Background
Early childhood caries (ECC) describes dental caries affecting children aged 0–71 months. Current research suggests ECC has important aetiological bases during the first year of life. Gaps ...in knowledge about disease progression prevent the effective and early identification of ‘at risk’ children.
Aim
To conduct a systematic review of research studies focusing on (a) acquisition and colonization of oral bacteria and ECC and (b) risk and/or protective factors in infants aged 0–12 months.
Design
Ovid Medline and Embase databases (1996–2011) were searched for RCT, longitudinal, cross‐sectional and qualitative studies. Two investigators undertook a quality assessment for risk of bias.
Results
Inclusion criteria were met for (a) by four papers and for (b) by 13 papers; five papers were rated medium or high quality. Bacterial acquisition/colonization and modifying factor interrelationships were identified, but their role in the caries process was not clarified. Key risk indicators were infant feeding practices (nine papers), maternal circumstances and oral health (6) and infant‐related oral health behaviours (4).
Conclusion
This review confirmed that factors occurring during the first year of life affect ECC experience. Despite heterogeneity, findings indicated maternal factors influence bacterial acquisition, whereas colonization was mediated by oral health behaviours and practices and feeding habits.
The follow-up schedule for individuals with eyes treated with anti-vascular endothelial growth factor agents for proliferative diabetic retinopathy (PDR) requires that patients return frequently for ...monitoring and repeated treatment. The likelihood that a patient will comply should be a consideration in choosing a treatment approach.
To describe completion of scheduled examinations among participants assigned to intravitreous injections of ranibizumab for PDR in a multicenter randomized clinical trial.
This post hoc analysis evaluates data from a randomized clinical trial conducted at 55 US sites among 305 adults with proliferative diabetic retinopathy enrolled between February and December 2012. Both eyes were enrolled for 89 participants (1 eye to each study group), with a total of 394 study eyes. The final 2-year visit was completed in January 2015. Data were analyzed from April 2019 to July 2021.
Ranibizumab injections for PDR or macular edema.
A long lapse in care of 8 or more weeks past a scheduled examination, dropout from follow-up, visual acuity at 5 years.
Among 170 participants, the median age was 51 years, and 44.7% were female. Through 5 years of follow-up, 94 of 170 participants (55.3%) had 1 or more long lapse in care. Median time to the first long lapse was 210 weeks, and 69 of 94 participants (73.4%) returned for examination after the first long lapse. Fifty of 170 participants (29.4%) dropped out of follow-up by 5 years. Among the 120 participants who completed the 5-year examination, median change from baseline in visual acuity was -2 letters for participants who had 1 or more long lapse compared with +5 letters for those without a long lapse (P = .02). After multivariable adjustment, the odds ratio (95% CI) for baseline associations with 1 or more long lapse was 1.21 (1.03-1.43) for each 5-letter decrement in visual acuity score, 2.19 (1.09-4.38) for neovascularization of the disc and elsewhere, and 3.48 (1.38-8.78) for no prior laser treatment for diabetic macular edema.
Over 5 years, approximately half of the participants assigned to ranibizumab for PDR had a long lapse in care despite substantial effort by the DRCR Retina Network to facilitate timely completion of examinations. The likelihood of a long lapse in care during long-term follow-up needs to be considered when choosing treatment for PDR.
ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT01489189.
Traditional methods used to monitor influenza infection typically require 2–5 days to perform, prompting a need for more rapid and quantitative methods for monitoring viral infection in 96-well ...formats. Such assays would find application in high-throughput screening for novel antiviral agents. A new method, based on branched DNA (bDNA) technology, is described for the specific detection of negative strand RNA of influenza A strains using a set of oligonucleotides designed for the A/PR/8/34 nucleoprotein (NP) transcript. By detecting the genomic strand, this signal amplification assay is appropriate for monitoring the kinetics of viral replication. Assay performance was monitored following infection of MDCK cells. The assay exhibited high reproducibility, good sensitivity over a range of multiplicity of infection and has a lower limit of detection of ∼5×10
5 RNA copies. Designed to quantitate the H1N1 strain A/PR/8/34, the assay also detects other influenza A subtypes, but not the evolutionarily more distant strain B/Yamagata/16/88. Validation as an antiviral assay was demonstrated with two influenza antivirals, zanamivir and rimantadine. The EC
50 values calculated following bDNA detection for zanamivir (265 nM) and rimantadine (9.4 μg/ml) in A/PR/8/34 infection correlate closely to data previously reported from visual CPE determinations, neutral red dye uptake and plaque assays, respectively. The advantages over the more time-consuming traditional assays suggest that the influenza bDNA assay is applicable to rapid screening of compound collections for antiviral activity.
