| 1. |
- van Vollenhoven, R.F., et al.
(author)
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Addition of infliximab compared with addition of sulfasalazine and hydroxychloroquine to methotrexate in patients with early rheumatoid arthritis (Swefot trial) : 1-year results of a randomised trial
- 2009
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In: The Lancet. - 0140-6736 .- 1474-547X. ; 374:9688, s. 459-466
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Background: New treatment strategies for early rheumatoid arthritis are evolving rapidly. We aimed to compare addition of conventional disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (sulfasalazine and hydroxychloroquine) with addition of a tumour necrosis factor antagonist (infliximab) to methotrexate in patients with early rheumatoid arthritis. Methods: We undertook a randomised trial in 15 rheumatology units in Sweden. We enrolled patients with early rheumatoid arthritis (symptom duration less than1 year) and administered methotrexate (up to 20 mg per week). After 3-4 months, those who had not achieved low disease activity but who could tolerate methotrexate were randomly allocated by computer addition of either sulfasalazine and hydroxychloroquine or infliximab. Primary outcome was achievement of a good response according to European League Against Rheumatism (EULAR) criteria at 12 months. Patients were followed up to 24 months; here, we present findings at 12 months. Analysis was by intention to treat and we used non-responder imputation. The Swefot (Swedish Pharmacotherapy) study is registered in the WHO database at the Karolinska University Hospital, number CT20080004. Findings: 487 patients were initially enrolled. Of 258 who had not achieved low disease activity with methotrexate, 130 were allocated sulfasalazine and hydroxychloroquine and 128 were assigned infliximab. 32 of 130 (25%) patients allocated sulfasalazine and hydroxychloroquine achieved the primary outcome compared with 50 of 128 (39%) assigned infliximab (risk ratio 1·59 [95% CI 1·10-2·30], p=0·0160). Adverse events were balanced fairly well between the two groups and accorded with known adverse events of the drugs used. No deaths occurred in either group. Interpretation: In patients with early rheumatoid arthritis in whom methotrexate treatment failed, addition of a tumour necrosis factor antagonist to methotrexate monotherapy is clinically superior to addition of conventional disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs. Funding: Swedish Rheumatism Association, Schering-Plough.
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| 2. |
- Argaw, A. A., et al.
(author)
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Dictionary based Amharic - English information retrieval
- 2004
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In: CEUR Workshop Proceedings. - : CEUR-WS.
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- We present two approaches to the Amharic - English bilingual track in CLEF 2004. Both experiments use a dictionary based approach to translate the Amharic queries into English Bags-of-words, but while one approach removes non-content bearing words from the Amharic queries based on their IDF value, the other uses a list of English stop words to perform the same task. The resulting translated (English) terms are then submitted to a retrieval engine that supports the Boolean and vector-space models. In our experiments, the second approach (based on a list of English stop words) performs slightly better than the one based on IDF values for the Amharic terms.
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| 3. |
- Argaw, Atelach Alemu, et al.
(author)
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Dictionary-based Amharic-French information retrieval
- 2005
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In: CLEF2005 Working Notes. - : CEUR-WS.
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- We present four approaches to the Amharic -French bilingual track at CLEF 2005. All experiments use a dictionary based approach to translate the Amharic queries into French Bags-of-words, but while one approach uses word sense discrimination on the translated side of the queries, the other one includes all senses of a translated word in the query for searching. We used two search engines: The SICS experimental engine and Lucene, hence four runs with the two approaches. Non-content bearing words were removed both before and after the dictionary lookup. TF/IDF values supplemented by a heuristic function was used to remove the stop words from the Amharic queries and two French stopwords lists were used to remove them from the French translations. In our experiments, we found that the SICS search engine performs better than Lucene and that using the word sense discriminated keywords produce a slightly better result than the full set of non discriminated keywords.
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| 4. |
- Askling, Johan, et al.
(author)
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Anti-tumour necrosis factor therapy in rheumatoid arthritis and risk of malignant lymphomas : relative risks and time trends in the Swedish Biologics Register
- 2009
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In: Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases. - London, UK : BMJ. - 0003-4967 .- 1468-2060. ; 68:5, s. 648-653
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- BACKGROUND:Tumour necrosis factor (TNF) antagonists have proved effective as treatment against rheumatoid arthritis (RA), but the unresolved issue of whether the use of anti-TNF therapy increases the already elevated risk of lymphoma in RA remains a concern.METHODS:Using the Swedish Biologics Register (ARTIS), the Swedish Cancer Register, pre-existing RA cohorts and cross-linkage with other national health and census registers, a national RA cohort (n = 67,743) was assembled and patients who started anti-TNF therapy between 1998 and July 2006 (n = 6604) were identified. A general population comparator (n = 471,024) was also assembled and the incidence of lymphomas from 1999 to 31 December 2006 was assessed and compared in these individuals.RESULTS:Among the 6604 anti-TNF-treated RA patients, 26 malignant lymphomas were observed during 26,981 person-years of follow-up, which corresponded to a relative risk (RR) of 1.35 (95% CI 0.82 to 2.11) versus anti-TNF-naive RA patients (336 lymphomas during 365,026 person-years) and 2.72 (95% CI 1.82 to 4.08) versus the general population comparator (1568 lymphomas during 3,355,849 person-years). RA patients starting anti-TNF therapy in 1998-2001 accounted for the entire increase in lymphoma risk versus the two comparators. By contrast, RR did not vary significantly by time since start of first treatment or with the accumulated duration of treatment, nor with the type of anti-TNF agent.CONCLUSION:Overall and as used in routine care against RA, TNF antagonists are not associated with any major further increase in the already elevated lymphoma occurrence in RA. Changes in the selection of patients for treatment may influence the observed risk.
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