The National Institute on Aging and the Alzheimer's Association charged a workgroup with the task of revising the 1984 criteria for Alzheimer's disease (AD) dementia. The workgroup sought to ensure that the revised criteria would be flexible enough to be used by both general healthcare providers without access to neuropsychological testing, advanced imaging, and cerebrospinal fluid measures, and specialized investigators involved in research or in clinical trial studies who would have these tools available. We present criteria for all-cause dementia and for AD dementia. We retained the general framework of probable AD dementia from the 1984 criteria. On the basis of the past 27 years of experience, we made several changes in the clinical criteria for the diagnosis. We also retained the term possible AD dementia, but redefined it in a manner more focused than before. Biomarker evidence was also integrated into the diagnostic formulations for probable and possible AD dementia for use in research settings. The core clinical criteria for AD dementia will continue to be the cornerstone of the diagnosis in clinical practice, but biomarker evidence is expected to enhance the pathophysiological specificity of the diagnosis of AD dementia. Much work lies ahead for validating the biomarker diagnosis of AD dementia.

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The diagnosis of dementia due to Alzheimer’s disease: Recommendations from the National Institute on Aging-Alzheimer’s Association workgroups on diagnostic guidelines for Alzheimer's disease

The lion's share of bacteria in various environments cannot be cloned in the laboratory and thus cannot be sequenced using existing technologies. A major goal of single-cell genomics is to complement gene-centric metagenomic data with whole-genome assemblies of uncultivated organisms. Assembly of single-cell data is challenging because of highly non-uniform read coverage as well as elevated levels of sequencing errors and chimeric reads. We describe SPAdes, a new assembler for both single-cell and standard (multicell) assembly, and demonstrate that it improves on the recently released E+V-SC assembler (specialized for single-cell data) and on popular assemblers Velvet and SoapDeNovo (for multicell data). SPAdes generates single-cell assemblies, providing information about genomes of uncultivatable bacteria that vastly exceeds what may be obtained via traditional metagenomics studies. SPAdes is available online ( http://bioinf.spbau.ru/spades ). It is distributed as open source software.

SPAdes, a new genome assembly algorithm and its applications to single-cell sequencing ( 7th Annual SFAF Meeting, 2012)

Pedagosko i psiholosko testiranje i procjenjivanje spadaju među najvažnije doprinose znanosti o ponasanju nasem drustvu i pružaju temeljna i znacajna poboljsanja u odnosu na ranije postupke. Iako se ne može ustvrditi da su svi testovi dovoljno usavrseni niti da su sva testiranja razborita i korisna, postoji velika kolicina informacija koje ukazuju na ucinkovitost kvalitetnih instrumenata u onim situacijama u kojima je njihovo koristenje potkrijepljeno validacijskim podacima. Pravilna upotreba testova može dovesti do boljih odluka o pojedincima i programima nego sto bi to bio slucaj bez njihovog koristenja, a također i ukazati na put za siri i pravedniji pristup obrazovanju i zaposljavanju. Međutim, losa upotreba testova može dovesti do zamjetne stete nanesene ispitanicima i drugim sudionicima u procesu donosenja odluka na temelju testovnih podataka. Cilj Standarda je promoviranje kvalitetne i eticne upotrebe testova te uspostavljanje osnovice za ocjenu kvalitete postupaka testiranja. Svrha objavljivanja Standarda je uspostavljanje kriterija za evaluaciju testova, provedbe testiranja i posljedica upotrebe testova. Iako bi evaluacija prikladnosti testa ili njegove primjene trebala ovisiti prvenstveno o strucnim misljenjima, Standardi pružaju okvir koji osigurava obuhvacanje svih relevantnih pitanja. Bilo bi poželjno da svi autori, sponzori, nakladnici i korisnici profesionalnih testova usvoje Standarde te da poticu druge da ih također prihvate.

Standards for educational and psychological testing

https://www.hal.inserm.fr/inserm-00561753/document

International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer/American Thoracic Society/European Respiratory Society International Multidisciplinary Classification of Lung Adenocarcinoma

Based on the recent literature and collective experience, an international consortium developed revised guidelines for the diagnosis of behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia. The validation process retrospectively reviewed clinical records and compared the sensitivity of proposed and earlier criteria in a multi-site sample of patients with pathologically verified frontotemporal lobar degeneration. According to the revised criteria, 'possible' behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia requires three of six clinically discriminating features (disinhibition, apathy/inertia, loss of sympathy/empathy, perseverative/compulsive behaviours, hyperorality and dysexecutive neuropsychological profile). 'Probable' behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia adds functional disability and characteristic neuroimaging, while behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia 'with definite frontotemporal lobar degeneration' requires histopathological confirmation or a pathogenic mutation. Sixteen brain banks contributed cases meeting histopathological criteria for frontotemporal lobar degeneration and a clinical diagnosis of behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia, Alzheimer's disease, dementia with Lewy bodies or vascular dementia at presentation. Cases with predominant primary progressive aphasia or extra-pyramidal syndromes were excluded. In these autopsy-confirmed cases, an experienced neurologist or psychiatrist ascertained clinical features necessary for making a diagnosis according to previous and proposed criteria at presentation. Of 137 cases where features were available for both proposed and previously established criteria, 118 (86%) met 'possible' criteria, and 104 (76%) met criteria for 'probable' behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia. In contrast, 72 cases (53%) met previously established criteria for the syndrome (P < 0.001 for comparison with 'possible' and 'probable' criteria). Patients who failed to meet revised criteria were significantly older and most had atypical presentations with marked memory impairment. In conclusion, the revised criteria for behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia improve diagnostic accuracy compared with previously established criteria in a sample with known frontotemporal lobar degeneration. Greater sensitivity of the proposed criteria may reflect the optimized diagnostic features, less restrictive exclusion features and a flexible structure that accommodates different initial clinical presentations. Future studies will be needed to establish the reliability and specificity of these revised diagnostic guidelines.

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Sensitivity of revised diagnostic criteria for the behavioural variant of frontotemporal dementia.

https://www.jto.org/article/S1556-0864(15)30604-3/pdf

Receiver Operating Characteristic Curve in Diagnostic Test Assessment

Background Culturing of samples of periprosthetic tissue is the standard method used for the microbiologic diagnosis of prosthetic-joint infection, but this method is neither sensitive nor specific. In prosthetic-joint infection, microorganisms are typically present in a biofilm on the surface of the prosthesis. We hypothesized that culturing of samples obtained from the prosthesis would improve the microbiologic diagnosis of prosthetic-joint infection. Methods We performed a prospective trial comparing culture of samples obtained by sonication of explanted hip and knee prostheses to dislodge adherent bacteria from the prosthesis with conventional culture of periprosthetic tissue for the microbiologic diagnosis of prosthetic-joint infection among patients undergoing hip or knee revision or resection arthroplasty. Results We studied 331 patients with total knee prostheses (207 patients) or hip prostheses (124 patients); 252 patients had aseptic failure, and 79 had prosthetic-joint infection. With the use o...

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Sonication of Removed Hip and Knee Prostheses for Diagnosis of Infection

https://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343(04)00440-1/pdf

Synovial fluid leukocyte count and differential for the diagnosis of prosthetic knee infection.

Purpose: To develop a single TBI severity classification system based on commonly used TBI severity measures and indicators that (1) maximally uses available positive evidence to classify TBI severity in three categories: (a) Moderate-Severe (Definite) TBI, (b) Mild (Probable) TBI, (c) Symptomatic (Possible) TBI; (2) reflects current clinical knowledge and relevance; and (3) classifies a larger number of cases than single indicator systems with reasonable accuracy. Main Findings: The study sample of a defined population consisted of 1501 unique Olmsted County residents with at least one confirmed TBI event from 1985 to 1999. Within the sample, 1678 TBI events were confirmed. Single measures of TBI severity were not available in a large percentage of these events, i.e., Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) was absent in 1242 (74.0%); loss of consciousness, absent in 178 (70.2%), posttraumatic amnesia (PTA), absent in 974 (58.1%), head CT, not done in 827 (49.3%). The Mayo Classification System for TBI Severity was dev...

The Mayo classification system for traumatic brain injury severity

Background: Incidence rates for internal carotid artery dissection (ICAD) have been reported to be 2.6 to 2.9 per 100,000, but reliable epidemiologic data for vertebral artery dissection (VAD) are not available. Objective: To determine the incidence rate of cervical artery dissection (CAD) in a defined population. Methods: With IRB approval, we used the medical record linkage system of the Rochester Epidemiology Project to identify all patients diagnosed with spontaneous ICAD and VAD for the period of 1987–2003 in Olmsted County, MN. Results: Of 48 patients with CAD, there were 32 patients with ICAD and 18 patients with VAD. In Olmsted County, the average annual incidence rate for ICAD was 1.72 per 100,000 population (95% CI, 1.13 to 2.32) and for VAD 0.97 per 100,000 population (95% CI, 0.52 to 1.4). The average annual incidence rate for CAD was 2.6 per 100,000 population (95% CI, 1.86 to 3.33). The most frequently encountered symptoms in CAD were head or neck pain (80%), cerebral ischemia (TIA or infarct) (56%), and Horner syndrome (25%). Good outcome (defined as modified Rankin score of 0 to 2) was seen in 92% of patients. No recurrence of dissection was observed during a mean 7.8 years of follow-up. Conclusions: Internal carotid artery dissection was detected approximately twice as frequently as vertebral artery dissection in the overall study, but in the latter half of the study period, vertebral artery and internal carotid artery dissection incidence rates were equivalent. The majority of cervical artery dissection patients in the community have excellent outcome, and contrary to many tertiary referral series, re-dissection is rare.

Jayawant N. Mandrekar

Papers

Receiver Operating Characteristic Curve in Diagnostic Test Assessment

Sonication of Removed Hip and Knee Prostheses for Diagnosis of Infection

Synovial fluid leukocyte count and differential for the diagnosis of prosthetic knee infection.

The Mayo classification system for traumatic brain injury severity

Incidence and outcome of cervical artery dissection: a population-based study.