OBJECTIVEThe reporting of patient-reported outcomes (PRO) instrument development is vital for both researchers and clinicians to determine its validity, thus, we propose the Preferred Reporting Items for PRO Instrument Development (PRIPROID) to improve the quality of reports.

METHODSAbiding by the guidance published by the Enhancing the QUAlity and Transparency Of health Research (EQUATOR) Network, we had performed 6 steps for items development: identified the need for a guideline, performed a literature review, obtained funding for the guideline initiative, identified participants, conducted a Delphi exercise and generated a list of PRIPROID items for consideration at the face-to-face meeting.

RESULTSTwenty three items subheadings under 7 topics were included: title and structured abstract, rationale, objectives, intention, eligibility criteria, conceptual framework, items generation, response options, scoring, times, administrative modes, burden assessment, properties assessment, statistical methods, participants, main results, and additional analysis, summary of evidence, limitations, clinical attentions, and conclusions, item pools or final form, and funding.

CONCLUSIONSThe PRIPROID contains many elements of the PRO research, and this assists researchers to report their results more accurately and to a certain degree use this instrument to evaluate the quality of the research methods.

The United States National Cancer Institute (NCI) supports complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) research which includes different methods and practices (such as nutrition therapies) and other medical systems (such as Chinese medicine). In recent years, NCI has spent around $120 million each year on various CAM-related research projects on cancer prevention, treatment, symptom/side effect management and epidemiology. The categories of CAM research involved include nutritional therapeutics, pharmacological and biological treatments, mind-body interventions, manipulative and body based methods, alternative medical systems, exercise therapies, spiritual therapies and energy therapies on a range of types of cancer. The NCI Office of Cancer Complementary and Alternative Medicine (OCCAM) supports various intramural and extramural cancer CAM research projects. Examples of these cancer CAM projects are presented and discussed. In addition, OCCAM also supports international research projects.
Complementary Therapies ; statistics & numerical data ; trends ; Drugs, Chinese Herbal ; therapeutic use ; Humans ; International Cooperation ; National Cancer Institute (U.S.) ; statistics & numerical data ; trends ; Neoplasms ; epidemiology ; therapy ; Research Support as Topic ; statistics & numerical data ; trends ; United States

In clinical research on complementary and integrative medicine, experts and scientists have often pursued a research agenda in spite of an incomplete understanding of the needs of end users. Consequently, the majority of previous clinical trials have mainly assessed the efficacy of interventions. Scant data is available on their effectiveness. Comparative effectiveness research (CER) promises to support decision makers by generating evidence that compares the benefits and harms of the best care options. This evidence, more generalizable than the evidence generated by traditional randomized controlled trials (RCTs), is better suited to inform real-world care decisions. An emphasis on CER supports the development of the evidence base for clinical and policy decision-making. Whereas in most areas of complementary and integrative medicine data on comparative effectiveness is scarce, available acupuncture research already contributes to CER evidence. This paper will introduce CER and make suggestions for future research.
Comparative Effectiveness Research ; Decision Support Systems, Clinical ; Humans ; Integrative Medicine ; Medicine, Chinese Traditional ; Practice Guidelines as Topic ; Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic

The applications accepted and approved by general program, young scientist fund and fund for less developed region of national natural science funds in the discipline of Chinese materia medica, NSFC in 2011 have been introduced. The character and problems in these applications have been analyzed to give a reference to the scientists in the field of Chinese material medica.
China ; Foundations ; Materia Medica ; Natural Science Disciplines ; Research Support as Topic

OBJECTIVETo review the situation of stomatological research projects supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) and to analyze the status of stomatological research and obtained achievements in the past decade.

METHODSThe internet-based science information system of NSFC together with Yearbook of Chinese Stomatology was served as the basis of data collection. All of the data were arranged and analyzed by Excel.

RESULTSA total of 866 projects and 234.4054 billion Yuan were supported by NSFC during the past decade, and they were increasing continuously. The average supportive strength of each single project was also enhanced. The percentage of projects supported by the NSFC for young scientists accounted for the biggest proportion. The approved projects of stomatology were covering an increasingly wide area of the subjects. The projects number of different areas kept growing, and further investigations were done in these projects. The areas number were from 10 increasing to 26.

CONCLUSIONSWith the support of NSFC, great progress has been made in stomatology, and the interdisciplinary research between stomatology and other disciplines is more active.

PURPOSE: This study was done to explore the knowledge structure of Korean Nursing Science. METHODS: The main variables were key words from the research papers that were presented in the Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing and journals of the seven branches of the Korean Academy of Nursing. English titles and abstracts of the papers (n=5,936) published from 1995 through 2009 were included. Noun phrases were extracted from the corpora using an in-house program (BiKE Text Analyzer), and their co-occurrence networks were generated via a cosine similarity measure, and then the networks were analyzed and visualized using Pajek, a Social Network Analysis program. RESULTS: With the hub and authority measures, the most important research topics in Korean Nursing Science were identified. Newly emerging topics by three-year period units were observed as research trends. CONCLUSION: This study provides a systematic overview on the knowledge structure of Korean Nursing Science. The Social Network Analysis for this study will be useful for identifying the knowledge structure in Nursing Science.
Bibliometrics ; Humans ; Nursing Research/*trends ; Periodicals as Topic/statistics & numerical data ; Qualitative Research ; Republic of Korea ; *Social Support

Proteins are major executors of life processes, carrying out essential and nonessential functions inside and outside of the cell, in species ranging from simple unicellular organisms to mammals. Thus, not surprisingly, studies of structure and function of proteins span the entire spectrum of molecular biology and modern biomedical sciences in general. Due to historical reasons, protein science research in China was isolated and limited in scope until late 1970s. In the last two decades, China has seen an outburst of research activities, government initiatives, and aggregation of human talents in protein science research. This article provides an overview of major initiatives in research funding, investment in infrastructures, and research forces for protein science research in China.
Animals ; Biomedical Research ; economics ; history ; China ; History, 20th Century ; History, 21st Century ; Humans ; Proteins ; economics ; history ; Research Support as Topic ; Science ; economics ; history

OBJECTIVETo discuss the development module of ontology-based computerized clinical practical guideline, and to supply the technology support for implement of alerm/reminding, data sharing, evidence-based medicine and clinical decision making in the medical information system.

METHODSAnalyse the structure and field ontology of the Guideline Interchange Format (GLIF); expand GLIF based on the Guideline of Cerebrovascular Disease Prevention and Treatment in China and Neurology Disease Ontology.

RESULTSA Chinese computerized guideline of intravenous thrombolytic therapy of acute cerebral infarction is constructed, which included metadata of edition description, list of drug data item, explanation of evidence strength, steps of indications decision, contraindication decision and drug selection.

CONCLUSIONThe computerized clinical practical guideline combined with clinical information system and Electronic Medical Records plays an important role in clinical pathways optimizing and decision making.

PURPOSE: This quasi-experimental study was performed to evaluate the effectiveness of an early nursing intervention program to support mothers of children aged 0-3 yr living in poverty. METHODS: In this study, mothers who received financial support from the government were recruited from one city and assigned to an intervention group (24) and comparison group (18). They completed a baseline questionnaire about depression, child rearing burden, agreement on physical punishment, and child temperament. Also, Denver II screening of the children was performed by the researcher. Mothers in the intervention group received a home visit intervention every two weeks for three months. At 3-months post-baseline, questionnaire and Denver II screening were reused to compare these two groups. RESULTS: Mother's depression, child rearing burden, agreement on physical punishment, and child temperament were not significantly different between the two groups. However, the percentage of depression declined only in the intervention group. Mothers in the intervention group showed higher Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (HOME) scores than mothers in the comparison group. CONCLUSION: The findings of the study show that this nursing intervention is an effective parenting program. The early nursing program for mothers with infant and toddlers in poverty is effective in promoting HOME, the child rearing home environment.
Adult ; Child Abuse ; *Child Rearing ; Child, Preschool ; Depression ; Female ; Humans ; Infant ; Infant, Newborn ; Interviews as Topic ; Male ; Mother-Child Relations ; Mothers/*psychology ; Nursing Methodology Research ; Parenting ; *Poverty ; Program Evaluation ; Questionnaires ; Social Support

China ; Metals, Heavy ; Research Support as Topic ; statistics & numerical data