Objective To use a measurement tool to assess systematic reviews (AMSTAR) to assess the methodological quality of published meta-analyses of intravenous fish oil interventions on clinical outcomes in postoperative or intensive care unit (ICU) patients supported with parenteral nutrition (PN).Methods PubMed,EMBASE,Cochrane Library,Web of Science,Chinese Biomedical Databases,China National Knowledge Infrastructure,Wanfang Database,and some other databases were searched to retrieve the eligible studies published from January 1996 to September 2013,and the relevant journals and the references of included studies were also retrieved manually.The studies were included if they were systematic reviews or meta-analyses that evaluated the effects of fish oil-enriched PN and standard PN for postoperative or ICU patients on clinical outcome.Two reviewers screened the literature according to the inclusion criteria and extracted the data.Then the AMSTAR was used to evaluate the quality of the included studies.Results A total of five relevant meta analyses were included.Based on AMSTAR,two studies were of high quality,one of moderate quality,and the other two were of low quality.Conclusions The methodological quality of these five published metaanalyses of intravenous fish oil interventions is uneven.Further large-scale and high-quality randomized controlled trials about the impact of intravenous fish oil on clinical outcomes and cost-effectiveness analysis for postoperative and ICU patients are needed.

Objective To discuss the levels of evidence provided by different study designs.Methods Websites of N Engl J Med, JAMA, Lancet, and BMJ were accessed to identify research articles (systematic review and meta-analysis included) published in 2009. A standardized data collection form was established using Epidata 3. 1 software to extract the "title", "country of lead author", "clinical problem" (such as treatment, diagnosis, etc. ) and "study design" of eligible studies. Descriptive statistics was conducted with SPSS 13.0. Results Over all, 844 studies were included, among which 35.7% were RCT,9. 4% systematic review and Meta-analysis, and 54. 9% other types of studies. Regarding clinical problems,34. 2%, 19. 7%, 13.7%, 6. 0% and 5. 1% of the included researches addressed the issues of treatment,etiology/risk factors, prevention, disease frequency and prognosis, respectively. The study designs that were most frequently adopted to explore these problems were RCT (70.6%), cohort study (44. 6% ), RCT (68. 1% ), cross-sectional study ( 56. 9% ), and cohort study ( 93.0% ), respectively. Conclusions High-level evidence does not come exclusively from RCT and systematic review, as each type of study may have its unique value in health related research. The clinical problem of interest, the previous work that has been done to approach the same issue, as well as other factors should be taken into account when deciding whether the selected study design is appropriate.

Objective:To systematically evaluate the incidence of liver injury in multi-drug resistant tu-berculosis ( MDR-TB ) patients with the treatment of second-line anti-TB drugs.Methods: Medline (January 1, 1966 to March 1, 2014), Embase (January 1, 1974 to March 1, 2014) and the Cochrane library (January 1, 1993 to March 1, 2014) with four Chinese databases including VIP ( January 1, 1989 to March 1, 2014), CBMDisc (January 1, 1978 to March 1, 2014), CNKI (January 1, 1994 to March 1, 2014)and Wanfang (January 1, 1998 to March 1, 2014), were systematically searched with the keywords including “Tuberculosis”,“multidrug-resistant”,“MDR-TB”,“side effect”,“adverse”,“safety” and “tolerability” for the follow-up studies of MDR-TB patients with liver injury during the treatment of second-line anti-TB drugs.The relevant information was extracted and the data were analyzed using the random-effects model .Subgroup and sensitivity analyses were performed based on the diagnostic criteria, study population , study design , history of anti-TB treatment and treatment length .Results: A total of 26 articles with 3 875 MDR-TB patients were included , of which 373 patients developed liver in-jury, and the weighed combined incidence of liver injury was 7.7%(95%CI:5.5%-10.8%).There was some heterogeneity among the studies .Subgroup analyses showed that the incidence of liver injury was higher in groups with treatment length≥18 months and non-Asian populations , but there was no sig-nificant difference between the groups (P>0.05).Among the 26 articles, only nine of them reported the diagnostic criteria of liver injury , while the criteria were not uniform .Conclusion:The incidence of liver injury during the treatment of second-line anti-TB drug in MDR-TB patients was high , and the diag-nostic criteria were not uniform .We should pay attention to the prevention and treatment of liver injury , and develop standard diagnostic criteria for it .

Objective:To assess the association between particulate air pollution and hospital admissions for acute exacerbation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (AECOPD) in Beijing, and to eva-luate the differences of association among different subgroups.Methods: Hospital admissions to intertiary hospitals for AECOPD from January 1,2014, through December 31, 2015 were obtained from the electronic hospitalization summary reports (HSRs).We obtained the data on air pollution during the study period from the national air pollution monitoring system.The data on meteorological variables were obtained from the Chinese meteorological bureau.A poison generalized additive model was used to assess the effects of particulate pollution on AECOPD with adjustment for the long term trend, day of week, holiday effect and meteorological variables.Subgroup analyses were also conducted by age and gender, which would help identify higher-risk groups.Results: A total of 7 884 hospitalizations from 15 tertiary hospitals were recorded during the study period, and 69.3% were male patients, 37.1% were ≥80 years of age, 45.5% were 65-79 years of age, and 17.4% were younger than 65.The mean (SD) daily concentrations of PM2.5, PM10 were 77.1 (66.6) μg/m3, 111.9 (75.8) μg/m3.Every 10 μg/m3 increase in particulate pollution concentration for a lag of 4 d was associated with an increase in hospital admissions for AECOPD as follows: 0.53% (95% CI: 0.01%-1.06%, P=0.0478) of PM2.5, 0.53% (95% CI: 0.07%-1.00%, P=0.0250) of PM10, respectively.We found differences in risk for AECOPD admissions among the different subgroups.For every 10 μg/m3 increase in PM2.5, PM10 exposure in the female group there was a 1.13% (95% CI: 0.19%-2.07%, P=0.018 3) increase, 1.06% (95% CI: 0.22%-1.91%, P=0.013 6) increase in admissions, respectively, while in the male group, the association was non-significant.The patients of 80 years of age and older demonstrated a hi-gher risk of AECOPD, 1.25% (95% CI: 0.40%-2.11%, P=0.004 0) increase of PM2.5, 1.18% (95% CI: 0.42%-1.95%, P=0.002 4) increase of PM10, respectively, while other subgroups didn't find significant association.Conclusion: Our findings showed that particulate air pollution was significantly associated with hospital admissions for AECOPD in Beijing.The susceptibility to particulate pollution varied by gender and age.

Academic Dissertations as Topic ; Cross Infection ; epidemiology ; prevention & control ; Infection Control

Ebola virus disease , which can cause ebola hemorrhagic fever , is a potent zoonotic infectious virus disease . In 2014 , Ebola virus spread across West Africa and it has become a new major threat to global public health .This article summarizes the structural features of Ebola virus , transmission characteristics , interactions ,animal models .

Detection of pathogenic microorganisms has been a hot research field of microbiology.Conventional detection methods,such as isolation and culture, PCR technology, ELISA and genomic sequencing,are all time-consuming and com-plex.Because of the advantages of quick-testing, accuracy, safety and efficiency, spectroscopy has become a new non-inva-sive testing technology and has witnessed rapid development in pathogen detection and disease diagnosis.This article intro-duces three types of common spectroscopy technologies ( laser excitation fluorescence spectroscopy, infrared spectroscopy and Raman spectroscopy) , and also explains how they work in the detection of pathogenic microorganisms.

Objective To assess the risk factors of multidrug-resistant organism(MDRO)healthcare-associated pneumonia(HCAP).Methods The case-control study was conducted in patients admitted to 22 hospitals in 4 cities between April 1 ,2013 and December 31 ,2013,patients with HCAP caused by MDRO (MRSA,MDRPA,MDRAB, ESBL KP,ESBL E.coli)(drug-resistant group )and drug-sensitive organisms (MSSA,PA,AB,KP,E.coli)(drug-sensitive group )were surveyed .Univariate and multivariate statistical analysis methods were used to evaluate the risk factors for MDRO HCAP.The prognosis,cost and length of hospital stay between drug-resistant group and drug-sensitive group were compared .Results A total of 1 656 patients were included in the study ,including 43 pa-tients (2.60%)with mixed infection caused by both drug-resistant and drug-sensitive organisms ;there were 927 ca-ses (55.98%)in drug-resistant group and 772 cases(46.62%)in drug-sensitive group .Logistic regression model re-vealed that admission to ICUs (OR 95%CI :1 .55[1 .14-2.11]),mechanical ventilation (OR 95%CI :1 .45[1 .15-1 .84]),arteriovenous catheterization (OR 95%CI :1 .29 [1 .02 - 1 .63 ]),fiberbronchoscopy (OR 95%CI :1 .46 [1 .02-2.09]),antimicrobial use(OR 95%CI :1 .63[1 .20-2.22]),chronic lung diseases (OR 95%CI :1 .54[1 .13-2.10]),and chronic cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases (OR 95%CI :1 .42[1 .15-1 .74])were independ-ent risk factors for MDRO HCAP .Compared with drug-sensitive group ,drug-resistant group prolonged length of hospital stay by an average of 5.89 days,increased hospitalization and antimicrobial expense by ￥40 739.30 and￥2 805.80 respectively;prognoses was worse,risk factor was 1 .66-fold of drug-sensitive group(OR 95%CI :1 .16-2.35).Conclusion Admission to ICUs,invasive operations,antimicrobial use,chronic lung diseases and chronic cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases can increase the risk of MDRO HCAP .

Complex surgeries often need multi-disciplinary surgeons to work collaboratively and set synthesized operation plans. Aided by collaboration enabled three dimensional visualization software over network, operation plans can be made more intuitively and accurately. Because different disciplinary surgeons often work at different locations, a distributed collaboration virtue environment over network should be provided. By our knowledge, such a system does not exist yet. Toward this, we implement a platform upon Client/Server architecture over network. The 3D model is reconstructed from CT image data of DICOM format and the resulting mesh is then simplified, using the Visualization Toolkit (VTK). The simplified polygon mesh data is further seamlessly integrated into our 3D graphics system developed with the HOOPS/3DAF for displaying, where the model is converted to the lossless compression stream file format-HSF, which is suited for network transmission. Using this format, a collaboration enabled interactive visualization system is implemented upon Client/Server architecture, developed with HOOPS/NET toolkit. The reconstructed 3D model is clear, and the interactive collaboration with 3D visualization is fairly real-time. We then implemented a platform for developing collaborative surgery simulation software, into which the surgery operation simulation and prosthesis design function can be easily added.
Computer Simulation ; Diagnostic Imaging ; methods ; Humans ; Image Enhancement ; methods ; Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted ; methods ; Imaging, Three-Dimensional ; methods ; Internet ; Software ; User-Computer Interface

Objective To study the association between statins use and liver-injury through prescription sequence symmetry analysis (PSSA) and evaluate the feasibility of the method to be used in Chinese Medical Insurance Database.Methods The data of the patients who prescribed both statins and liver-proactive drugs in Chinese Basic Medical Insurance Database in 2013 were selected as study subjects to calculate the adjusted sequence ratio (ASR) with signal detection methods to determine the study parameters and investigate the potential association between statins use and liver-injury.Results In 5 649 individuals which met the inclusion criteria,the washout period was set as one month and interval period was set as 60 days.The overall ASR of statins was 1.471(95％CI:1.395-1.550),the ASR of atorvastatin was 1.419 (95％CI:1.335-1.508),the ASR of simvastatin was 1.307 (95％CI:1.164-1.467).The positive signal was strong in 30 days interval period.Conclusions PSSA indicated that there might be potential association between statins use and liver-injury,especially the uses of atorvastatin and simvastatin.This signal detection method may be a fast and effective method in drug safety evaluation and can be used in Chinese Medical Insurance Database.