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MEDICAL NEWS: Partial verification refers to the situation where a subset of patients is not verified by the reference (gold) standard and is excluded from the analysis. If partial verification is present, the observed (naive) measures of accuracy such as sensitivity and specificity are most likely to be biased. Recently, Harel and Zhou showed [...]

MEDICAL NEWS: Partial verification refers to the situation where a subset of patients is not verified by the reference (gold) standard and is excluded from the analysis. If partial verification is present, the observed (naive) measures of accuracy such as sensitivity and specificity are most likely to be biased. Recently, Harel and Zhou showed [...]

MEDICAL NEWS: Shared random effects models have been increasingly common in the joint analyses of repeated measures (e.g. CD4 counts, hemoglobin levels) and a correlated failure time such as death. In this paper we study several shared random effects models in the multi-level repeated measures data setting with dependent failure times. Distinct random effects [...]

MEDICAL NEWS:
Background  Genetic and environmental factors are involved in the pathogenesis of autoimmune thyroid disease (AITD). Family members of patients with AITD are at increased risk for AITD, but not all will develop overt hypothyroidism or hyperthyroidism. Our goal was to develop a simple predictive score that has broad applicability and is easily calculated at [...]

MEDICAL NEWS:
Background  Hospitalization may cause bone loss and decrease physical function; however, the risk of fracture following hospitalization is not known.
Methods  A prospective study of a cohort of 3075 white and black women and men, aged 70 to 79 years, recruited from 2 communities from 1997 to 1998. Incident hospitalizations and fractures were validated by [...]

MEDICAL NEWS:
Abstract

Background  Efforts to improve primary care depression treatment have assessed strategies across heterogeneous groups of patients, but
few have examined clinician-level influences on depression treatment.

Objective  To examine clinician characteristics that affect depression treatment in primary care settings, using multilevel ordinal regression
modeling to disentangle patient- from clinician-level effects.

Design  Secondary analysis from the Quality Improvement in [...]

MEDICAL NEWS: We present a mixed treatment meta-analysis of antivirals for treatment of influenza, where some trials report summary measures on at least one of the two outcomes: time to alleviation of fever and time to alleviation of symptoms. The synthesis is further complicated by the variety of summary measures reported: mean time, median [...]

MEDICAL NEWS: Background:
This paper focuses on measuring the efficiency and effectiveness of two diagramming methods employed in key informant interviews with clinicians and health care administrators. The two methods are ‘participatory diagramming’, where the respondent creates a diagram that assists in their communication of answers, and ‘graphic elicitation’, where a researcher-prepared diagram is [...]

DRUGS & RX: MEXICO CITY Aug. 1, 2008—For human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infected patients with treatment-related abdominal obesity and growth hormone deficiency, receiving low-dose growth hormone resulted in improvement in fat and blood pressure…

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Growth Hormone Treatment for HIV-Related Abdominal Obesity Improves Abdominal Fat and Other Cardiovascular Measures, but May Be Limited [...]

DRUGS & RX: Other cost cutting measures include management salary concessions and the reduction in use of consultants and other contract personnel
WATERTOWN, Mass., July 28, 2008–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Acusphere Inc. (NASDAQ: ACUS) announced today that it has…

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Acusphere Announces Staff Reductions was another wonderful and informative drug and pharmaceutical article from your drug [...]

DRUGS & RX: With News of Pfizer’s Second Quarter Profits More Than Doubling Due in Part to Cost-Cutting Measures, Senator Expands Investigation of Drug Industry Trend of Outsourcing to China and Other Developing Nations
WASHINGTON, July 24, 2008 - In the…

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With Drug Company Profits Soaring, Sen. Brown Renews Investigation of Drug [...]

DRUGS & RX: The French government has announced a set of new measures aimed at reducing its healthcare budget deficit. Among the measures that will become part of the bill financing social security 2009 - which is to be presented in late 2008 - will be a levy on complementary health insurance fund revenues of [...]