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| 2. |
- van Bragt, JJMH, et al.
(författare)
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Characteristics and treatment regimens across ERS SHARP severe asthma registries
- 2020
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Ingår i: The European respiratory journal. - : European Respiratory Society (ERS). - 1399-3003 .- 0903-1936. ; 55:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Little is known about the characteristics and treatments of patients with severe asthma across Europe, but both are likely to vary. This is the first study in the European Respiratory Society Severe Heterogeneous Asthma Research collaboration, Patient-centred (SHARP) Clinical Research Collaboration and it is designed to explore these variations. Therefore, we aimed to compare characteristics of patients in European severe asthma registries and treatments before starting biologicals.This was a cross-sectional retrospective analysis of aggregated data from 11 national severe asthma registries that joined SHARP with established patient databases.Analysis of data from 3236 patients showed many differences in characteristics and lifestyle factors. Current smokers ranged from 0% (Poland and Sweden) to 9.5% (Belgium), mean body mass index ranged from 26.2 (Italy) to 30.6 kg·m−2 (the UK) and the largest difference in mean pre-bronchodilator forced expiratory volume in 1 s % predicted was 20.9% (the Netherlands versus Hungary). Before starting biologicals patients were treated differently between countries: mean inhaled corticosteroid dose ranged from 700 to 1335 µg·day−1 between those from Slovenia versus Poland when starting anti-interleukin (IL)-5 antibody and from 772 to 1344 µg·day−1 in those starting anti-IgE (Slovenia versus Spain). Maintenance oral corticosteroid use ranged from 21.0% (Belgium) to 63.0% (Sweden) and from 9.1% (Denmark) to 56.1% (the UK) in patients starting anti-IL-5 and anti-IgE, respectively.The severe asthmatic population in Europe is heterogeneous and differs in both clinical characteristics and treatment, often appearing not to comply with the current European Respiratory Society/American Thoracic Society guidelines definition of severe asthma. Treatment regimens before starting biologicals were different from inclusion criteria in clinical trials and varied between countries.
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| 3. |
- Aoyama, T., et al.
(författare)
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The anomalous magnetic moment of the muon in the Standard Model
- 2020
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Ingår i: Physics reports. - : Elsevier BV. - 0370-1573 .- 1873-6270. ; 887, s. 1-166
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- We review the present status of the Standard Model calculation of the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon. This is performed in a perturbative expansion in the fine-structure constant α and is broken down into pure QED, electroweak, and hadronic contributions. The pure QED contribution is by far the largest and has been evaluated up to and including O(α5) with negligible numerical uncertainty. The electroweak contribution is suppressed by (mμ/MW)2 and only shows up at the level of the seventh significant digit. It has been evaluated up to two loops and is known to better than one percent. Hadronic contributions are the most difficult to calculate and are responsible for almost all of the theoretical uncertainty. The leading hadronic contribution appears at O(α2) and is due to hadronic vacuum polarization, whereas at O(α3) the hadronic light-by-light scattering contribution appears. Given the low characteristic scale of this observable, these contributions have to be calculated with nonperturbative methods, in particular, dispersion relations and the lattice approach to QCD. The largest part of this review is dedicated to a detailed account of recent efforts to improve the calculation of these two contributions with either a data-driven, dispersive approach, or a first-principle, lattice-QCD approach. The final result reads aμSM = 116 591 810(43) x 10-11 and is smaller than the Brookhaven measurement by 3.7 σ. The experimental uncertainty will soon be reduced by up to a factor four by the new experiment currently running at Fermilab, and also by the future J-PARC experiment. This and the prospects to further reduce the theoretical uncertainty in the near future - which are also discussed here - make this quantity one of the most promising places to look for evidence of new physics.
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| 4. |
- Fabian, ID, et al.
(författare)
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Travel burden and clinical presentation of retinoblastoma: analysis of 1024 patients from 43 African countries and 518 patients from 40 European countries
- 2021
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Ingår i: The British journal of ophthalmology. - : BMJ. - 1468-2079 .- 0007-1161. ; 105:10, s. 1435-1443
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The travel distance from home to a treatment centre, which may impact the stage at diagnosis, has not been investigated for retinoblastoma, the most common childhood eye cancer. We aimed to investigate the travel burden and its impact on clinical presentation in a large sample of patients with retinoblastoma from Africa and Europe.MethodsA cross-sectional analysis including 518 treatment-naïve patients with retinoblastoma residing in 40 European countries and 1024 treatment-naïve patients with retinoblastoma residing in 43 African countries.ResultsCapture rate was 42.2% of expected patients from Africa and 108.8% from Europe. African patients were older (95% CI −12.4 to −5.4, p<0.001), had fewer cases of familial retinoblastoma (95% CI 2.0 to 5.3, p<0.001) and presented with more advanced disease (95% CI 6.0 to 9.8, p<0.001); 43.4% and 15.4% of Africans had extraocular retinoblastoma and distant metastasis at the time of diagnosis, respectively, compared to 2.9% and 1.0% of the Europeans. To reach a retinoblastoma centre, European patients travelled 421.8 km compared to Africans who travelled 185.7 km (p<0.001). On regression analysis, lower-national income level, African residence and older age (p<0.001), but not travel distance (p=0.19), were risk factors for advanced disease.ConclusionsFewer than half the expected number of patients with retinoblastoma presented to African referral centres in 2017, suggesting poor awareness or other barriers to access. Despite the relatively shorter distance travelled by African patients, they presented with later-stage disease. Health education about retinoblastoma is needed for carers and health workers in Africa in order to increase capture rate and promote early referral.
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| 6. |
- Kreuzig, C., et al.
(författare)
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The CoPhyLab comet-simulation chamber
- 2021
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Ingår i: Review of Scientific Instruments. - : American Institute of Physics (AIP). - 0034-6748 .- 1089-7623. ; 92:11, s. 115102-115102
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The Comet Physics Laboratory (CoPhyLab) is an international research program to study the physical properties of cometary analog materials under simulated space conditions. The project is dedicated to studying, with the help of multiple instruments and the different expertise and background from the different partners, the physics of comets, including the processes inside cometary nuclei, the activity leading to the ejection of dust and gas, and the sub-surface and surface evolution of cometary nuclei when exposed to solar illumination. CoPhyLab will provide essential information on the formation and evolution of comets and insights into the origins of primitive Solar System bodies. To this end, we constructed a new laboratory that hosts several small-scale experiments and a large-scale comet-simulation chamber (L-Chamber). This chamber has been designed and constructed to host ice–dust samples with a diameter of up to 250 mm and a variable height between 100 and 300 mm. The cometary-analog samples will be kept at temperatures below 120 K and pressures around 10−6 mbar to ensure cometary-like conditions. In total, 14 different scientific instruments are attached to the L-Chamber to study the temporal evolution of the physical properties of the sample under different insolation conditions. Due to the implementation of a scale inside the L-Chamber that can measure weight changes of the samples with high precision, the cooling system is mechanically decoupled from the sample holder and cooling of the samples occurs by radiation only. The constructed chamber allows us to conduct uninterrupted experiments at low temperatures and pressures up to several weeks.
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| 7. |
- Lazar, Tamas, et al.
(författare)
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PED in 2021 : A major update of the protein ensemble database for intrinsically disordered proteins
- 2021
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Ingår i: Nucleic Acids Research. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0305-1048 .- 1362-4962. ; 49:D1, s. 404-411
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The Protein Ensemble Database (PED) (https://proteinensemble.org), which holds structural ensembles of intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs), has been significantly updated and upgraded since its last release in 2016. The new version, PED 4.0, has been completely redesigned and reimplemented with cutting-edge technology and now holds about six times more data (162 versus 24 entries and 242 versus 60 structural ensembles) and a broader representation of state of the art ensemble generation methods than the previous version. The database has a completely renewed graphical interface with an interactive feature viewer for region-based annotations, and provides a series of descriptors of the qualitative and quantitative properties of the ensembles. High quality of the data is guaranteed by a new submission process, which combines both automatic and manual evaluation steps. A team of biocurators integrate structured metadata describing the ensemble generation methodology, experimental constraints and conditions. A new search engine allows the user to build advanced queries and search all entry fields including cross-references to IDP-related resources such as DisProt, MobiDB, BMRB and SASBDB. We expect that the renewed PED will be useful for researchers interested in the atomic-level understanding of IDP function, and promote the rational, structure-based design of IDP-targeting drugs.
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| 8. |
- Lethuillier, A., et al.
(författare)
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Cometary dust analogues for physics experiments
- 2022
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Ingår i: Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. - : Oxford University Press. - 0035-8711 .- 1365-2966. ; 515:3, s. 3420-3438
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The CoPhyLab (Cometary Physics Laboratory) project is designed to study the physics of comets through a series of earth-based experiments. For these experiments, a dust analogue was created with physical properties comparable to those of the non-volatile dust found on comets. This ‘CoPhyLab dust’ is planned to be mixed with water and CO2 ice and placed under cometary conditions in vacuum chambers to study the physical processes taking place on the nuclei of comets. In order to develop this dust analogue, we mixed two components representative for the non-volatile materials present in cometary nuclei. We chose silica dust as a representative for the mineral phase and charcoal for the organic phase, which also acts as a darkening agent. In this paper, we provide an overview of known cometary analogues before presenting measurements of eight physical properties of different mixtures of the two materials and a comparison of these measurements with known cometary values. The physical properties of interest are particle size, density, gas permeability, spectrophotometry, and mechanical, thermal, and electrical properties. We found that the analogue dust that matches the highest number of physical properties of cometary materials consists of a mixture of either 60 per cent/40 per cent or 70 per cent/30 per cent of silica dust/charcoal by mass. These best-fit dust analogue will be used in future CoPhyLab experiments.
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| 10. |
- Andermann, E., et al.
(författare)
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Comparative analysis of the safety and tolerability of eslicarbazepine acetate in older (>= 60 years) and younger (18-59 years) adults
- 2021
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Ingår i: Epilepsy Research. - : Elsevier BV. - 0920-1211. ; 169
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Objective: To investigate the safety and tolerability of eslicarbazepine acetate (ESL), a once-daily oral anti-seizure drug (ASD), in older and younger adult patient populations. Methods: Two post-hoc pooled data analyses were performed: one from three Phase III studies in patients with focal (partial-onset) seizures who were taking 1-3 concomitant ASDs; the other from five Phase II studies in patients from non-epilepsy populations not taking other ASDs chronically and/or at a clinically-effective anti-seizure dose. The frequencies of treatment-emergent adverse events (TEAEs) were calculated for the older (>= 60 years) and younger (18-59 years) adults separately. Results: In the focal seizures study pool, 4.1 % of patients (58/1431) were aged >= 60 years. The overall frequency of TEAEs was 77.5 % in older ESL-treated patients and 72.6 % in younger ESL-treated patients (p = 0.495). For patients who received placebo, the overall frequency of TEAEs was 50.0 % in the older adults and 57.5 % in the younger adults (p = 0.531). The overall placebo-adjusted frequency of TEAEs was 27.5 % in older adults and 15.1 % in younger adults. The placebo-adjusted frequencies of the TEAEs dizziness, somnolence, headache, nausea, diplopia, blurred vision, and ataxia were >= 5 % higher, and frequencies of vomiting and vertigo were >= 2 % higher in older than younger adults. The overall frequency of TEAEs leading to discontinuation was 15.0 % in older ESL-treated patients and 17.6 % in younger ESL-treated patients (p = 0.647); the frequency increased with increasing ESL dose. For patients who received placebo, the overall frequency of TEAEs leading to discontinuation was 5.6 % in older adults and 6.6 % in younger adults (p = 0.847). In the non-epilepsy study pool, 30.2 % of patients (515/1705) were aged >= 60 years. The overall frequency of TEAEs was 56.9 % in older ESL-treated patients and 58.8 % in younger ESL-treated patients. The placebo-adjusted frequencies were 14.9 % in older and 15.1 % in younger ESL-treated patients. The placebo-adjusted frequencies of the TEAEs nausea, vomiting, fatigue, and vertigo were >= 2 % higher in older adults, whereas somnolence was >= 2 % higher in younger adults. The overall frequency of TEAEs leading to discontinuation was 18.3 % in older ESL-treated patients and 12.1 % in younger ESL-treated patients (p = 0.003); frequencies were not related to ESL dose. For patients who received placebo, the overall frequency of TEAEs leading to discontinuation was 8.0 % in older adults and 5.6 % in younger adults (p = 0.407). Conclusion: Analyses of adverse event data support the safety and tolerability of ESL in adults aged >= 60 years. In the limited number of older patients with focal seizures taking ESL plus concomitant ASDs (n = 40), the frequency of TEAEs was generally higher than in younger adults. However, in the non-epilepsy patient group (in which the number of older patients was ten times larger; 427 patients taking ESL without concomitant ASDs), no marked age-related TEAE differences were observed, suggesting that increased ASD load associated with adjunctive therapy may complicate treatment selection in older patients, due to risk of increased adverse events. As is common practice for all ASDs, balancing clinical response and tolerability is needed in this vulnerable group of patients.
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