BMC Bioinformatics. 2022 Jun 10;23(1):224. doi: 10.1186/s12859-022-04763-2.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Drug-Drug interactions (DDIs) are a challenging problem in drug research. Drug combination therapy is an effective solution to treat diseases, but it can also cause serious side effects. Therefore, DDIs prediction is critical in pharmacology. Recently, researchers have been using deep learning techniques to predict DDIs. However, these methods only consider single information of the drug and have shortcomings in robustness and scalability.

RESULTS: In this paper, we propose a multi-type feature fusion based on graph neural network model (MFFGNN) for DDI prediction, which can effectively fuse the topological information in molecular graphs, the interaction information between drugs and the local chemical context in SMILES sequences. In MFFGNN, to fully learn the topological information of drugs, we propose a novel feature extraction module to capture the global features for the molecular graph and the local features for each atom of the molecular graph. In addition, in the multi-type feature fusion module, we use the gating mechanism in each graph convolution layer to solve the over-smoothing problem during information delivery. We perform extensive experiments on multiple real datasets. The results show that MFFGNN outperforms some state-of-the-art models for DDI prediction. Moreover, the cross-dataset experiment results further show that MFFGNN has good generalization performance.

CONCLUSIONS: Our proposed model can efficiently integrate the information from SMILES sequences, molecular graphs and drug-drug interaction networks. We find that a multi-type feature fusion model can accurately predict DDIs. It may contribute to discovering novel DDIs.

PMID:35689200 | PMC:PMC9188183 | DOI:10.1186/s12859-022-04763-2

J Popul Ther Clin Pharmacol. 2022 Mar 15;29(1):e87-e96. doi: 10.47750/jptcp.2022.845. eCollection 2022.

ABSTRACT

RESULTS: The present study compared three scabicidal agents alone or with combination, the currently considered medicine of choice permethrin, oral ivermectin, and gamma benzene hexachloride in the local population of India. A total of 120 patients were studied. They were randomly divided into four groups -Group A, Group B, Group C, and Group D. Group A received topical 5% permethrin and oral placebo. Group B was given topical placebo cream and oral ivermectin in two dose regimen. Group C received topical 1% gamma benzene hexachloride with oral placebo, and Group D was given topical 5% permethrin and oral ivermectin. The improvement of lesions and pruritus were assessed in the next three follow-ups, i.e., on the 7th day, 14th day, and 28th day along with any adverse drug reactions (ADRs). It was found that Group A had 83%, 90%, 97%, and Group B had 70%, 81%, and 91% improvement of lesions in the three follow-ups respectively. Group C showed 57%, 70%, 86%, and Group D had 82%, 90%, 97% efficiency to decrease lesion count (p>0.05) respectively. Again, Group A observed 77%, 88%, and 94% improvement in pruritus in subsequent follow-ups, while for Group B it was 63%, 76%, and 86%. Group C had 55%, 71%, 85% efficiency, and Group D had recorded 77%, 88%, and 94% improvement to decrease pruritus (p>0.05). The incidence of adverse effects was found to be less in Group B, Group C, and Group D when compared to Group A.

CONCLUSION: Group D or a combination therapy was a better choice for scabies in comparison to other monotherapy due to its better efficacy and safety profile.

PMID:35686900 | DOI:10.47750/jptcp.2022.845

Integr Cancer Ther. 2022 Jan-Dec;21:15347354221105485. doi: 10.1177/15347354221105485.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Chemotherapy-induced adverse effects (CIAEs) remain a challenging problem due to their high incidences and negative impacts on treatment in Chinese colorectal cancer (CRC) patients. We aimed to identify risk factors and predictive markers for CIAEs using food/nutrition data in CRC patients receiving post-operative capecitabine-based chemotherapy.

METHODS: Food/nutrition data from 130 Chinese CRC patients were analyzed. Univariate and multivariate analyses were used to identify CIAE-related food/nutrition factors. Prediction models were constructed based on the combination of these factors. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC) was used to evaluate the discrimination ability of models.

RESULTS: A total of 20 food/nutrition factors associated with CIAEs were identified in the univariate analysis after adjustments for total energy and potential confounding factors. Based on multivariate analysis, we found that, among these factors, dessert, eggs, poultry, and milk were associated with several CIAEs. Most importantly, poultry was an overall protective factor; milk and egg were risk factors for hand-foot syndrome (HFS) and bone marrow suppression (BMS), respectively. Developed multivariate models in predicting grade 1 to 3 CIAEs and grade 2/3 CIAEs both had good discrimination (AUROC values from 0.671 to 0.778, 0.750 to 0.946 respectively), which had potential clinical application value in the early prediction of CIAEs, especially for more severe CIAEs.

CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest that patients with high milk and egg intakes should be clinically instructed to control their corresponding dietary intake to reduce the likelihood of developing HFS and BMS during capecitabine-based chemotherapy, respectively.

TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT03030508.

PMID:35686441 | DOI:10.1177/15347354221105485

Int J Clin Pract. 2022 Feb 14;2022:9443884. doi: 10.1155/2022/9443884. eCollection 2022.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Despite being the first-line treatment for severe or moderate acne, isotretinoin has several serious side effects that necessitate the evaluation of patients' knowledge about isotretinoin side effects and its proper use.

OBJECTIVE: The current study aim was to explore information needs about isotretinoin by evaluating patients' knowledge about the appropriate use of isotretinoin and its associated side effects.

METHODS: In addition to the sociodemographic variables, a validated online questionnaire was adopted from the literature to evaluate patients' knowledge about isotretinoin use and its potential side effects. Independent t-test and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) test were implemented to find the correlation between the study variables and the knowledge score.

RESULTS: The most recognized side effect of isotretinoin therapy was dryness (98.1%). The study patients showed good knowledge about isotretinoin use with a mean knowledge score of 8.1 (SD = 0.7). However, more than half of them (61.0%) mistakenly thought that isotretinoin therapy should be taken continuously for more than 6 months without stop, and some of them did not know that isotretinoin is recommended to be taken with fatty meal (24%) and sunblock (24.6%). Female gender (8.2 (SD = 0.8)) and using isotretinoin for more than 6 months (8.3 (SD = 1.2)) were significantly associated with a higher knowledge score of isotretinoin use (p=0.01), when compared with male patients (7.8 (SD = 0.7)) and less than 6-month use of isotretinoin (7.7 (SD = 0.7)).

CONCLUSIONS: The lack of patients' information about the potential side effects, duration of therapy, and some instructions on isotretinoin use, such as taking the medication with fatty meal and sunblock, shed the light on the necessity to prepare leaflets, educational brochures, and educational posts via social media in order to improve patients' knowledge about isotretinoin therapy and its optimal use.

PMID:35685597 | PMC:PMC9159128 | DOI:10.1155/2022/9443884

Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 May 31;19(11):6724. doi: 10.3390/ijerph19116724.

ABSTRACT

Potentially inappropriate prescribing (PIP) is associated with an increased risk of adverse drug reactions, recognized as a determinant of adherence and increased healthcare costs. The study's aim was to explore and compare the results of interventions to reduce PIP and its impact on avoidable healthcare costs. A systematic literature review was conducted according to Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) statement guidelines. PubMed and Embase were queried until February 2021. Inclusion criteria followed the PICO model: older patients receiving PIP; Interventions aimed at health professionals, structures, and patients; no/any intervention as a comparator; postintervention costs variations as outcomes. The search strategy produced 274 potentially relevant publications, of which 18 articles met inclusion criteria. Two subgroups were analyzed according to the study design: observational studies assessing PIP frequency and related-avoidable costs (n = 10) and trials, including specific intervention and related outcomes in terms of postintervention effectiveness and avoided costs (n = 8). PIP prevalence ranged from 21 to 79%. Few educational interventions carried out to reduce PIP prevalence and avoidable costs resulted in a slowly improving prescribing practice but not cost effective. Implementing cost-effective strategies for reducing PIP and clinical and economic implications is fundamental to reducing health systems' PIP burden.

PMID:35682331 | PMC:PMC9180095 | DOI:10.3390/ijerph19116724

Comput Methods Programs Biomed. 2022 Jun 3;221:106934. doi: 10.1016/j.cmpb.2022.106934. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: In silico tools are known to aid in drug cardiotoxicity assessment. However, computational models do not usually consider electrophysiological variability, which may be crucial when predicting rare adverse events such as drug-induced Torsade de Pointes (TdP). In addition, classification tools are usually binary and are not validated using an external data set. Here we analyze the role of incorporating electrophysiological variability in the prediction of drug-induced arrhythmogenic-risk, using a ternary classification and two external validation datasets.

METHODS: The effects of the 12 training CiPA drugs were simulated at three different concentrations using a single baseline model and an electrophysiologically calibrated population of models. 9 biomarkers related with action potential (AP), calcium dynamics and net charge were measured for each simulated concentration. These biomarkers were used to build ternary classifiers based on Support Vector Machines (SVM) methodology. Classifiers were validated using two external drug sets: the 16 validation CiPA drugs and 81 drugs from CredibleMeds database.

RESULTS: Population of models allowed to obtain different AP responses under the same pharmacological intervention and improve the prediction of drug-induced TdP with respect to the baseline model. The classification tools based on population of models achieve an accuracy higher than 0.8 and a mean classification error (MCE) lower than 0.3 for both validation drug sets and for the two electrophysiological action potential models studied (Tomek et al. 2020 and a modified version of O'Hara et al. 2011). In addition, simulations with population of models allowed the identification of individuals with lower conductances of IKr, IKs, and INaK and higher conductances of ICaL, INaL, and INCX, which are more prone to develop TdP.

CONCLUSIONS: The methodology presented here provides new opportunities to assess drug-induced TdP-risk, taking into account electrophysiological variability and may be helpful to improve current cardiac safety screening methods.

PMID:35687995 | DOI:10.1016/j.cmpb.2022.106934

Pain Pract. 2022 Jun 10. doi: 10.1111/papr.13136. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

Celecoxib-tramadol co-crystal (CTC) is a first-in-class analgesic co-crystal of celecoxib and racemic tramadol with an improved pharmacologic profile, conferred by the co-crystal structure, compared with its active constituents administered alone/concomitantly. We evaluated CTC in moderate-to-severe acute postoperative pain. This randomized, double-blind, factorial, active- and placebo-controlled phase 3 trial (NCT03108482) was conducted at 6 US clinical research centers. Adults with moderate-to-severe acute pain following bunionectomy with osteotomy were randomized to oral CTC (200 mg [112 mg celecoxib/88 mg rac-tramadol hydrochloride] every 12 hours), tramadol (50 mg every 6 hours), celecoxib (100 mg every 12 hours), or placebo for 48 hours. Patients, investigators, and personnel were blinded to assignment. The primary endpoint was the 0-48h sum of pain intensity differences (SPID0-48 ) in all randomized patients. Pain intensity was assessed on a 0-10 numerical rating scale (NRS). Safety was analyzed in patients who received study medication. Funded by ESTEVE Pharmaceuticals. In 2017 (March to November), 1323 patients were screened and 637 randomized to CTC (n=184), tramadol (n=183), celecoxib (n=181), or placebo (n=89). Mean baseline NRS was 6.7 in all active groups. CTC had a significantly greater effect on SPID0-48 (least-squares mean: -139.1 [95% confidence interval: -151.8, -126.5]) than tramadol (-109.1 [-121.7, -96.4]; P<0.001), celecoxib (-103.7 [-116.4, -91.0]; P<0.001), or placebo (-74.6 [-92.5, -56.6]; P<0.001). Total treatment-emergent adverse events (TEAEs) were 358 for CTC and 394 for tramadol. Drug-related TEAEs occurred in 37.7% patients in the CTC group, compared with 48.6% in the tramadol group. There were no serious TEAEs/deaths. CTC provided greater analgesia than comparable daily doses of tramadol and celecoxib, with similar tolerability to tramadol. CTC is approved in the US.

PMID:35686380 | DOI:10.1111/papr.13136

Nanomaterials (Basel). 2022 May 25;12(11):1807. doi: 10.3390/nano12111807.

ABSTRACT

Until now, strategies used to treat cancer are imperfect, and this generates the need to search for better and safer solutions. The biggest issue is the lack of selective interaction with neoplastic cells, which is associated with occurrence of side effects and significantly reduces the effectiveness of therapies. The use of nanoparticles in cancer can counteract these problems. One of the most promising nanoparticles is magnetite. Implementation of this nanoparticle can improve various treatment methods such as hyperthermia, targeted drug delivery, cancer genotherapy, and protein therapy. In the first case, its feature makes magnetite useful in magnetic hyperthermia. Interaction of magnetite with the altered magnetic field generates heat. This process results in raised temperature only in a desired part of a patient body. In other therapies, magnetite-based nanoparticles could serve as a carrier for various types of therapeutic load. The magnetic field would direct the drug-related magnetite nanoparticles to the pathological site. Therefore, this material can be used in protein and gene therapy or drug delivery. Since the magnetite nanoparticle can be used in various types of cancer treatment, they are extensively studied. Herein, we summarize the latest finding on the applicability of the magnetite nanoparticles, also addressing the most critical problems faced by smart nanomedicine in oncological therapies.

PMID:35683663 | DOI:10.3390/nano12111807

BMJ Open. 2022 Jun 9;12(6):e055725. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2021-055725.

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVES: To investigate what factors affect parents' influenza vaccination preference for their children and whether there exists preference heterogeneity among respondents in China.

DESIGN: Cross-sectional study. A discrete choice experiment was conducted. Five attributes were identified based on literature review and qualitative interviews, including protection rate, duration of vaccine-induced protection, risk of serious side effects, location of manufacturer and out-of-pocket cost.

SETTING: Multistage sampling design was used. According to geographical location and the level of economic development, 10 provinces in China were selected, and the survey was conducted at community healthcare centres or stations.

PARTICIPANTS: Parents with at least one child aged between 6 months and 5 years old were recruited and the survey was conducted via a face-to-face interview in 2019. In total, 600 parents completed the survey, and 449 who passed the internal consistency test were included in the main analysis.

MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES: A mixed logit model was used to estimate factors affecting parents' preference to vaccinate their children. In addition, sociodemographic characteristics were included to explore the preference heterogeneity.

RESULTS: In general, respondents preferred to vaccinate their children. All attributes were statistically significant and among them, the risk of severe side effects was the most important attribute, followed by the protection rate and duration of vaccine-induced protection. Contrary to our initial expectation, respondents have a stronger preference for the domestic than the imported vaccine. Some preference heterogeneity among parents was also found and in particular, parents who were older, or highly educated placed a higher weight on a higher protection rate.

CONCLUSION: Vaccination safety and vaccine effectiveness are the two most important characteristics that influenced parents' decision to vaccinate against influenza for their children in China. Results from this study will facilitate future policy implementations to improve vaccination uptake rates.

PMID:35680275 | DOI:10.1136/bmjopen-2021-055725

Swiss Dent J. 2022 Jun 13;132(6):433-435.

ABSTRACT

This contribution gives an overview of the use, therapeutic effects and side effects of the antibiotic substance Metronidazole. Metronidazole is effective in the treatment support of paradontitis, microbial-caused halitosis, perioral skin infections and odontogenic hard or soft tissue abscess formations related to anaerobic bacterial infections. Due to its anti- parasitic effect, Metronidazole is also effective in the treatment of protozoa. In adults and children from 12 years on, 200 mg Metronidazole to a maximum of 2000 mg Metronidazole per day can be administered. In children below 12 years of age, an antibiotic dose of Metronidazole between 20 to 30 mg per kilogram body weight is advised.

PMID:35679094

Cureus. 2022 Jun 5;14(6):e25665. doi: 10.7759/cureus.25665. eCollection 2022 Jun.

ABSTRACT

Introduction Radiation pneumonitis (RP) is a common dose-limiting toxicity of radiotherapy to the chest in lung cancer patients. Similarly, the revolutionary use of immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) to treat lung cancer can be complicated by immune-related adverse events (irAEs), particularly checkpoint inhibitor pneumonitis (CIP). Our study aimed to assess the effect of immunotherapy, with and without radiotherapy, on pneumonitis and other outcomes. Methods We performed a retrospective chart review of 680 lung cancer patients treated with either radiotherapy, immunotherapy, or both at St. Luke's University Health Network to determine the incidence rates of pneumonitis. Then, a more extensive review of 346 patients was completed, 181 of whom had pneumonitis, to investigate risk factors and outcomes. Results All-grade pneumonitis incidence was 26.6% while more severe pneumonitis (grade 3 or higher) was 13%. Receiving programmed cell death-1 (PD-1) or ligand-1 (PD-L1) inhibitors, having squamous cell carcinoma (SCC), and having poorer performance status were independently and significantly associated with increased risk of pneumonitis, with AOR (adjusted odds ratios) of 8.32, 4.10, 2.91, and 1.71, respectively. Among those who had pneumonitis, more severe cases (grade 3 or higher) were related to immunotherapy, either alone (58.32%) or with radiation (55.7%), compared to radiation therapy alone (36.2%). Poorer performance status (defined as a higher Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG) score) was the only covariate we found to be significantly and independently associated with reduced odds of 18-months survival. More of the patients treated with both lung radiation and immunotherapy had progressive disease (53.8%) compared to those treated with only radiation (30.4%) or immunotherapy (36.7). Progressive disease occurred more in patients with pneumonitis grade 3 or higher (48.3%) than those with no or low-grade pneumonitis (27.2%). Conclusion Receiving PD-L1 and PD-1 inhibitors, either with or without radiotherapy, was associated with a higher risk of more severe pneumonitis (PD-L1 > PD-1) than radiotherapy alone. Given its high incidence and complications, more about therapy-induced pneumonitis is yet to be studied. Learning more about pneumonitis' risk factors and complications is of great clinical importance, as it may result in better treatment planning and improved outcomes. Future studies are needed to investigate the suggested association between symptomatic pneumonitis and poorer response to treatment and whether SCC increases the risk of higher-grade pneumonitis.

PMID:35677739 | PMC:PMC9167438 | DOI:10.7759/cureus.25665

BMC Med Res Methodol. 2022 Jun 8;22(1):166. doi: 10.1186/s12874-022-01628-3.

ABSTRACT

CONTEXT: Real-life data consist of exhaustive data which are not subject to selection bias. These data enable to study drug-safety profiles but are underused because of their temporality, necessitating complex models (i.e., safety depends on the dose, timing, and duration of treatment). We aimed to create a data-driven pipeline strategy that manages the complex temporality of real-life data to highlight the safety profile of a given drug.

METHODS: We proposed to apply the weighted cumulative exposure (WCE) statistical model to all health events occurring after a drug introduction (in this paper HCQ) and performed bootstrap to select relevant diagnoses, drugs and interventions which could reflect an adverse drug reactions (ADRs). We applied this data-driven pipeline on a French national medico-administrative database to extract the safety profile of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) from a cohort of 2,010 patients.

RESULTS: The proposed method selected eight drugs (metopimazine, anethole trithione, tropicamide, alendronic acid & colecalciferol, hydrocortisone, chlormadinone, valsartan and tixocortol), twelve procedures (six ophthalmic procedures, two dental procedures, two skin lesions procedures and osteodensitometry procedure) and two medical diagnoses (systemic lupus erythematous, unspecified and discoid lupus erythematous) to be significantly associated with HCQ exposure.

CONCLUSION: We provide a method extracting the broad spectrum of diagnoses, drugs and interventions associated to any given drug, potentially highlighting ADRs. Applied to hydroxychloroquine, this method extracted among others already known ADRs.

PMID:35676635 | DOI:10.1186/s12874-022-01628-3

Stud Health Technol Inform. 2022 Jun 6;290:739-743. doi: 10.3233/SHTI220176.

ABSTRACT

The value of social media data for Adverse Drug Reaction (ADR) monitoring is actively investigated. While social media provide a vast amount of data, these data are hard to analyse due to their unstructured nature and lack of credibility. Despite these challenges, social media have been identified as a potentially useful data source, potentially able to "strengthen" the evidence for new ADRs. To this end, PVClinical project aims to build a platform facilitating the investigation of multiple heterogeneous data sources, including social media, to support pharmacovigilance (PV) processes, both in the clinical environment and beyond. In this study, we present the PVClinical Twitter workspace, also highlighting the rationale behind the main design choices, while also discussing the respective challenges.

PMID:35673115 | DOI:10.3233/SHTI220176

Stud Health Technol Inform. 2022 Jun 6;290:704-708. doi: 10.3233/SHTI220169.

ABSTRACT

This study aims to find out the variation of Twitter users' sentiment before and after the COVID-19 vaccine rollout. We analyzed all COVID-19 related tweets posted on Twitter within two timeframes: September 2020 (T1) and March 2021 (T2). A total of 3 million tweets from over 132 thousand users were analyzed. We then categorized the users into two groups whose overall sentiment shifted positively or negatively from T1 to T2. Our analysis showed that 27% of users' sentiment shifted from T1 to T2 positively and the users were more confident about vaccine safety and efficacy. Users reported positive sentiments about travelling and the easing of lockdown measures. Also, 20.4% of the users' sentiment shifted negatively from T1 to T2. This group of Twitter users were more concerned about the adverse side effects of the vaccine, the pace of vaccine development as well as the emerging novel coronavirus variants. Interestingly, over half of the users' overall sentiment remained the same in both periods of T1 and T2, indicating indifference about vaccine rollout. We believe that our analysis will support the exploration of public reaction to COVID-19 vaccine rollout and assess policy makers' decision to combat the pandemic.

PMID:35673108 | DOI:10.3233/SHTI220169

Stud Health Technol Inform. 2022 Jun 6;290:330-334. doi: 10.3233/SHTI220090.

ABSTRACT

COVID-19 patients with multiple comorbid illnesses are more likely to be using polypharmacy to treat their COVID-19 disease and comorbid conditions. Previous literature identified several DDIs in COVID-19 patients; however, various DDIs are unrecognized. This study aims to discover novel DDIs by conducting comprehensive research on the FDA Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS) data from January 2020 to March 2021. We applied seven algorithms to discover DDIs. In addition, the Liverpool database containing DDI confirmed by clinical trials was used as a gold standard to determine novel DDIs in COVID-19 patients. The seven models detected 2,516 drug-drug pairs having adverse events (AEs), 49 out of which were confirmed by the Liverpool database. The remaining 2,467 drug pairs tested to be significant by the seven models can be candidate DDIs for clinical trial hypotheses. Thus, the FAERS database, along with informatics approaches, provides a novel way to select candidate drug-drug pairs to be examined in COVID-19 patients.

PMID:35673029 | DOI:10.3233/SHTI220090

Stud Health Technol Inform. 2022 Jun 6;290:120-124. doi: 10.3233/SHTI220044.

ABSTRACT

Allergy information is often documented in diverse sections of the electronic health record (EHR). Systematically reconciling allergy information across the EHR is critical to improve the accuracy and completeness of patients' allergy lists and ensure patient safety. In this retrospective cohort study, we examined the prevalence of incompleteness, inaccuracy, and redundancy of allergy information for patients with a clinical encounter at any Mass General Brigham facility between January 1, 2018 and December 31, 2018. We identified 4 key places in the EHR containing reconcilable allergy information: 1) allergy modules (including free text comments and duplicate allergen entries), 2) medication laboratory tests results, 3) oral medication allergy challenge tests, and 4) medication orders that have been discontinued due to adverse drug reactions (ADRs). Within our cohort, 718,315 (45.2% of the total 1,588,979) patients had an active allergy entry; of which, 266,275 (37.1%) patient's records indicated a need for reconciliation.

PMID:35672983 | DOI:10.3233/SHTI220044

Ann Palliat Med. 2022 May;11(5):1752-1761. doi: 10.21037/apm-22-324.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Yinhua Miyanling tablet (YMT) not only has the functions of clearing away heat and toxin, dredging drenching and diuresis, but also has antibacterial activity. The formation of bacterial biofilm in ureteral stent and its related infection have plagued the clinic. Antibacterial traditional Chinese medicine is a potential method.

METHODS: This multicenter, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study was designed to enroll patients who underwent ureteroscopic lithotripsy associated with indwelling ureteral stents at six centers between March 2019 and June 2020. The eligible patients were randomly assigned to the experimental group to take YMT 2 g qid orally or the control group to take dummy YMT 2 g qid orally from the first day after the operation according to a random number table. The unused drugs were recalled 14±3 days after the operation and record the body temperature. Relevant laboratory tests (urinalysis and urine culture) were performed before extubation. The ureteral stent was removed. The specimen was collected for scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Biofilm formation, USSQ scores, postoperative infectious complications, stone formation, and adverse drug reactions were compared between the two groups.

RESULTS: Of the 211 patients enrolled, 165 were included in the per-protocol set (PPS), including 86 in the control group and 79 in the experimental group. No significant difference was found between the two groups in baseline parameters (P>0.05). The prevalence of biofilm formation in the control group (47%) was significantly higher than that in the experimental group (22.7%, P=0.001). There was no significant difference in total USSQ score and domain score between the two groups (all P>0.05). There were more patients with symptomatic urinary tract infection (UTI) in the control group (12.9%) than in the experimental group (2.6%, P=0.017). The incidence of other complications did not show a significant difference between the two groups (all P>0.05). The incidence of stone formation on the ureteral stent surface and adverse drug reactions did not show a significant difference between the two groups (all P>0.05).

CONCLUSIONS: YMT is helpful to reduce the formation of bacterial biofilms on ureteral stents and the incidence of symptomatic UTIs related to ureteral stenting after surgery for ureteral calculi.

TRIAL REGISTRATION: Chinese Clinical Trial Registry ChiCTR2000041399.

PMID:35672892 | DOI:10.21037/apm-22-324

Stud Health Technol Inform. 2022 Jun 6;290:767-771. doi: 10.3233/SHTI220182.

ABSTRACT

Recently, an active area of research in pharmacovigilance is to use social media such as Twitter as an alternative data source to gather patient-generated information pertaining to medication use. Most of thr published work focuses on identifying mentions of adverse effects in social media data but rarely investigating the relationship between a mentioned medication and any mentioned effect expressions. In this study, we treated this relation extraction task as a classification problem, and represented the Twitter text with neural embedding which was fed to a recurrent neural network classifier. The classification performance of our method was investigated in comparison with 4 baseline word embedding methods on a corpus of 9516 annotated tweets.

PMID:35673121 | DOI:10.3233/SHTI220182

Stud Health Technol Inform. 2022 Jun 6;290:552-556. doi: 10.3233/SHTI220138.

ABSTRACT

As Twitter emerged as an important data source for pharmacovigilance, heterogeneous data veracity becomes a major concern for extracted adverse drug reactions (ADRs). Our objective is to categorize different levels of data veracity and explore linguistic features of tweets and Twitter variables as they may be used for automatic screening high-veracity tweets that contain ADR-related information. We annotated a published Twitter corpus with linguistic features from existing studies and clinical experts. Multinomial logistic regression models found that first-person pronouns, expressing negative sentiment, ADR and drug name being in the same sentence were significantly associated with higher levels of data veracity (p<0.05), using medical terminology and fewer indications were associated with good data veracity (p<0.05), less drug numbers were marginally associated with good data veracity (p=0.053). These findings suggest opportunities for developing machine learning models for automatic screening of ADR-related tweets using key linguistic features, Twitter variables, and association rules.

PMID:35673077 | DOI:10.3233/SHTI220138

Stud Health Technol Inform. 2022 Jun 6;290:91-95. doi: 10.3233/SHTI220038.

ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION: Chemotherapies against cancers are often interrupted due to severe drug toxicities, reducing treatment opportunities. For this reason, the detection of toxicities and their severity from EHRs is of importance for many downstream applications. However toxicity information is dispersed in various sources in the EHRs, making its extraction challenging.

METHODS: We introduce OntoTox, an ontology designed to represent chemotherapy toxicities, its attributes and provenance. We illustrated the interest of OntoTox by integrating toxicities and grading information extracted from three heterogeneous sources: EHR questionnaires, semi-structured tables, and free-text.

RESULTS: We instantiated 53,510, 2,366 and 54,420 toxicities from questionnaires, tables and free-text respectively, and compared the complementarity and redundancy of the three sources.

DISCUSSION: We illustrated with this preliminary study the potential of OntoTox to guide the integration of multiple sources, and identified that the three sources are only moderately overlapping, stressing the need for a common representation.

PMID:35672977 | DOI:10.3233/SHTI220038