Epidemiological methods

Schistosomiasis, caused by Schistosoma trematode worms, represents a significant global health challenge. This review offers a thorough examination of the disease's epidemiology, transmission dynamics, diagnostic modalities, and treatment options. Diagnostic techniques encompass direct parasitological methods, immunological assays, DNA/RNA detection, and biomarker utilization, each with distinct advantages and limitations. There is an urgent need for improved diagnostic tools with enhanced sensitivity and specificity...

BACKGROUND: The aim of this study was to screen for musculoskeletal disorders (MSD) complaints, to analyse the activity and to identify their risk factors. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This cross-sectional epidemiological study involved 903 men aged > 20 years and with a seniority > 2 years. It included a questionnaire and an ergonomic analysis of the activity. The questionnaire included: socio-demographic and occupational characteristics, health status and life habits, stress and items from the Nordic questionnaire...

Pediatric stone disease, once considered rare, has emerged as a significant research area in the past two decades due to a sharp increase in its incidence. Understanding the evolving epidemiology and treatment strategies for pediatric stone disease is crucial for enhancing child health protection. This study aims to summarize the advancements in pediatric stone disease research over the last two decades through bibliometric analysis. We conducted a comprehensive search in the Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC) for literature on pediatric stone disease from January 1, 2000 to February 20, 2024...

The complex interactions were performed among non-pharmaceutical interventions, vaccinations, and hosts for all epidemics in mainland China during the spread of COVID-19. Specially, the small-scale epidemic in the city described by SVEIR model was less found in the current studies. The SVEIR model with control was established to analyze the dynamical and epidemiological features of two epidemics in Jinzhou City led by Omicron variants before and after Twenty Measures. In this study, the total population ( N ) of Jinzhou City was divided into five compartments: the susceptible ( S ), the vaccinated ( V ), the exposed ( E ), the infected ( I ), and the recovered ( R )...

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the clinical characteristics and molecular epidemiology of carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae (CRKP) isolated from patients with bloodstream infections in a large tertiary-care general hospital in Southwest China. METHODS: A total of 131 strains of non-repeating CRKP were collected from the blood cultures of patients who had bloodstream infections in 2015-2019. The strains were identified by VITEK-2, a fully automated microbial analyzer, and matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization-time of flight (MALDI-TOF) mass spectrometry...

INTRODUCTION: The San Joaquin Valley (SJV) is often recognized as one of the most polluted regions in the US. Periods of pollution exposure are associated with increased health burden related to respiratory inflammation and undermined lung function, which aggravates respiratory diseases such as asthma and leads to symptoms such as coughing, wheezing, or difficulty breathing. Asthma costs US$ 82 billion annually in healthcare costs, missed work and school in the US. METHODS: Employing a societal perspective, a cost of illness design was combined with environmental epidemiological methods to analyze the economic impact of O3 , NO2 , and PM2...

Epidemiologic screening programs often make use of tests with small, but non-zero probabilities of misdiagnosis. In this article, we assume the target population is finite with a fixed number of true cases, and that we apply an imperfect test with known sensitivity and specificity to a sample of individuals from the population. In this setting, we propose an enhanced inferential approach for use in conjunction with sampling-based bias-corrected prevalence estimation. While ignoring the finite nature of the population can yield markedly conservative estimates, direct application of a standard finite population correction (FPC) conversely leads to underestimation of variance...

Objective: To establish and validate a predicting nomogram for cervical adenocarcinoma based on surveillance, epidemiology and end results (SEER) database and Chinese single-center data, and to explore the optimal treatment for cervical adenocarcinoma. Methods: This study selected 2 478 cervical adenocarcinoma patients from the SEER database as the training cohort, and 195 cervical adenocarcinoma patients from Cancer Hospital of Dalian University of Technology, Liaouing Cancer Hospital and Institute as an external validation cohort...

BACKGROUND: Instrumental variable (IV) methods are widely employed to estimate causal effects when concerns regarding unmeasured confounders. Although comparisons among several IV methods for binary outcomes exist, comprehensive evaluations are insufficient. Therefore, in this study, we aimed to conduct a simulation with some settings for a detailed comparison of these methods, focusing on scenarios where IVs are valid and under effect homogeneity with different instrument strengths. METHODS: We compared six IV methods under 32 simulation scenarios: two-stage least squares (2SLS), two-stage predictor substitutions (2SPS), two-stage residual inclusions (2SRI), limited information maximum likelihood (LIML), inverse-variance weighted methods with a linear outcome model (IVWLI ), and inverse-variance weighted methods with a non-linear model (IVWLL )...

Background There has been growing concern about the negative mental health impact of long working hours and overwork. Our study examined how work-life imbalance (WLI) could be a mediator between working hours and poor mental well-being.Methods We included 34,968 individuals from a nationwide cross-sectional survey in Korea. Self-reported working hours per week was collected, and mental health was assessed by the WHO-5 Well-Being Index. Counterfactual-based mediation models were employed to disentangle the total effects into a direct effect (work hour - poor mental health) and an indirect effect (work hour - WLI - poor mental health)...

The COVID-19 pandemic has given rise to a broad range of research from fields alongside and beyond the core concerns of infectiology, epidemiology, and immunology. One significant subset of this work centers on machine learning-based approaches to supporting medical decision-making around COVID-19 diagnosis. To date, various challenges, including IT issues, have meant that, notwithstanding this strand of research on digital diagnosis of COVID-19, the actual use of these methods in medical facilities remains incipient at best, despite their potential to relieve pressure on scarce medical resources, prevent instances of infection, and help manage the difficulties and unpredictabilities surrounding the emergence of new mutations...

Arboviruses represent a threat to transfusion safety for several reasons: the presence of vectors and the notification of autochthonous cases in our region, the recent increase in the number of cases transmitted through blood and/or blood component transfusion, the high prevalence rates of RNA of the main arboviruses in asymptomatic blood donors, and their ability to survive processing and storage in the different blood components. In an epidemic outbreak caused by an arbovirus in our region, transfusion centres can apply different measures: reactive measures, related to donor selection or arbovirus screening, and proactive measures, such as pathogen inactivation methods...

INTRODUCTION: Surgical patients over 70 experience postoperative delirium (POD) complications in up to 50% of procedures. Sleep/circadian disruption has emerged as a potential risk factor for POD in epidemiological studies. This protocol presents a single-site, prospective observational study designed to examine the relationship between sleep/circadian regulation and POD and how this association could be moderated or mediated by Alzheimer's disease (AD) pathology and genetic risk for AD...

Research integrity is guided by a set of principles to ensure research reliability, and rigor. It serves as a pillar to uphold society's trust in science and foster scientific progress. However, over the past two decades, a surge in research integrity concerns, including fraudulent research, reproducibility challenges, and questionable practices, has raised critical questions about the reliability of scientific outputs, particularly in biomedical research. In the biomedical sciences, any breaches in research integrity could potentially lead to a domino effect impacting patient care, medical interventions, and the broader implementation of healthcare policies...

PURPOSE: Methods for assessing the structural mechanisms of health inequity are not well established. This study applies a phased approach to modeling racial, occupational, and rural disparities on the county level. METHODS: Rural counties with disparately high rates of COVID-19 incidence or mortality were randomly paired with in-state control counties with the same rural-urban continuum code. Analysis was restricted to the first six months of the pandemic to represent the baseline structural reserves for each county and reduce biases related to the disruption of these reserves over time...

BACKGROUND: Detailed, comprehensive, and timely reporting on population health by underlying causes of disability and premature death is crucial to understanding and responding to complex patterns of disease and injury burden over time and across age groups, sexes, and locations. The availability of disease burden estimates can promote evidence-based interventions that enable public health researchers, policy makers, and other professionals to implement strategies that can mitigate diseases...

Genomic surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 has given insight into the evolution and epidemiology of the virus and its variant lineages during the COVID-19 pandemic. Expanding this approach to include a range of respiratory pathogens can better inform public health preparedness for potential outbreaks and epidemics. Here, we simultaneously sequenced 38 pathogens including influenza viruses, coronaviruses and bocaviruses, to examine the abundance and seasonality of respiratory pathogens in urban wastewater. We deployed a targeted bait capture method and short-read sequencing (Illumina Respiratory Virus Oligos Panel; RVOP) on composite wastewater samples from 8 wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) and one associated hospital site...

OBJECTIVE: Aim: to investigate the epidemiology, microbiology, and risk factors for healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) in postoperative patients with intracranial aneurysm in Ukraine. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Materials and Methods: Retrospective cohort study was conducted from January 2018 to December 2022 in four tertiary care hospitals of Ukraine. The diagnostic criteria were based on specific HAI site were adapted from the CDC/NHSN case definitions. RESULTS: Results: Of 1,084 postoperative patients with intracranial aneurysm, 128 (11...

OBJECTIVE: Adenomyosis is associated with female infertility worldwide. With improvements in imaging methods, such as pelvic magnetic resonance imaging, the diagnosis and treatment of adenomyosis have changed. This study aimed to evaluate the overall prevalence, incidence, and treatment trends of adenomyosis in South Korea using data from the Korean National Health Insurance Service Database (NHIS). METHODS: Data were collected from the Korean NHIS, a population-based complete enumeration database...

BACKGROUND: Physical activity (PA) promotes health in adults as well as children. At the same time, a large proportion of children do not meet the recommendations for PA, and more school-based efforts to increase PA are needed. This study investigates the effectiveness and feasibility of lesson-integrated PA in a Swedish primary school. METHODS: We evaluate a new method called 'Physical Activity and Lesson in Combination' (abbreviated FALK in Swedish) using a mixed methods approach; a quasi-experimental study followed by qualitative interviews...