) were prepared. five spec...

Twenty-three human T lymphotropic virus type I (HTLV-I) seroconverters were identified among 1120 HTLV-I-seronegative adults followed up for 11 years in an area of Japan endemic for HTLV-I. The geometric mean titer of anti-HTLV-I was 1:453 in the first year after seroconversion; the titer of each subject did not change significantly during 2-10 years of follow-up. HTLV-I proviral DNA load was q...

Phase I trials are conducted to find a dose to use in subsequent trials. They provide data on the rate of adverse events at different dose levels and provide data for studying the pharmacokinetics and pharmacology of the drug. Dose-finding studies that involve therapies with little or no toxicity often enroll healthy volunteers and usually have a control group. Trials in oncology and other life...

Human T lymphotropic virus type I (HTLV-I)-associated myelopathy/tropical spastic paraparesis (HAM/TSP) is one outcome of infection with HTLV-I. A population association study of 229 patients with HAM/TSP and 202 healthy carriers of HTLV-I in southern Japan showed that this outcome of HTLV-I infection and the HTLV-I provirus load are under polygenic control. Of 58 polymorphic sites studied in 3...

background : the existing evidence about the clinical situations of the bipolar patients with opioid dependence is scarce. the present study was carried out to compare the clinical features and course of the bipolar disorder type i regarding the two subgroups of opioid dependent and non-dependent. methods : there were 178 adult patients with bipolar disorder type i consecutively referred to the...

The Korean translated Appraisal of Guidelines for Research and Evaluation II (Korean AGREE II) instrument was distributed into Korean medical societies in 2011. However, inter-rater disagreement issues still exist. The Korean AGREE II scoring guide was therefore developed to reduce inter-rater differences. This study examines the effects of the Korean AGREE II scoring guide to reduce inter-rate...