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Four new antipsychotic medications--clozapine, risperidone, olanzapine, and quetiapine have been introduced in the United States during the past decade. These new medications now account for the majority of antipsychotic prescriptions. The author reviews specific issues related to the use of traditional antipsychotic medications and then highlights the emerging clinical research data regarding the new medications, which have all been shown to be efficacious in the treatment of schizophrenia. Clinical research data indicate that they are also more useful for a broader array of symptoms associated with schizophrenia than traditional compounds. Furthermore, movement disorder side effects are substantially decreased--a property that leads to higher acceptability. Surprisingly, there has been little relationship between the pivotal trials designed for FDA approval and current dosing strategies in broader clinical settings. These dosing issues are described. New uses, including treatment of mood disorders and conduct disorder, are also discussed. These medicines offer substantial hope for improved treatment of schizophrenia. (Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic, 64[1], 60-75) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports that although biomarkers development and application in the U.S. have progressed but their integration into patient management has remained slow. It mentions that although biomarkers are emerging as key indices for individual patient management, but regulation of their safety have lagged. Further, the collaboration of the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) with the U.S. National Institutes of Health is a step to realize individualized medicine.

Salmonella enterica causes an estimated 1 million illnesses in the United States each year, resulting in 19,000 hospitalizations and 380 deaths, and is one of the four major global causes of diarrhoeal diseases. No effective treatments are available to the food industry. Much attention has been given to colicins, natural non-antibiotic proteins of the bacteriocin class, to control the related pathogen Escherichia coli. We searched Salmonella genomic databases for colicin analogues and cloned and expressed in plants five such proteins, which we call salmocins. Among those, SalE1a and SalE1b were found to possess broad antimicrobial activity against all 99 major Salmonella pathovars. Each of the two salmocins also showed remarkably high potency (>10 6  AU/µg recombinant protein, or >10 3 higher than colicins) against major pathogenic target strains. Treatment of poultry meat matrices contaminated with seven key pathogenic serovars confirmed salmocin efficacy as a food safety intervention against Salmonella.

Controlled clinical trials are usually supported with an in-front data aggregation system, which supports the storage of relevant information according to the trial context within a highly structured environment. In contrast to the documentation of clinical trials, daily routine documentation has many characteristics that influence data quality. One such characteristic is the use of non-standardized text, which is an indispensable part of information representation in clinical information systems. Based on a cohort study we highlight challenges for mining electronic health records targeting free text entry fields within semi-structured data sources. Our prototypical information extraction system achieved an F-measure of 0.91 (precision=0.90, recall=0.93) for the training set and an F-measure of 0.90 (precision=0.89, recall=0.92) for the test set. We analyze the obtained results in detail and highlight challenges and future directions for the secondary use of routine data in general., (Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Objective: In the context of past and current SNOMED CT translation projects we compare three kinds of SNOMED CT translations from English to German by: (t1) professional medical translators; (t2) a free Web-based machine translation service; (t3) medical students., Methods: 500 SNOMED CT fully specified names from the (English) International release were randomly selected. Based on this, German translations t1, t2, and t3 were generated. A German and an Austrian physician rated the translations for linguistic correctness and content fidelity., Results: Kappa for inter-rater reliability was 0.4 for linguistic correctness and 0.23 for content fidelity. Average ratings of linguistic correctness did not differ significantly between human translation scenarios. Content fidelity was rated slightly better for student translators compared to professional translators. Comparing machine to human translation, the linguistic correctness differed about 0.5 scale units in favour of the human translation and about 0.25 regarding content fidelity, equally in favour of the human translation., Conclusion: The results demonstrate that low-cost translation solutions of medical terms may produce surprisingly good results. Although we would not recommend low-cost translation for producing standardized preferred terms, this approach can be useful for creating additional language-specific entry terms. This may serve several important use cases. We also recommend testing this method to bootstrap a crowdsourcing process, by which term translations are gathered, improved, maintained, and rated by the user community.

Purpose: Since 2003 the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) has been developing a lexicon of standardized radiological terms (RadLex) intended to support the structured reporting of imaging observations and the indexing of teaching cases. The aim of this study was to translate the first version of the lexicon (1 - 2007) into German and to implement a language-independent online term browser., Materials and Methods: RadLex version 1 - 2007 contains 6303 terms in nine main categories. Two radiologists independently translated the lexicon using medical dictionaries. Terms translated differently were revised and translated by consensus. For the development of an online term browser, a text processing algorithm called morphosemantic indexing was used which splits up words into small semantic units and compares those units to language-specific subword thesauri., Results: In total 6240 of 6303 terms (99 %) were translated. Of those terms 3965 were German, 1893 were Latin, 359 were multilingual, and 23 were English terms that are also used in German and were therefore maintained. The online term browser supports a language-independent term search in RadLex (German/English) and other common medical terminology (e. g., ICD 10). The term browser displays term hierarchies and translations in different frames and the complexity of the result lists can be adapted by the user., Conclusion: RadLex version 1 - 2007 developed by the RSNA is now available in German and can be accessed online through a term browser with an efficient search function. This is an important precondition for the future comparison of national and international indexed radiological examination results and the interoperability between digital teaching resources.

Human immunodeficiency virus, type 1 (HIV), seroprevalence studies are needed to determine the level and trends of HIV infection among women attending family planning, abortion, and prenatal care clinics in the United States. A review of published and unpublished studies showed that HIV seroprevalence among women attending women's health clinics was 0 to 2.6 percent, although the studies were difficult to compare because of differences in methodology. The Centers for Disease Control, in association with State and local health departments, has developed a standardized protocol to determine HIV seroprevalence among women attending women's health clinics in selected metropolitan areas. Blinded HIV serosurveys (serologic test results not identified with a person) are being conducted annually in selected sentinel clinics in order to obtain estimates of HIV seroprevalence unbiased by self-selection, as well as to monitor trends in infection among clients attending these clinics. In areas with high HIV seroprevalence, nonblinded serosurveys (in which clients voluntarily agree to participate) will be used to assess behaviors that may place women at increased risk of exposure to HIV. Data from the surveys can be used in developing age-specific and culturally appropriate AIDS educational materials, assessing the amount and type of counseling activities required, and evaluating acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) prevention activities. The information will provide epidemiologic data to complement the results of other surveys in characterizing the scope of HIV infection among women of childbearing age in the United States.

In this review, available human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) seroprevalence data are presented for United States women attending clinics related to reproductive health and for women in other settings. At family planning clinics, prenatal clinics, and in delivery room settings (cord blood testing), studies that have not targeted women at high risk for HIV infection have shown prevalence rates ranging from 0-4.3%. Higher rates (greater than 1%) have been observed in more urban areas--Newark, New York City, Baltimore, Miami, and San Juan; rates at settings outside these areas have generally been below 1%. Filter-paper testing for maternal HIV antibodies from neonatal heel-stick specimens has been conducted statewide in Massachusetts and New York; prevalence rates were 0.3% in Massachusetts in 1987, and 0.2% in upstate New York and 1.3% in New York City in 1987-1988. Prevalence rates of female military applicants and female blood donors are below 0.03% and 0.1%, respectively, and have been relatively stable over time. Where age data are available, prevalence rates are near 0 in women below age 20 years, are higher for young adult and early middle-aged women, and decline thereafter. Studies have also been conducted using blood samples from women undergoing premarital testing for syphilis serology, from women attending sexually transmitted disease clinics and drug treatment centers, and from patients at sentinel hospital sites. Information on the prevalence of HIV infection in United States women is useful to identify specific populations at risk for HIV infection and to target and evaluate education and prevention efforts.