Search

Background: Suicide was an important cause of death in prostate cancer. This study intended to investigate trends in suicide mortality among prostate cancer (PCa) survivors from 1975 to 2019 in the United States. Method: We identified PCa survivors from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) program from January 1975 to December 2019. Standardized mortality rate (SMR) was calculated d to assess the relative risk of suicide in PCa survivors compared with the general men population. Poisson regression model was performed to test for trend of SMRs. The cumulative mortality rate of suicide was calculated to assess the clinical burden of suicide mortality. Results: 7108 (0.2%) cases were death from suicide cause, and 2,308,923(65.04%%) cases recorded as dying from non-suicidal causes. Overall, a slightly higher suicide mortality rate among PCa survivors was observed compared with general male population (SMR: 1.15, 95%CI: 1.09–1.2). The suicide mortality rate declined significantly relative to the general population by the calendar year of diagnosis, from an SMR of 1.74(95%CI: 1.17–2.51) in 1975–1979 to 0.99(0.89–1.1) in 2015–2019 (Ptrend < 0.001). PCa survivors with aged over 84 years, black and other races, registered in registrations (including Utah, New Mexico, and Hawaii) failed to observe a decrease in suicide mortality (Ptrend > 0.05). The cumulative suicide mortality during 1975–1994 was distinctly higher than in 1995–2019(P < 0.001). Conclusion: The trend in suicide mortality declined significantly from 1975 to 2019 among PCa survivors compared with the general male population in the United States. Notably, part of PCa survivors had no improvement in suicide mortality, and additional studies in the future were needed to explore it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Renal cell carcinoma (RCC) survival has improved due to recent developments in RCC treatment. Therefore, other co-morbid conditions may have a more critical role. This study aims to explore the common causes of death in patients with RCC to improve the management and survival of RCC. Method: We used the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) (1992–2018) database to get patients with RCC. We calculated the percentage of total deaths of six kinds of the cause of death (COD) and the cumulative incidence of death for each selected cause over survival time. The joinpoint regression was utilized to present the trend of mortality rate by COD. Results: We enrolled 107,683 cases with RCC. RCC was the leading cause of death in patients with RCC [25376(48.3%)], followed by cardiovascular diseases [9023(17.2%)], other cancers [8003 (15.2%)], other non-cancer diseases [4195 (8%)], non-disease cause [4023 (7.7%)], and respiratory diseases [1934 (3.6%)]. The proportion of patients who died of RCC decreased gradually over survival time, and this value decreased from 69.71% in 1992–1996 to 38.96% in 2012–2018. The non-RCC cause mortality rate showed an increasing trend, whereas a slight decrease was observed in RCC specific mortality rate. The distribution of such conditions varied across different patient populations. Conclusion: RCC was still the primary COD of patients with RCC. However, non-RCC cause death was increasingly important among RCC patients in recent two decades. Cardiovascular disease and other cancers were crucial co-morbidities that required significant attention in the management of RCC patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The aim of this study is to investigate the trends in incidence and mortality, and explore any change in survival of penile cancer in the United States. Methods: We obtained data from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database (2000–2018) utilizing the SEER Stat software. The joinpoint regression was used to analyze the secular trend of incidence and incidence-based mortality (IBM) stratified by age, race, and summary stage. The 5-year relative survival rate was also calculated. Result: The age-adjusted rates of penile cancer patients were 0.38 (0.37–0.39) and 0.21 (0.2–0.21) for overall incidence and IBM, respectively. The 5-year relative survival rates were 67.7%, 66.99%, and 65.67% for the calendar periods of 2000–2004, 2005–2009, and 2010–2014, respectively. No significant changes in incidence by era were observed from 2000 to 2018 [annual percentage change (APC) = 0.5%, p = 0.064]. The IBM rate of penile cancer showed an initial significant increase from 2000 to 2002 (APC = 78.6%, 95% CI, −1.7–224.6) followed by a deceleration rate of 4.6% (95% CI, 3.9–5.3) during 2002 to 2018. No significant improvement in 5-year relative survival was observed. The trends by age, race, and summary stage in incidence and IBM were significantly different. Conclusion: This study, using population-level data from the SEER database, showed an increasing trend in IBM and no significant improvement in the 5-year relative survival rate. Meanwhile, the incidence of penile cancer exhibited a relatively stable trend during the study period. These results might be due to the lack of significant progress in the treatment and management of penile cancer patients in the United States in recent decades. More efforts, like increasing awareness among the general population and doctors, and centralized management, might be needed in the future to improve the survival of this rare disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A novel positive single-stranded RNA virus, Sclerotinia sclerotiorum hypovirus 9 (SsHV9), was identified in the plant-pathogenic Sclerotinia sclerotiorum strain GB375, which was associated with a garden bean plant in the United States. The complete genome of SsHV9 is 14,067 nucleotides in length, excluding the poly(A) tail. It has a single large open reading frame encoding a putative polyprotein (4,196 amino acids), which is predicted to contain a papain-like protease, a protein of unknown function, an RNA-dependent RNA polymerase, and an RNA helicase. Phylogenetic analysis based on a multiple alignment of amino acid sequences of polyproteins that suggested SsHV9 belongs to the proposed genus "Alphahypovirus" in the family Hypoviridae. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the rapidly-changing technologies in the power industry, many new references addressing the frameworks and business models of the next-generation retail electricity market are entering the research community. In particular, considering new customers with considerable demand response awareness and so-called prosumers with localized power generation based on distributed energy resources (DERs), the next-generation retail electricity market infrastructure will be a level playing field for local energy transactions, strategic pricing scheme design, new business model design and building an innovative energy ecosystem. Consequently, there is an urgent need to keep track of international experiences and activities taking place in the field of the market mechanism design problem at the distribution level. This paper provides a comprehensive survey of recent technology developments and aims to inspire awareness of the further deregulation of the electricity market, especially in areas close to customers. We mainly bring attention to the more than 90 articles published during the past five years. The collected literature has been divided into different sections to discuss different aspects of the next-generation retail electricity market under the deregulated power industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the extant literature of business cycle predictions, the signals for business cycle turning points are generally issued with a lag of at least 5 months. In this paper, we make use of a novel and timely indicator-the Google search volume data-to help to improve the timeliness of business cycle turning point identification. We identify multiple query terms to capture the real-time public concern on the aggregate economy, the credit market, and the labor market condition. We incorporate the query indices in a Markov-switching framework and successfully 'nowcast' the peak date within a month that the turning occurred. ( JEL E37, G17) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) underscored the importance of influenza detection and response in China. From 2004, the Chinese National Influenza Center (CNIC) and the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (USCDC) initiated Cooperative Agreements to build capacity in influenza surveillance in China.From 2004 to 2014, CNIC and USCDC collaborated on the following activities: 1) developing human technical expertise in virology and epidemiology in China; 2) developing a comprehensive influenza surveillance system by enhancing influenza-like illness (ILI) reporting and virological characterization; 3) strengthening analysis, utilization and dissemination of surveillance data; and 4) improving early response to influenza viruses with pandemic potential.Since 2004, CNIC expanded its national influenza surveillance and response system which, as of 2014, included 408 laboratories and 554 sentinel hospitals. With support from USCDC, more than 2500 public health staff from China received virology and epidemiology training, enabling > 98% network laboratories to establish virus isolation and/or nucleic acid detection techniques. CNIC established viral drug resistance surveillance and platforms for gene sequencing, reverse genetics, serologic detection, and vaccine strains development. CNIC also built a bioinformatics platform to strengthen data analysis and utilization, publishing weekly on-line influenza surveillance reports in English and Chinese. The surveillance system collects 200,000-400,000 specimens and tests more than 20,000 influenza viruses annually, which provides valuable information for World Health Organization (WHO) influenza vaccine strain recommendations. In 2010, CNIC became the sixth WHO Collaborating Centre for Influenza. CNIC has strengthened virus and data sharing, and has provided training and reagents for other countries to improve global capacity for influenza control and prevention.The collaboration's successes were built upon shared mission and values, emphasis on long-term capacity development and sustainability, and leadership commitment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of present study was to examine the current prevalence and recent trends of overactive bladder (OAB) among US adult men and examine the correlations between OAB and several potential risk factors. The study used the nationally representative data between 2005 and 2020 from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey in the US. A total of 18,386 participants aged ≥ 20 years were included in the study. We divided the data into three groups: 2005-2008, 2009-2014 and 2015-2020 to investigate the trends in OAB prevalence. The weighted prevalence and corresponding 95% confidence intervals (CI) of OAB were calculated. The differences (95% CI) in prevalence between the surveys were calculated and multivariate-adjusted weighted logistic regression analysis was performed to determine the correlates of OAB. Among all US adult men, the overall prevalence of OAB increased slightly from 11.3% in 2005-2008 to 11.7% in 2009-2014 and significantly increased to 14.5% in 2015-2020 (difference, 3.2% [95% CI (1.9-4.4%)]; P < 0.05). Increases in OAB prevalence especially concentrated on those who were 40-59 years, non-Hispanic White, non-Hispanic Black and those who were overweight and obese. Older age, non-Hispanic Black, lower educational level and family poverty ratio, diabetes, depression, sleep disorder, other chronic comorbidities, less intense recreational activity, poorer health condition and unsafe food were independent risk factors of OAB. The contemporary prevalence of OAB was high, affecting 14.5% US men and the estimated overall prevalence significantly increased from 2005 to 2020. Therefore, future research should be focused to prevent and remedy this growing socioeconomic and individually troublesome malady., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Background: As an innovative lipid parameter, NHHR (the ratio of non-high-density lipoprotein cholesterol to high-density lipoprotein cholesterol) can serve as a valuable tool for assessing cardiovascular disease risk. Nevertheless, the relationship between NHHR and the risk of kidney stones remains unexplored., Methods: A cross-sectional survey utilized data from the National Health and Population Survey (NHANES) database in the United States spanning from 2007 to 2018. Distinct statistical analyses were applied, including weighted logistic regression, stratified and interaction analysis and restricted cubic spline curve (RCS) models, to examine the correlation between NHHR and the incidence of kidney stones., Results: This analysis encompassed 24,664 participants, with 9.63% reporting incidents of kidney stones. Following multivariate logistic regression and comprehensive adjustments, participants in NHHR quartile 4 (OR 1.34; 95% CI 1.12, 1.60, P < 0.01) exhibited a significantly increased risk of kidney stones compared to those in NHHR quartile 1 (Q1). The RCS result further illustrated a non-linear correlation between NHHR and the incidence of kidney stones. The result of subgroup analysis manifested that participants without diabetes had a higher risk of kidney stones when measured high NHHR levels compared those with diabetes (p for interaction < 0.05)., Conclusion: Elevated NHHR levels were found to be associated with an increased risk of kidney stones. Based on these findings, NHHR appears to be a promising predictive indicator for the occurrence of kidney stones., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

By exploiting the local randomness in close-call labor elections, the authors find a negative impact of labor unionization at a firm on its real earnings management (REM). The finding suggests a managerial pressure effect of increased labor power. In a local regression discontinuity (RD) analysis, firms that narrowly pass the 50% threshold show a significant decrease in REM, relative to their peers that narrowly fail. This effect is stronger for firms headquartered in right-to-work states and when managers have less pressure to manage earnings. Evidence from a global parametric RD analysis and a multivariate OLS test using industry-level unionization measures confirms the external validity of results in local RD analysis. Overall, the research sheds new light on the economic consequence of labor unionization on employers' accounting decisions., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2024 Astvansh et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

Background: Optic nerve astrocytomas (ONAs) are neurological neoplasms in the central nervous system (CNS), and they have the highest incidence rate among all the tumor types in the visual pathway. In this study, we conducted a Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) -based research to explore the demographic, survival, and prognostic factors of patients diagnosed with ONAs., Methods: Utilizing the SEER database, we retrospectively evaluated data of patients diagnosed with ONAs of all ages from 1984 to 2016. We used the Student's t distribution to test variables of patients and various characteristics, and Kaplan-Meier curve to illustrate overall survival (OS) with 95.0% confidence intervals (CIs). We also performed univariate and multivariate analyses to evaluate various variables' validity on overall survival., Results: A total of 1004 cases were analyzed, and revealed that age (P<0.001, hazard ratio (HR) = 8.830, 95% CI: 4.088-19.073), tumor grade (P<0.001, HR = 1.927, 95% CI: 1.516-2.450), diagnostic confirmation (P<0.001, HR = 2.444, 95% CI: 1.632-3.660), and histology type (P = 0.046, HR = 1.563, 95% CI: 1.008-2.424) of the tumor were associated with decreased survival., Conclusions: From this large, comparative study of ONAs, we found that younger age may be considered as a protective indicator, while high-grade astrocytic tumors have a worse prognosis. We also found that diagnostic confirmation and tumor grade were independent prognostic factors in this patient population., (© 2021. The Author(s).)

Background: Racial and ethnic minorities are disproportionately affected by human papillomavirus (HPV)-related cancer, many of which could have been prevented with vaccination. Yet, the initiation and completion rates of HPV vaccination remain low among these populations. Given the importance of social media platforms for health communication, we examined US-based HPV images on Twitter. We explored inconsistencies between the demographics represented in HPV images and the populations that experience the greatest burden of HPV-related disease., Objective: The objective of our study was to observe whether HPV images on Twitter reflect the actual burden of disease by select demographics and determine to what extent Twitter accounts utilized images that reflect the burden of disease in their health communication messages., Methods: We identified 456 image tweets about HPV that contained faces posted by US users between November 11, 2014 and August 8, 2016. We identified images containing at least one human face and utilized Face++ software to automatically extract the gender, age, and race of each face. We manually annotated the source accounts of these tweets into 3 types as follows: government (38/298, 12.8%), organizations (161/298, 54.0%), and individual (99/298, 33.2%) and topics (news, health, and other) to examine how images varied by message source., Results: Findings reflected the racial demographics of the US population but not the disease burden (795/1219, 65.22% white faces; 140/1219, 11.48% black faces; 71/1219, 5.82% Asian faces; and 213/1219, 17.47% racially ambiguous faces). Gender disparities were evident in the image faces; 71.70% (874/1219) represented female faces, whereas only 27.89% (340/1219) represented male faces. Among the 11-26 years age group recommended to receive HPV vaccine, HPV images contained more female-only faces (214/616, 34.3%) than males (37/616, 6.0%); the remainder of images included both male and female faces (365/616, 59.3%). Gender and racial disparities were present across different image sources. Faces from government sources were more likely to depict females (n=44) compared with males (n=16). Of male faces, 80% (12/15) of youth and 100% (1/1) of adults were white. News organization sources depicted high proportions of white faces (28/38, 97% of female youth and 12/12, 100% of adult males). Face++ identified fewer faces compared with manual annotation because of limitations with detecting multiple, small, or blurry faces. Nonetheless, Face++ achieved a high degree of accuracy with respect to gender, race, and age compared with manual annotation., Conclusions: This study reveals critical differences between the demographics reflected in HPV images and the actual burden of disease. Racial minorities are less likely to appear in HPV images despite higher rates of HPV incidence. Health communication efforts need to represent populations at risk better if we seek to reduce disparities in HPV infection., (©Yuki Lama, Tao Chen, Mark Dredze, Amelia Jamison, Sandra Crouse Quinn, David A Broniatowski. Originally published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (http://www.jmir.org), 14.09.2018.)

The prognosis of malignancies has improved in recent years, subsequent primary cancers (SPCs) have become more frequent. This study investigates the patterns of lung cancer involved multiple primary cancers. We enrolled 206,619 primary lung cancer patients and 2,071,922 patients with other primary malignancies from Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) database. Observed annual risk (OAR) and absolute numbers were used to describe the risk of SPC and observed cases of SPC per 10,000 person-years at risk. Overall, OAR of SPCs following lung cancer was 176.28. At follow-up, 41.26% of SPCs occurred within 12-59 months while the highest OAR appeared after 120 months. The overall OAR of subsequent lung cancer after other malignancies was 27.90. Overall, the highest OAR and the highest absolute numbers of subsequent lung cancers were noticed 60-119 months and over 120 months post-diagnosis, respectively. Ten related cancers were listed. Our findings encourage surveillance for 10 common SPCs in lung cancer survivors during follow-up as well as screening for lung cancer after 10 common malignancies.

Introduction: The 2009 swine-origin H1N1 influenza virus (swH1N1) provided an opportunity to study immune responses to a new influenza strain in the context of seasonal influenza vaccination. Our goals were: to assess whether analyzing multiple parameters of immune responsiveness to influenza has an advantage over evaluating hemagglutination inhibition (HAI) titer alone, to determine whether vaccination with the seasonal vaccine induced cross-reactive immunity to swH1N1 in some individuals, and to determine whether the immune response against swH1N1 is higher after infection than vaccination., Methods: Antibody and T cell responses were studied in ten subjects who were first immunized with the 2009-2010 seasonal influenza subunit vaccine, then 6 weeks later with the swH1N1 monovalent subunit vaccine. The amount of antibody against native virus glycoproteins, overall avidity of these antibodies, and HAI titer were measured. T cells were evaluated for proliferation and IFNγ secretion in response to the vaccine in vitro. Individuals with influenza-like illness were also evaluated, adding a microplate neuraminidase inhibition (NAI) test., Results: The immune response to influenza was highly variable and immune parameters did not increase in parallel. The seasonal vaccine induced antibodies recognizing the pandemic virus in 50% of subjects. Antibody affinity and NAI activity to swH1N1 were higher after natural infection than vaccination., Conclusions: The evaluation of several immune parameters gives a more complete measure of immune responsiveness to influenza infection or vaccination than the HAI test alone.

Background: Gene Ontology (GO) characterizes and categorizes the functions of genes and their products according to biological processes, molecular functions and cellular components, facilitating interpretation of data from high-throughput genomics and proteomics technologies. The most effective use of GO information is achieved when its rich and hierarchical complexity is retained and the information is distilled to the biological functions that are most germane to the phenomenon being investigated., Results: Here we present a FDA GO tool named Gene Ontology for Functional Analysis (GOFFA). GOFFA first ranks GO terms in the order of prevalence for a list of selected genes or proteins, and then it allows the user to interactively select GO terms according to their significance and specific biological complexity within the hierarchical structure. GOFFA provides five interactive functions (Tree view, Terms View, Genes View, GO Path and GO TreePrune) to analyze the GO data. Among the five functions, GO Path and GO TreePrune are unique. The GO Path simultaneously displays the ranks that order GOFFA Tree Paths based on statistical analysis. The GO TreePrune provides a visual display of a reduced GO term set based on a user's statistical cut-offs. Therefore, the GOFFA visual display can provide an intuitive depiction of the most likely relevant biological functions., Conclusion: With GOFFA, the user can dynamically interact with the GO data to interpret gene expression results in the context of biological plausibility, which can lead to new discoveries or identify new hypotheses., Availability: GOFFA is available through ArrayTrack softwarehttp://edkb.fda.gov/webstart/arraytrack/.