Biomedical subjects

R Woods

Publications and source records attributed to R Woods.

157 records · Page 9Linked to original sources

PubMed1965

The transport of cells from the bursa of Fabricius to the spleen and the thymus.

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Animals↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Efficacy and tolerability of cefprozil versus amoxicillin/clavulanate for the treatment of adults with severe sinusitis.

Cefprozil is a beta-lactamase-stable oral cephalosporin with an antimicrobial spectrum that includes gram-positive and gram-negative pathogens commonly associated with acute bacterial sinusitis, one of the most common upper respiratory tract infections among adults. We conducted a multicenter, open-label study to compare the efficacy and safety of cefprozil and amoxicillin/clavulanate in the treatment of adults with severe acute bacterial sinusitis diagnosed by clinical and radiographic criteria. A total of 278 patients entered the study, 140 (59 males, 81 females) in the cefprozil group and 138 (69 males, 69 females) in the amoxicillin/clavulanate group. Patients were randomized to 10 days of treatment with either cefprozil 500 mg BID or amoxicillin/clavulanate 500 mg/125 mg TID. Clinical severity was assessed at study entry, and patients were stratified based on symptom grade. Efficacy was evaluated using a 10-point questionnaire administered during, at the end of, and 2 weeks after completing therapy. At the end of treatment, 84.5% (71/84) of patients with severe sinusitis treated with cefprozil had a satisfactory clinical response, which was not significantly different from the 89.9% (80/89) of patients in the amoxicillin/clavulanate group who had a satisfactory clinical response. Two weeks after completing treatment, 80.8% (63/78) of cefprozil-treated patients and 81.0% (64/79) of amoxicillin/clavulanate-treated patients with severe sinusitis had a satisfactory response. Relapse was more common among amoxicillin/clavulanate patients (6/70; 8.6%) than among cefprozil patients (2/65; 3.1%), but the difference was not statistically significant. Significantly more amoxicillin/clavulanate-treated patients experienced adverse events compared with cefprozil-treated patients (P < 0.001), including diarrhea (P < 0.001), nausea (P < 0.042), and rash (P < 0.035). Three times as many amoxicillin/clavulanate patients discontinued treatment because of adverse events. Cefprozil demonstrated comparable clinical efficacy to amoxicillin/clavulanate in the treatment of adults with severe sinusitis; however, cefprozil was associated with a significantly lower incidence of diarrhea, nausea, and rash.

Adult↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Asthma management: how effective is it in the community?

BACKGROUND: The National Asthma Campaign (NAC) was launched in Australia in 1989 with the major objective of improving asthma management through the implementation of a six-step asthma management plan. AIM: The objective of the present study was to analyse the management of asthma in a cohort of adults with self-reported asthma 10 years after the commencement of the NAC. METHODS: The subjects were participants in the laboratory phase of a cross-sectional epidemiological study conducted in Melbourne in 1999-2000. Participants completed the detailed European Community Respiratory Health Survey, which included specific questions about their asthma management. Participants were included in this analysis if they had a positive response to the question 'Have you ever had asthma?'. This resulted in a total of 435 subjects. RESULTS: Of the subjects with self-reported asthma, over half of the participants reported that a doctor had ever measured their breathing (52.9%). However, only 10.1% of participants reported that they owned a peakflow meter (PFM) and only 13.3% reported that they had ever been given a written action plan. In comparison with data reported from 1993, doctor measurement of lung function has decreased significantly (P < 0.000 1), as has PFM ownership (P < 0.0001) and, importantly, possession of a written action plan (P = 0.0004). CONCLUSIONS: Asthma management among adults still falls well short of NAC guidelines. The decline in some key features over recent years suggests that new management and dissemination strategies are required.

Adult↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Enhancement of MR images using registration for signal averaging.

PURPOSE: With the advent of noninvasive neuroimaging, a plethora of digital human neuroanatomical atlases has been developed. The accuracy of these atlases is constrained by the resolution and signal-gathering powers of available imaging equipment. In an attempt to circumvent these limitations and to produce a high resolution in vivo human neuroanatomy, we investigated the usefulness of intrasubject registration for post hoc MR signal averaging. METHOD: Twenty-seven high resolution (7 x 0.78 and 20 x 1.0 mm3) T1-weighted volumes were acquired from a single subject, along with 12 double echo T2/proton density-weighted volumes. These volumes were automatically registered to a common stereotaxic space in which they were subsampled and intensity averaged. The resulting images were examined for anatomical quality and usefulness for other analytical techniques. RESULTS: The quality of the resulting image from the combination of as few as five T1 volumes was visibly enhanced. The signal-to-noise ratio was expected to increase as the root of the number of contributing scans to 5.2, n = 27. The improvement in the n = 27 average was great enough that fine anatomical details, such as thalamic subnuclei and the gray bridges between the caudate and putamen, became crisply defined. The gray/white matter boundaries were also enhanced, as was the visibility of any finer structure that was surrounded by tissue of varying T1 intensity. The T2 and proton density average images were also of higher quality than single scans, but the improvement was not as dramatic as that of the T1 volumes. CONCLUSION: Overall, the enhanced signal in the averaged images resulted in higher quality anatomical images, and the data lent themselves to several postprocessing techniques. The high quality of the enhanced images permits novel uses of the data and extends the possibilities for in vivo human neuroanatomy.

Artifacts↗

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Regional spatial normalization: toward an optimal target.

PURPOSE: The purpose of this work was to develop methods for defining, constructing, and evaluating a "minimal deformation target" (MDT) brain for multisubject studies based on analysis of the entire group. The goal is to provide a procedure that will create a standard, reproducible target brain image based on common features of a group of three-dimensional MR brain images. METHOD: The average deformation and dispersion distance, derived from discrete three-dimensional deformation fields (DFs), are used to identify the best individual target (BIT) brain. This brain is assumed to be the one with the minimal deformation bias within a group of MR brain images. The BIT brain is determined as the one with the minimal target quality score, our cost function based on the deformation displacement and dispersion distance. The BIT brain is then transformed to the MDT brain using an average DF to create an optimized target brain. This analysis requires the calculation of a large number of DFs. To overcome this limitation, we developed an analysis method (the fast method) that reduces the task from order N2 complexity to one of order N, a tremendous advantage for large-N studies. RESULTS: Multiscale correlation analysis in a group of 20 subjects demonstrated the superiority of warping using the MDT target brain, made from the BIT brain, over several individual and MDT-transformed target brains also from the group. CONCLUSION: Analysis of three-dimensional DF provides a means to quickly create a reproducible MDT target brain for any set of subjects. Warping to the MDT target was shown by an independent multiscale correlation method to produce superior results.

Adult↗

PubMedDate not supplied

A four-dimensional probabilistic atlas of the human brain.

The authors describe the development of a four-dimensional atlas and reference system that includes both macroscopic and microscopic information on structure and function of the human brain in persons between the ages of 18 and 90 years. Given the presumed large but previously unquantified degree of structural and functional variance among normal persons in the human population, the basis for this atlas and reference system is probabilistic. Through the efforts of the International Consortium for Brain Mapping (ICBM), 7,000 subjects will be included in the initial phase of database and atlas development. For each subject, detailed demographic, clinical, behavioral, and imaging information is being collected. In addition, 5,800 subjects will contribute DNA for the purpose of determining genotype- phenotype-behavioral correlations. The process of developing the strategies, algorithms, data collection methods, validation approaches, database structures, and distribution of results is described in this report. Examples of applications of the approach are described for the normal brain in both adults and children as well as in patients with schizophrenia. This project should provide new insights into the relationship between microscopic and macroscopic structure and function in the human brain and should have important implications in basic neuroscience, clinical diagnostics, and cerebral disorders.

Adolescent↗

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