| 1. |
- Burisch, J, et al.
(författare)
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Natural disease course of Crohn's disease during the first 5 years after diagnosis in a European population-based inception cohort: an Epi-IBD study
- 2019
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Ingår i: Gut. - : BMJ. - 1468-3288 .- 0017-5749. ; 68:3, s. 423-433
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The Epi-IBD cohort is a prospective population-based inception cohort of unselected patients with inflammatory bowel disease from 29 European centres covering a background population of almost 10 million people. The aim of this study was to assess the 5-year outcome and disease course of patients with Crohn’s disease (CD).DesignPatients were followed up prospectively from the time of diagnosis, including collection of their clinical data, demographics, disease activity, medical therapy, surgery, cancers and deaths. Associations between outcomes and multiple covariates were analysed by Cox regression analysis.ResultsIn total, 488 patients were included in the study. During follow-up, 107 (22%) patients received surgery, while 176 (36%) patients were hospitalised because of CD. A total of 49 (14%) patients diagnosed with non-stricturing, non-penetrating disease progressed to either stricturing and/or penetrating disease. These rates did not differ between patients from Western and Eastern Europe. However, significant geographic differences were noted regarding treatment: more patients in Western Europe received biological therapy (33%) and immunomodulators (66%) than did those in Eastern Europe (14% and 54%, respectively, P<0.01), while more Eastern European patients received 5-aminosalicylates (90% vs 56%, P<0.05). Treatment with immunomodulators reduced the risk of surgery (HR: 0.4, 95% CI 0.2 to 0.6) and hospitalisation (HR: 0.3, 95% CI 0.2 to 0.5).ConclusionDespite patients being treated early and frequently with immunomodulators and biological therapy in Western Europe, 5-year outcomes including surgery and phenotype progression in this cohort were comparable across Western and Eastern Europe. Differences in treatment strategies between Western and Eastern European centres did not affect the disease course. Treatment with immunomodulators reduced the risk of surgery and hospitalisation.
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| 2. |
- Dalmasso, MC, et al.
(författare)
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Transethnic meta-analysis of rare coding variants in PLCG2, ABI3, and TREM2 supports their general contribution to Alzheimer's disease
- 2019
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Ingår i: Translational psychiatry. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2158-3188. ; 9:1, s. 55-
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Rare coding variants in TREM2, PLCG2, and ABI3 were recently associated with the susceptibility to Alzheimer’s disease (AD) in Caucasians. Frequencies and AD-associated effects of variants differ across ethnicities. To start filling the gap on AD genetics in South America and assess the impact of these variants across ethnicity, we studied these variants in Argentinian population in association with ancestry. TREM2 (rs143332484 and rs75932628), PLCG2 (rs72824905), and ABI3 (rs616338) were genotyped in 419 AD cases and 486 controls. Meta-analysis with European population was performed. Ancestry was estimated from genome-wide genotyping results. All variants show similar frequencies and odds ratios to those previously reported. Their association with AD reach statistical significance by meta-analysis. Although the Argentinian population is an admixture, variant carriers presented mainly Caucasian ancestry. Rare coding variants in TREM2, PLCG2, and ABI3 also modulate susceptibility to AD in populations from Argentina, and they may have a European heritage.
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| 3. |
- Oenning, AC, et al.
(författare)
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Halve the dose while maintaining image quality in paediatric Cone Beam CT
- 2019
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Ingår i: Scientific reports. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2045-2322. ; 9:1, s. 5521-
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Cone beam CT (CBCT) for dentomaxillofacial paediatric assessment has been widely used despite the uncertainties of the risks of the low-dose radiation exposures. The aim of this work was to investigate the clinical performance of different CBCT acquisition protocols towards the optimization of paediatric exposures. Custom-made anthropomorphic phantoms were scanned using a CBCT unit in six protocols. CT slices were blinded, randomized and presented to three observers, who scored the image quality using a 4-point scale along with their level of confidence. Sharpness level was also measured using a test object containing an air/PMMA e,dge. The effective dose was calculated by means of a customized Monte Carlo (MC) framework using previously validated paediatric voxels models. The results have shown that the protocols set with smaller voxel size (180 µm), even when decreasing exposure parameters (kVp and mAs), showed high image quality scores and increased sharpness. The MC analysis showed a gradual decrease in effective dose when exposures parameters were reduced, with an emphasis on an average reduction of 45% for the protocol that combined 70 kVp, 16 mAs and 180 µm voxel size. In contrast, both “ultra-low dose” protocols that combined a larger voxel size (400 µm) with lower mAs (7.4 mAs) demonstrated the lowest scores with high levels of confidence unsuitable for an anatomical approach. In conclusion, a significant decrease in the effective dose can be achieved while maintaining the image quality required for paediatric CBCT.
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| 4. |
- Politis, C., et al.
(författare)
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SDR Implementation of a Testbed for Real-Time Interference Detection With Signal Cancellation
- 2018
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Ingår i: IEEE Access. - 2169-3536. ; 6, s. 20807-20821
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Interference greatly affects the quality of service of wireless and satellite communications, having also a financial impact for the telecommunication operators. Therefore, as the interfering events increase due to the deployment of new services, there is an increasing demand for the detection and mitigation of interference. There are several interference detectors in the literature, evaluated by using extensive simulations. However, this paper goes one step further, designing, implementing, and evaluating the performance of the developed interference detection algorithms experimentally using a software defined radio, and particularly the universal software radio peripheral platform. A realistic communication system is implemented, consisting of a transmitter, a channel emulator, and a receiver. Based on this system, we implement all the appropriate communications features, such as pulse shaping, synchronization, and demodulation. The real-time system implementation is validated and evaluated through signal and interference detection. We observe that the interference detection threshold is critical to the functioning of the system. Several existing interference detection techniques fail in practice due to this fact. In this paper, we propose a robust and practically implementable method, the selection of threshold. Finally, we present real-time experimental results for the probabilities of false alarm and detection in order to verify the accuracy of our study and reinforce our theoretical analysis.
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| 5. |
- Politis, C., et al.
(författare)
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Simultaneous Sensing and Transmission for Cognitive Radios With Imperfect Signal Cancellation
- 2017
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Ingår i: IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications. - : Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). - 1536-1276 .- 1558-2248. ; 16:9, s. 5599-5615
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In conventional cognitive radio systems, the secondary user employs a “listen-before-talk” paradigm, where it senses if the primary user is active or idle, before it decides to access the licensed spectrum. However, this method faces challenges, with the most important one being the reduction of the secondary user's throughput, as no data transmission takes place during the sensing period. In this context, the idea of simultaneous spectrum sensing and data transmission is proposed. This paper studies a system model where this concept is obtained through the collaboration of the secondary transmitter with the secondary receiver. First, the secondary receiver decodes the signal from the secondary transmitter, removes it from the total received signal, and then carries out spectrum sensing in the remaining signal in order to determine the presence/absence of the primary user. Different from the existing literature, this paper considers the imperfect signal cancellation, evaluating how the decoding errors affect the sensing reliability, and derives the analytical expressions for the probability of false alarm. Finally, numerical results are presented illustrating the accuracy of the proposed analysis.
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| 8. |
- Martin-Bastida, A., et al.
(författare)
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Motor associations of iron accumulation in deep grey matter nuclei in Parkinson's disease : A cross-sectional study of iron-related magnetic resonance imaging susceptibility
- 2017
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Ingår i: European Journal of Neurology. - : Wiley. - 1351-5101. ; 24:2, s. 357-365
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Background and purpose: To determine whether iron deposition in deep brain nuclei assessed using high-pass filtered phase imaging plays a role in motor disease severity in Parkinson's disease (PD). Methods: Seventy patients with mild to moderate PD and 20 age- and gender-matched healthy volunteers (HVs) underwent susceptibility-weighted imaging on a 3 T magnetic resonance imaging scanner. Phase shifts (radians) in deep brain nuclei were derived from high-pass filtered phase images and compared between groups. Analysis of clinical laterality and correlations with motor severity (Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale, Part III, UPDRS-III) were performed. Phase shifts (in radians) were compared between HVs and three PD subgroups divided according to UPDRS-III scores using analysis of covariance, adjusting for age and regional area. Results: Parkinson's disease patients had significantly (P < 0.001) higher radians than HVs bilaterally in the putamen, globus pallidus and substantia nigra (SN). The SN contralateral to the most affected side showed higher radians (P < 0.001) compared to the less affected side. SN radians positively correlated with UPDRS-III and bradykinesia-rigidity subscores, but not with tremor subscores. ancova followed by post hoc Bonferroni-adjusted pairwise comparisons revealed that SN radians were significantly greater in the PD subgroup with higher UPDRS-III scores compared to both lowest UPDRS-III PD and HV groups (P < 0.001). Conclusions: Increased nigral iron accumulation in PD appears to be stratified according to disease motor severity and correlates with symptoms related to dopaminergic neurodegeneration. This semi-quantitative in vivo iron assessment could prove useful for objectively monitoring PD progression, especially in clinical trials concerning iron chelation therapies.
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| 9. |
- Nørgaard, Martin, et al.
(författare)
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Cerebral serotonin transporter measurements with [11C]DASB : A review on acquisition and preprocessing across 21 PET centres
- 2019
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Ingår i: Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism. - 0271-678X .- 1559-7016. ; 39:2, s. 210-222
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Positron Emission Tomography (PET) imaging has become a prominent tool to capture the spatiotemporal distribution of neurotransmitters and receptors in the brain. The outcome of a PET study can, however, potentially be obscured by suboptimal and/or inconsistent choices made in complex processing pipelines required to reach a quantitative estimate of radioligand binding. Variations in subject selection, experimental design, data acquisition, preprocessing, and statistical analysis may lead to different outcomes and neurobiological interpretations. We here review the approaches used in 105 original research articles published by 21 different PET centres, using the tracer [11C]DASB for quantification of cerebral serotonin transporter binding, as an exemplary case. We highlight and quantify the impact of the remarkable variety of ways in which researchers are currently conducting their studies, while implicitly expecting generalizable results across research groups. Our review provides evidence that the foundation for a given choice of a preprocessing pipeline seems to be an overlooked aspect in modern PET neuroscience. Furthermore, we believe that a thorough testing of pipeline performance is necessary to produce reproducible research outcomes, avoiding biased results and allowing for better understanding of human brain function.
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