Articles

Short- and long-term impact of vaccination against cytomegalovirus: a modeling study

Infection with cytomegalovirus (CMV) is highly prevalent worldwide and can cause severe disease in immunocompromised persons and congenitally infected infants. The disease burden caused by congenital CMV infec...

Authors: Ganna Rozhnova, Mirjam E. Kretzschmar, Fiona van der Klis, Debbie van Baarle, Marjolein Korndewal, Ann C. Vossen and Michiel van Boven

Ethnicity and COVID-19 infection: are the pieces of the puzzle falling into place?

Authors: Rachel H. Mulholland and Ian P. Sinha

sTREM-1 predicts mortality in hospitalized patients with infection in a tropical, middle-income country

Few studies of biomarkers as predictors of outcome in infection have been performed in tropical, low- and middle-income countries where the burden of sepsis is highest. We evaluated whether selected biomarkers...

Authors: Shelton W. Wright, Lara Lovelace-Macon, Viriya Hantrakun, Kristina E. Rudd, Prapit Teparrukkul, Susanna Kosamo, W. Conrad Liles, Direk Limmathurotsakul and T. Eoin West

Multidrug-resistant tuberculosis surveillance and cascade of care in Madagascar: a five-year (2012–2017) retrospective study

In Madagascar, the multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) surveillance programme was launched in late 2012 wherein previously treated TB cases and symptomatic MDR-TB contacts (hereafter called presumptive M...

Authors: Astrid M. Knoblauch, Simon Grandjean Lapierre, Daniella Randriamanana, Mamy Serge Raherison, Andrianantenaina Rakotoson, Bienvenue Solofomandimby Raholijaona, Masiarivony Ravaoarimanga, Pascaline Elisabeth Ravololonandriana, Marie-Sylvianne Rabodoarivelo, Orelys Ratsirahonana, Fanjasoa Rakotomanana, Turibio Razafindranaivo, Voahangy Rasolofo and Niaina Rakotosamimanana

Forecasting spatial, socioeconomic and demographic variation in COVID-19 health care demand in England and Wales

COVID-19 poses one of the most profound public health crises for a hundred years. As of mid-May 2020, across the world, almost 300,000 deaths and over 4 million confirmed cases were registered. Reaching over 3...

Authors: Mark D. Verhagen, David M. Brazel, Jennifer Beam Dowd, Ilya Kashnitsky and Melinda C. Mills

A subset of epithelial cells mimics regulatory T cells and contributes to immune evasion during development of pancreatic adenocarcinoma

Pancreatic cancer is refractory to most current treatment options. Immunotherapy emerges as an effective and novel therapeutic strategy for several solid tumors. However, most of the clinical trials on immunot...

Authors: Courtney W. Houchen and Min Li

Correction to: The complex neurobiology of resilient functioning after childhood maltreatment

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via the original article.

Authors: Konstantinos Ioannidis, Adrian Dahl Askelund, Rogier A. Kievit and Anne-Laura van Harmelen

Risk factors and risk prediction models for colorectal cancer metastasis and recurrence: an umbrella review of systematic reviews and meta-analyses of observational studies

There is a clear need for systematic appraisal of models/factors predicting colorectal cancer (CRC) metastasis and recurrence because clinical decisions about adjuvant treatment are taken on the basis of such ...

Authors: Wei Xu, Yazhou He, Yuming Wang, Xue Li, Jane Young, John P. A. Ioannidis, Malcolm G. Dunlop and Evropi Theodoratou

COVID-19: a retrospective cohort study with focus on the over-80s and hospital-onset disease

Data from the UK COVID-19 outbreak are emerging, and there are ongoing concerns about a disproportionate effect on ethnic minorities. There is very limited information on COVID-19 in the over-80s, and the rate...

Authors: Simon E. Brill, Hannah C. Jarvis, Ezgi Ozcan, Thomas L. P. Burns, Rabia A. Warraich, Lisa J. Amani, Amina Jaffer, Stephanie Paget, Anand Sivaramakrishnan and Dean D. Creer

Why the COVID-19 pandemic should be a call for action to advance equitable access to medicines

Authors: Jillian C. Kohler and Tim K. Mackey

Rapid publications risk the integrity of science in the era of COVID-19

Preprint manuscripts, rapid publications and opinion pieces have been essential in permitting the lay press and public health authorities to preview data relating to coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), includ...

Authors: N. Bagdasarian, G. B. Cross and D. Fisher

A prospect on the use of antiviral drugs to control local outbreaks of COVID-19

Current outbreaks of COVID-19 are threatening the health care systems of several countries around the world. Control measures, based on isolation, contact tracing, and quarantine, can decrease and delay the bu...

Authors: Andrea Torneri, Pieter Libin, Joris Vanderlocht, Anne-Mieke Vandamme, Johan Neyts and Niel Hens

Addressing challenges for clinical research responses to emerging epidemics and pandemics: a scoping review

Major infectious disease outbreaks are a constant threat to human health. Clinical research responses to outbreaks generate evidence to improve outcomes and outbreak control. Experiences from previous epidemic...

Authors: Louise Sigfrid, Katherine Maskell, Peter G. Bannister, Sharif A. Ismail, Shelui Collinson, Sadie Regmi, Claire Blackmore, Eli Harriss, Kajsa-Stina Longuere, Nina Gobat, Peter Horby, Mike Clarke and Gail Carson

Mental health and smoking cessation—a population survey in England

To reduce inequalities between individuals with and without mental health problems, a better understanding is required of triggers and success of quit attempts among the third of smokers with mental health pro...

Authors: Leonie S. Brose, Jamie Brown and Ann McNeill

Systematic reviews and meta-analyses comparing mortality in restrictive and liberal haemoglobin thresholds for red cell transfusion: an overview of systematic reviews

There are no overviews of systematic reviews investigating haemoglobin thresholds for transfusion. This is important as the literature on transfusion thresholds has grown considerably in recent years. Our aim ...

Authors: Kevin M. Trentino, Shannon L. Farmer, Michael F. Leahy, Frank M. Sanfilippo, James P. Isbister, Rhonda Mayberry, Axel Hofmann, Aryeh Shander, Craig French and Kevin Murray

Programmatic options for monitoring malaria in elimination settings: easy access group surveys to investigate Plasmodium falciparum epidemiology in two regions with differing endemicity in Haiti

As in most eliminating countries, malaria transmission is highly focal in Haiti. More granular information, including identifying asymptomatic infections, is needed to inform programmatic efforts, monitor inte...

Authors: Thomas Druetz, Gillian Stresman, Ruth A. Ashton, Lotus L. van den Hoogen, Vena Joseph, Carl Fayette, Frank Monestime, Karen E. Hamre, Michelle A. Chang, Jean F. Lemoine, Chris Drakeley and Thomas P. Eisele

Bevacizumab dose adjustment to improve clinical outcomes of glioblastoma

Glioblastoma (GBM) is one of the most aggressive and vascularized brain tumors in adults, with a median survival of 20.9 months. In newly diagnosed and recurrent GBM, bevacizumab demonstrated an increase in pr...

Authors: N. García-Romero, I. Palacín-Aliana, R. Madurga, J. Carrión-Navarro, S. Esteban-Rubio, B. Jiménez, A. Collazo, F. Pérez-Rodríguez, A. Ortiz de Mendivil, C. Fernández-Carballal, S. García-Duque, J. Diamantopoulos-Fernández, C. Belda-Iniesta, R. Prat-Acín, P. Sánchez-Gómez, E. Calvo…

To screen or not to screen: an interactive framework for comparing costs of mass malaria treatment interventions

Mass drug administration and mass-screen-and-treat interventions have been used to interrupt malaria transmission and reduce burden in sub-Saharan Africa. Determining which strategy will reduce costs is an imp...

Authors: Justin Millar, Kok Ben Toh and Denis Valle

Cerebrospinal fluid and plasma biomarkers in individuals at risk for genetic prion disease

Prion disease is neurodegenerative disease that is typically fatal within months of first symptoms. Clinical trials in this rapidly declining symptomatic patient population have proven challenging. Individuals...

Authors: Sonia M. Vallabh, Eric Vallabh Minikel, Victoria J. Williams, Becky C. Carlyle, Alison J. McManus, Chase D. Wennick, Anna Bolling, Bianca A. Trombetta, David Urick, Chloe K. Nobuhara, Jessica Gerber, Holly Duddy, Ingolf Lachmann, Christiane Stehmann, Steven J. Collins, Kaj Blennow…

A prospective longitudinal study on the microbiota composition in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

A connection between amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and altered gut microbiota composition has previously been reported in animal models. This work is the first prospective longitudinal study addressing t...

Authors: Diana Di Gioia, Nicole Bozzi Cionci, Loredana Baffoni, Angela Amoruso, Marco Pane, Luca Mogna, Francesca Gaggìa, Maria Ausiliatrice Lucenti, Enrica Bersano, Roberto Cantello, Fabiola De Marchi and Letizia Mazzini

Comparative performance and external validation of the multivariable PREDICT Prostate tool for non-metastatic prostate cancer: a study in 69,206 men from Prostate Cancer data Base Sweden (PCBaSe)

PREDICT Prostate is an endorsed prognostic model that provides individualised long-term prostate cancer-specific and overall survival estimates. The model, derived from UK data, estimates potential treatment bene...

Authors: David Thurtle, Ola Bratt, Pär Stattin, Paul Pharoah and Vincent Gnanapragasam

Risk of pneumococcal bacteremia in Kenyan children with glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency

Glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD) deficiency is the most common enzyme deficiency state in humans. The clinical phenotype is variable and includes asymptomatic individuals, episodic hemolysis induced by...

Authors: James J. Gilchrist, Sophie Uyoga, Matti Pirinen, Anna Rautanen, Salim Mwarumba, Patricia Njuguna, Neema Mturi, Adrian V. S. Hill, J. Anthony G. Scott and Thomas N. Williams

Using health facility deaths to estimate population causes of neonatal and child mortality in four African countries

Verbal autopsy is the main method used in countries with weak civil registration systems for estimating community causes of neonatal and 1–59-month-old deaths. However, validation studies of verbal autopsy met...

Authors: Henry D. Kalter, Jamie Perin, Agbessi Amouzou, Gift Kwamdera, Wasilat Adeyinka Adewemimo, Félicitée Nguefack, Abdoulaye-Mamadou Roubanatou and Robert E. Black

Child maltreatment and cardiovascular disease: quantifying mediation pathways using UK Biobank

Child maltreatment is associated with cardiovascular disease (CVD), but mediation pathways have not been fully elucidated. The aim of the current study was to determine and quantify the underlying pathways lin...

Authors: Frederick K. Ho, Carlos Celis-Morales, Stuart R. Gray, Fanny Petermann-Rocha, Donald Lyall, Daniel Mackay, Naveed Sattar, Helen Minnis and Jill P. Pell

Maternal iodine status, intrauterine growth, birth outcomes and congenital anomalies in a UK birth cohort

Severe iodine insufficiency in pregnancy has significant consequences, but there is inadequate evidence to indicate what constitutes mild or moderate insufficiency, in terms of observed detrimental effects on ...

Authors: Charles Jonathan Peter Snart, Diane Erin Threapleton, Claire Keeble, Elizabeth Taylor, Dagmar Waiblinger, Stephen Reid, Nisreen A. Alwan, Dan Mason, Rafaq Azad, Janet Elizabeth Cade, Nigel A. B. Simpson, Sarah Meadows, Amanda McKillion, Gillian Santorelli, Amanda H. Waterman, Michael Zimmermann…

Estimating the contribution of different age strata to vaccine serotype pneumococcal transmission in the pre vaccine era: a modelling study

Herd protection through interruption of transmission has contributed greatly to the impact of pneumococcal conjugate vaccines (PCVs) and may enable the use of cost-saving reduced dose schedules. To aid PCV age...

Authors: Stefan Flasche, Marc Lipsitch, John Ojal and Amy Pinsent

COVID-19 cancer conundrum—evidence driving decisions or the lack of it?

Authors: Nalinie Joharatnam-Hogan and Khurum Khan

Age-dependent effects of body mass index across the adult life span on the risk of dementia: a cohort study with a genetic approach

While a high body mass index (BMI) in midlife is associated with higher risk of dementia, high BMI in late-life may be associated with lower risk. This study combined genetic designs with longitudinal data to ...

Authors: Ida K. Karlsson, Kelli Lehto, Margaret Gatz, Chandra A. Reynolds and Anna K. Dahl Aslan

Responding to COVID-19: how an academic infectious diseases division mobilized in Singapore

On January 30, COVID-19 was declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern—a week after Singapore’s first imported case and 5 days before local transmission. The National University Hospital (NUH)...

Authors: Sophia Archuleta, Gail Cross, Jyoti Somani, Lionel Lum, Amelia Santosa, Rawan A. Alagha, David M. Allen, Alicia Ang, Darius Beh, Louis Chai, Si Min Chan, See Ming Lim, Dariusz P. Olszyna, Catherine Ong, Jolene Oon, Brenda M. A. Salada…

Current practice in analysing and reporting binary outcome data—a review of randomised controlled trial reports

Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) need to be reported so that their results can be unambiguously and robustly interpreted. Binary outcomes yield unique challenges, as different analytical approaches may prod...

Authors: Ines Rombach, Ruth Knight, Nicholas Peckham, Jamie R. Stokes and Jonathan A. Cook

The role of pulmonary CT scans for children during the COVID-19 pandemic

Authors: Ian P. Sinha and Musa Kaleem

Psychotherapy or medication for depression? Using individual symptom meta-analyses to derive a Symptom-Oriented Therapy (SOrT) metric for a personalised psychiatry

Antidepressant medication (ADM) and psychotherapy are effective treatments for major depressive disorder (MDD). It is unclear, however, if treatments differ in their effectiveness at the symptom level and whet...

Authors: Nils Kappelmann, Martin Rein, Julia Fietz, Helen S. Mayberg, W. Edward Craighead, Boadie W. Dunlop, Charles B. Nemeroff, Martin Keller, Daniel N. Klein, Bruce A. Arnow, Nusrat Husain, Robin B. Jarrett, Jeffrey R. Vittengl, Marco Menchetti, Gordon Parker, Jacques P. Barber…

Serum metabolite profiles are associated with the presence of advanced liver fibrosis in Chinese patients with chronic hepatitis B viral infection

Accurate and noninvasive diagnosis and staging of liver fibrosis are essential for effective clinical management of chronic liver disease (CLD). We aimed to identify serum metabolite markers that reliably pred...

Authors: Guoxiang Xie, Xiaoning Wang, Runmin Wei, Jingye Wang, Aihua Zhao, Tianlu Chen, Yixing Wang, Hua Zhang, Zhun Xiao, Xinzhu Liu, Youping Deng, Linda Wong, Cynthia Rajani, Sandi Kwee, Hua Bian, Xin Gao…

Alogliptin after acute coronary syndrome in patients with type 2 diabetes: a renal function stratified analysis of the EXAMINE trial

The EXAMINE trial tested the efficacy and safety of alogliptin, an inhibitor of dipeptidyl peptidase 4, compared with placebo in 5380 patients with type 2 diabetes and a recent acute coronary syndrome. Because...

Authors: João Pedro Ferreira, Cyrus Mehta, Abhinav Sharma, Steven E. Nissen, Patrick Rossignol and Faiez Zannad

The role of testosterone in chronic kidney disease and kidney function in men and women: a bi-directional Mendelian randomization study in the UK Biobank

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) has an apparent sex disparity, with a more rapid progress in men than in women. Whether the well-established sex-specific evolutionary biology trade-off between reproduction and lo...

Authors: Jie V. Zhao and C. Mary Schooling

The challenges of colposcopy for cervical cancer screening in LMICs and solutions by artificial intelligence

The World Health Organization (WHO) called for global action towards the elimination of cervical cancer. One of the main strategies is to screen 70% of women at the age between 35 and 45 years and 90% of women...

Authors: Peng Xue, Man Tat Alexander Ng and Youlin Qiao

Lactate dehydrogenase and susceptibility to deterioration of mild COVID-19 patients: a multicenter nested case-control study

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has infected more than 4 million people within 4 months. There is an urgent need to properly identify high-risk cases that are more likely to deteriorate even if they presen...

Authors: Jichan Shi, Yang Li, Xian Zhou, Qiran Zhang, Xinchun Ye, Zhengxing Wu, Xiangao Jiang, Hongying Yu, Lingyun Shao, Jing-Wen Ai, Haocheng Zhang, Bin Xu, Feng Sun and Wenhong Zhang

Real-time monitoring the transmission potential of COVID-19 in Singapore, March 2020

As of March 31, 2020, the ongoing COVID-19 epidemic that started in China in December 2019 is now generating local transmission around the world. The geographic heterogeneity and associated intervention strate...

Authors: Amna Tariq, Yiseul Lee, Kimberlyn Roosa, Seth Blumberg, Ping Yan, Stefan Ma and Gerardo Chowell

Routine data for malaria morbidity estimation in Africa: challenges and prospects

The burden of malaria in sub-Saharan Africa remains challenging to measure relying on epidemiological modelling to evaluate the impact of investments and providing an in-depth analysis of progress and trends i...

Authors: Victor A. Alegana, Emelda A. Okiro and Robert W. Snow

Heterogenous COVID-19 transmission dynamics within Singapore: a clearer picture of future national responses

Authors: N. Bagdasarian and D. Fisher

Conduct and reporting of individual participant data network meta-analyses need improvement

Authors: Anna Chaimani

Pregnancy outcomes and risk of placental malaria after artemisinin-based and quinine-based treatment for uncomplicated falciparum malaria in pregnancy: a WorldWide Antimalarial Resistance Network systematic review and individual patient data meta-analysis

Malaria in pregnancy, including asymptomatic infection, has a detrimental impact on foetal development. Individual patient data (IPD) meta-analysis was conducted to compare the association between antimalarial...

Authors: Makoto Saito, Rashid Mansoor, Kalynn Kennon, Anupkumar R. Anvikar, Elizabeth A. Ashley, Daniel Chandramohan, Lauren M. Cohee, Umberto D’Alessandro, Blaise Genton, Mary Ellen Gilder, Elizabeth Juma, Linda Kalilani-Phiri, Irene Kuepfer, Miriam K. Laufer, Khin Maung Lwin, Steven R. Meshnick…

An evidence mapping and analysis of registered COVID-19 clinical trials in China

This article aims to summarize the key characteristics of registered trials of 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19), in terms of their spatial and temporal distributions, types of design and interventions, and pa...

Authors: Liming Lu, Fan Li, Hao Wen, Shuqi Ge, Jingchun Zeng, Wen Luo, Lai Wang, Chunzhi Tang and Nenggui Xu

Statistical analyses and quality of individual participant data network meta-analyses were suboptimal: a cross-sectional study

Network meta-analyses using individual participant data (IPD-NMAs) have been increasingly used to compare the effects of multiple interventions. Although there have been many studies on statistical methods for...

Authors: Ya Gao, Shuzhen Shi, Muyang Li, Xinyue Luo, Ming Liu, Kelu Yang, Junhua Zhang, Fujian Song and Jinhui Tian

Ethnic and socioeconomic differences in SARS-CoV-2 infection: prospective cohort study using UK Biobank

Understanding of the role of ethnicity and socioeconomic position in the risk of developing SARS-CoV-2 infection is limited. We investigated this in the UK Biobank study.

Authors: Claire L. Niedzwiedz, Catherine A. O’Donnell, Bhautesh Dinesh Jani, Evangelia Demou, Frederick K. Ho, Carlos Celis-Morales, Barbara I. Nicholl, Frances S. Mair, Paul Welsh, Naveed Sattar, Jill P. Pell and S. Vittal Katikireddi

Evidence of unexplained discrepancies between planned and conducted statistical analyses: a review of randomised trials

Choosing or altering the planned statistical analysis approach after examination of trial data (often referred to as ‘p-hacking’) can bias the results of randomised trials. However, the extent of this issue in...

Authors: Suzie Cro, Gordon Forbes, Nicholas A. Johnson and Brennan C. Kahan

Diagnosis of COVID-19 in children: the story evolves

Authors: R. Harwood and I. Sinha

Risk stratification for prostate cancer management: value of the Cambridge Prognostic Group classification for assessing treatment allocation

The five-tiered Cambridge Prognostic Group (CPG) classification is a better predictor of prostate cancer-specific mortality than the traditional three-tiered classification (low, intermediate, and high risk). ...

Authors: M. G. Parry, T. E. Cowling, A. Sujenthiran, J. Nossiter, B. Berry, P. Cathcart, A. Aggarwal, H. Payne, J. van der Meulen, N. W. Clarke and V. J. Gnanapragasam

Evaluation of the potential incidence of COVID-19 and effectiveness of containment measures in Spain: a data-driven approach

We are currently experiencing an unprecedented challenge, managing and containing an outbreak of a new coronavirus disease known as COVID-19. While China—where the outbreak started—seems to have been able to c...

Authors: Alberto Aleta and Yamir Moreno

Serum free thiols predict cardiovascular events and all-cause mortality in the general population: a prospective cohort study

Serum free thiols (R-SH, sulfhydryl groups) reliably reflect systemic oxidative stress. Since serum free thiols are rapidly oxidized by reactive species, systemic oxidative stress is generally associated with ...

Authors: Amaal E. Abdulle, Arno R. Bourgonje, Lyanne M. Kieneker, Anne M. Koning, S. la Bastide-van Gemert, Marian L. C. Bulthuis, Gerard Dijkstra, Klaas Nico Faber, Robin P. F. Dullaart, Stephan J. L. Bakker, Reinold O. B. Gans, Ron T. Gansevoort, Douwe J. Mulder, Andreas Pasch and Harry van Goor