Evaluation of treatment response and symptom progression in 400 patients with visual snow syndrome

AimsTo gather information on useful medications to treat visual snow syndrome (VSS) as well as to validate an instrument to assess its clinical severity and the course of the disorder over time.MethodsFour hundred patients with VSS were included in this web-based prospective questionnaire study. All subjects completed a treatment questionnaire and a clinical diary. The first allowed evaluation of the effects of previous medications on visual snow, while the second measured VSS symptoms daily over the course of 30 days.ResultsPatients commonly reported previous use of medications such as antidepressants, antiepileptics, antibiotics and benzodiazepines. However, none of these drug classes was beneficial for the majority of patients. Recreational drugs and alcohol worsened visual snow symptoms in several reports. Vitamins and benzodiazepines had high therapeutic ratios, although in most cases they did not change the course of VSS.The monthly diary confirmed that the static in VSS is a consistent symptom over time. It also showed that indoor and fluorescent lights have a worse effect on symptoms when compared with natural outdoor lighting.ConclusionsThe study confirms clinical experience that medications are generally ineffective in VSS, with the exception of vitamins and perhaps benzodiazepines, which could be beneficial in some patients. The 30-day diary represents a useful tool to measure symptom progression over time, which could be used in future trials on VSS.

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Web-based physiotherapy for people affected by multiple sclerosis: a single blind, randomized controlled feasibility study

Clinical Rehabilitation ◽

10.1177/0269215518817080 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 33 (3) ◽

pp. 473-484 ◽

Cited By ~ 10

Author(s):

Lorna Paul ◽

Linda Renfrew ◽

Jennifer Freeman ◽

Heather Murray ◽

Belinda Weller ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Multiple Sclerosis ◽

Outcome Measures ◽

Exercise Programme ◽

Home Exercise ◽

Walk Test ◽

Web Based ◽

Randomized Controlled ◽

Home Exercise Programme ◽

Minute Walk ◽

Over Time

Objective: To examine the feasibility of a trial to evaluate web-based physiotherapy compared to a standard home exercise programme in people with multiple sclerosis. Design: Multi-centre, randomized controlled, feasibility study. Setting: Three multiple sclerosis out-patient centres. Participants: A total of 90 people with multiple sclerosis (Expanded Disability Status Scale 4–6.5). Interventions: Participants were randomized to a six-month individualized, home exercise programme delivered via web-based physiotherapy ( n = 45; intervention) or a sheet of exercises ( n = 45; active comparator). Outcome measures: Outcome measures (0, three, six and nine months) included adherence, two-minute walk test, 25 foot walk, Berg Balance Scale, physical activity and healthcare resource use. Interviews were undertaken with 24 participants and 3 physiotherapists. Results: Almost 25% of people approached agreed to take part. No intervention-related adverse events were recorded. Adherence was 40%–63% and 53%–71% in the intervention and comparator groups. There was no difference in the two-minute walk test between groups at baseline (Intervention-80.4(33.91)m, Comparator-70.6(31.20)m) and no change over time (at six-month Intervention-81.6(32.75)m, Comparator-74.8(36.16)m. There were no significant changes over time in other outcome measures except the EuroQol-5 Dimension at six months which decreased in the active comparator group. For a difference of 8(17.4)m in two-minute walk test between groups, 76 participants/group would be required (80% power, P > 0.05) for a future randomized controlled trial. Conclusion: No changes were found in the majority of outcome measures over time. This study was acceptable and feasible by participants and physiotherapists. An adequately powered study needs 160 participants.

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Designing Web Based Offering and Sales Information System (Case Study : PT. Daya Berkah Sentosa Nusantara)

Procedia of Engineering and Life Science ◽

10.21070/pels.v1i2.1030 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 1 (2) ◽

Author(s):

Siti Nurjanah Ramadhany ◽

Ade Eviyanti

Keyword(s):

Information System ◽

Data Collection ◽

Positive Impact ◽

Literature Study ◽

Web Based ◽

Business World ◽

The Public ◽

To Come ◽

Over Time

Technology is increasingly sophisticated with over time competition in the business world such as E-Commerce has a positive impact on entrepreneurs to advance their companies, namely by creating online websites so that offerings and sales are easy among the public. By accessing the website page of PT. Daya Berkah Sentosa Nusantara buyers do not have to come directly to the place or company, and send offers according to admin needs.The purpose of this study is to make it easier for researchers to solve supply and sales problems based on problems that arise in the company. The method used in this study is the Waterfall Method, with data collection techniques used using observation, interviews and literature study. The desired result of this research is to be able to create a website for the company, to be able to expand marketing reach, buyers can view products through the website.

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Web-based intervention for depressive symptoms in adults with types 1 and 2 diabetes mellitus: a health economic evaluation

The British Journal of Psychiatry ◽

10.1192/bjp.2018.10 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 212 (4) ◽

pp. 199-206 ◽

Cited By ~ 12

Author(s):

Stephanie Nobis ◽

David Daniel Ebert ◽

Dirk Lehr ◽

Filip Smit ◽

Claudia Buntrock ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Cost Effectiveness ◽

Treatment Response ◽

Active Control ◽

Cost Effective ◽

Control Group ◽

Active Control Group ◽

Comorbid Depression ◽

Web Based ◽

Life Years ◽

The Cost

BackgroundWeb-based interventions are effective in reducing depression. However, the evidence for the cost-effectiveness of these interventions is scarce.AimsThe aim is to assess the cost-effectiveness of a web-based intervention (GET.ON M.E.D.) for individuals with diabetes and comorbid depression compared with an active control group receiving web-based psychoeducation.MethodWe conducted a cost-effectiveness analysis with treatment response as the outcome and a cost-utility analysis with quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs) alongside a randomised controlled trial with 260 participants.ResultsAt a willingness-to-pay ceiling of €5000 for a treatment response, the intervention has a 97% probability of being regarded as cost-effective compared with the active control group. If society is willing to pay €14 000 for an additional QALY, the intervention has a 51% probability of being cost-effective.ConclusionsThis web-based intervention for individuals with diabetes and comorbid depression demonstrated a high probability of being cost-effective compared with an active control group.Declaration of interestS.N., D.D.E., D.L., M.B. and B.F. are stakeholders of the Institute for Online Health Trainings, which aims to transfer scientific knowledge related to this research into routine healthcare.

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Ontology Versioning Driven by Instance Evolution in the τOWL Framework

Journal of Information & Knowledge Management ◽

10.1142/s0219649222500022 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Zouhaier Brahmia ◽

Fabio Grandi ◽

Abir Zekri ◽

Rafik Bouaziz

Keyword(s):

Semantic Web ◽

Real World ◽

Ontology Construction ◽

Web Based ◽

The Real ◽

Initial Design ◽

Design Time ◽

Schema Versioning ◽

History Of ◽

Over Time

Like other components of Semantic Web-based applications, ontologies are evolving over time to reflect changes in the real world. Several of these applications require keeping a full-fledged history of ontology changes so that both ontology instance versions and their corresponding ontology schema versions are maintained. Updates to an ontology instance could be non-conservative that is leading to a new ontology instance version no longer conforming to the current ontology schema version. If, for some reasons, a non-conservative update has to be executed, in spite of its consequence, it requires the production of a new ontology schema version to which the new ontology instance version is conformant so that the new ontology version produced by the update is globally consistent. In this paper, we first propose an approach that supports ontology schema changes which are triggered by non-conservative updates to ontology instances and, thus, gives rise to an ontology schema versioning driven by instance updates. Note that in an engineering perspective, such an approach can be used as an incremental ontology construction method driven by the modification of instance data, whose exact structure may not be completely known at the initial design time. After that, we apply our proposal to the already established [Formula: see text]OWL (Temporal OWL 2) framework, which allows defining and evolving temporal OWL 2 ontologies in an environment that supports temporal versioning of both ontology instances and ontology schemas, by extending it to also support the management of non-conservative updates to ontology instance versions. Last, we show the feasibility of our approach by dealing with its implementation within a new release of the [Formula: see text] OWL-Manager tool.

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New modifications of Swedish ROP guidelines based on 10-year data from the SWEDROP register

British Journal of Ophthalmology ◽

10.1136/bjophthalmol-2019-314874 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 104 (7) ◽

pp. 943-949 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Gerd Holmström ◽

Ann Hellström ◽

Lotta Gränse ◽

Marie Saric ◽

Birgitta Sunnqvist ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Birth Weight ◽

Gestational Age ◽

Retinopathy Of Prematurity ◽

Neonatal Care ◽

Coverage Rate ◽

Natural Course ◽

Web Based ◽

Postmenstrual Age ◽

Over Time

Background/aimsDuring the last decade, improved neonatal care has resulted in increased survival of the most immature infants and improved health of more mature infants. We hypothesise that this has affected incidence and treatment of retinopathy of prematurity (ROP), enabling guidelines for screening to be modified.MethodsIn Sweden, all infants with gestational age (GA) at birth ≤30 weeks are screened for ROP. Results are registered in a web-based register, Swedish National ROP Register, with a coverage rate of 97%. Incidence of ROP and frequency of treatment, aspects on natural course of ROP and number of examinations, are calculated in relation to GA at birth in infants born during 2008–2017.ResultsOf 7249 infants, 31.9% (2310) had ROP and 6.1% (440) were treated. No infant with GA 30 weeks was treated. Incidence of ROP remained similar, but frequency of treatment increased (p=0.023). Over time, GA and birth weight were reduced in infants with ROP and with treated ROP. In the most immature infants, postmenstrual age was lower and postnatal age was higher when any ROP and stage 3 ROP were first detected (p<0.001). At treatment, postmenstrual but not postnatal age of the infant was associated with GA (p<0.001). During the 10-year period, 46 038 examinations were performed.ConclusionModification of Swedish guidelines is proposed, including only infants with a GA of <30 weeks and postponing the first examination with 1 week in infants with GA 26–29 weeks. This would spare many infants from stressful examinations and reduce eye examinations with at least 20%.

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The Voice of Drug Consumers: Online Textual Review Analysis Using Structural Topic Model

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health ◽

10.3390/ijerph17103648 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 17 (10) ◽

pp. 3648 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Lifeng He ◽

Dongmei Han ◽

Xiaohang Zhou ◽

Zheng Qu

Keyword(s):

Latent Dirichlet Allocation ◽

Topic Model ◽

Web Based ◽

Pharmaceutical Manufacturers ◽

Textual Data ◽

Consumer Dissatisfaction ◽

The Voice ◽

Document Level ◽

Structural Topic Model ◽

Over Time

Many web-based pharmaceutical e-commerce platforms allow consumers to post open-ended textual reviews based on their purchase experiences. Understanding the true voice of consumers by analyzing such a large amount of user-generated content is of great significance to pharmaceutical manufacturers and e-commerce websites. The aim of this paper is to automatically extract hidden topics from web-based drug reviews using the structural topic model (STM) to examine consumers’ concerns when they buy drugs online. The STM is a probabilistic extension of Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), which allows the consolidation of document-level covariates. This innovation allows us to capture consumer dissatisfaction along with their dynamics over time. We extract 12 topics, and five of them are negative topics representing consumer dissatisfaction, whose appearances in the negative reviews are substantially higher than those in the positive reviews. We also come to the conclusion that the prevalence of these five negative topics has not decreased over time. Furthermore, our results reveal that the prevalence of price-related topics has decreased significantly in positive reviews, which indicates that low-price strategies are becoming less attractive to customers. To the best of our knowledge, our work is the first study using STM to analyze the unstructured textual data of drug reviews, which enhances the understanding of the aspects of drug consumer concerns and contributes to the research of pharmaceutical e-commerce literature.

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THU-189-Role of comorbidites in sofosbuvir-based treatment response: Clinical experience from an Italian real life cohort

Journal of Hepatology ◽

10.1016/s0618-8278(19)30464-5 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 70 (1) ◽

pp. e246

Author(s):

Vitor Hugo Martins ◽

Giulia Troshina ◽

Giulia Verzon ◽

Michela Ciruolo ◽

Felice Rizzi ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Treatment Response ◽

Clinical Experience ◽

Real Life

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New fluid biomarkers tracking non-amyloid-β and non-tau pathology in Alzheimer’s disease

Experimental & Molecular Medicine ◽

10.1038/s12276-020-0418-9 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 52 (4) ◽

pp. 556-568 ◽

Cited By ~ 10

Author(s):

Sun Ah Park ◽

Song Mi Han ◽

Chae Eun Kim

Keyword(s):

Alzheimer’S Disease ◽

Alzheimer's Disease ◽

Treatment Response ◽

Amyloid Β ◽

Clinical Severity ◽

Intercellular Adhesion Molecule ◽

Csf Biomarkers ◽

Tau Pathology ◽

Protein Clearance ◽

New Biomarkers

Abstract Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biomarkers based on the core pathological proteins associated with Alzheimer’s disease (AD), i.e., amyloid-β (Aβ) and tau protein, are widely regarded as useful diagnostic biomarkers. However, a lack of biomarkers for monitoring the treatment response and indexing clinical severity has proven to be problematic in drug trials targeting Aβ. Therefore, new biomarkers are needed to track non-Aβ and non-tau pathology. Many proteins involved in the pathophysiological progression of AD have shown promise as new biomarkers. Neurodegeneration- and synapse-related biomarkers in CSF (e.g., neurofilament light polypeptide [NFL], neurogranin, and visinin-like protein 1) and blood (e.g., NFL) aid prediction of AD progress, as well as early diagnosis. Neuroinflammation, lipid dysmetabolism, and impaired protein clearance are considered important components of AD pathophysiology. Inflammation-related proteins in the CSF, such as progranulin, intercellular adhesion molecule 1, and chitinase-3-like protein 1 (YKL-40), are useful for the early detection of AD and can represent clinical severity. Several lipid metabolism-associated biomarkers and protein clearance-linked markers have also been suggested as candidate AD biomarkers. Combinations of subsets of new biomarkers enhance their utility in terms of broadly characterizing AD-associated pathological changes, thereby facilitating precise selection of susceptible patients and comprehensive monitoring of the treatment response. This approach could facilitate the development of effective treatments for AD.

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Psychopharmacological Treatment of Schizophrenia Over Time in 30 908 Inpatients: Data From the AMSP Study

The International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology ◽

10.1093/ijnp/pyz037 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 22 (9) ◽

pp. 560-573 ◽

Cited By ~ 9

Author(s):

Sermin Toto ◽

Renate Grohmann ◽

Stefan Bleich ◽

Helge Frieling ◽

Hannah B Maier ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Psychotropic Drugs ◽

Treatment Resistance ◽

Prescription Data ◽

Prescription Patterns ◽

Drug Classes ◽

Treatment Data ◽

Inpatient Settings ◽

Schizophrenic Patients ◽

Long Acting ◽

Over Time

Abstract Background Psychotropic drugs are the cornerstone of schizophrenia treatment, often requiring lifelong treatment. Data on pharmacotherapy in inpatient settings are lacking. Methods Prescription data of schizophrenic inpatients within the time period 2000–2015 were obtained from the database of the Drug Safety Program in Psychiatry (AMSP). Data were collected at 2 index dates per year; the prescription patterns and changes over time were analyzed. Results Among 30 908 inpatients (mean age 41.6 years, 57.8% males), the drug classes administered most often were antipsychotics (94.8%), tranquilizers (32%), antidepressants (16.5%), antiparkinsonians (16%), anticonvulsants (14.1%), hypnotics (8.1%), and lithium (2.1%). The use of second-generation antipsychotics significantly increased from 62.8% in 2000 to 88.9% in 2015 (P < .001), whereas the prescription of first-generation antipsychotics decreased from 46.6% in 2000 to 24.7% in 2015 (P < .001). The administration of long-acting injectable antipsychotics decreased from 15.2% in 2000 to 11.7% in 2015 (P = .006). Clopazine was the most often used antipsychotic, having been used for 21.3% of all patients. Polypharmacy rates (≥5 drugs) increased from 19% in 2000 to 26.5% in 2015. Psychiatric polypharmacy (≥3 psychotropic drugs) was present in 44.7% of patients. Conclusions Combinations of antipsychotics and augmentation therapies with other drug classes are frequently prescribed for schizophrenic patients. Though treatment resistance and unsatisfactory functional outcomes reflect clinical necessity, further prospective studies are needed on real-world prescription patterns in schizophrenia to evaluate the efficacy and safety of this common practice.

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