2016 ESC Guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of acute and chronic heart failure: The Task Force for the diagnosis and treatment of acute and chronic heart failure of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC). Developed with the special contribution of the Heart Failure Association (HFA) of the ESC.

https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/preview/1797952/1-s2.0-S0140673618322797-main.pdf

Global, regional, and national incidence, prevalence, and years lived with disability for 328 diseases and injuries for 195 countries, 1990–2016: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2016

世界経済・社会統計 = World development indicators

https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/bitstream/1885/164632/2/01_Bin%2bSayeed_Global%252C_regional%252C_and_national_2018.pdf

Global, regional, and national incidence, prevalence, andyears lived with disability for 354 diseases and injuries for195 countries and territories, 1990–2017: a systematicanalysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017

WRITING GROUP MEMBERS Emelia J. Benjamin, MD, SCM, FAHA Michael J. Blaha, MD, MPH Stephanie E. Chiuve, ScD Mary Cushman, MD, MSc, FAHA Sandeep R. Das, MD, MPH, FAHA Rajat Deo, MD, MTR Sarah D. de Ferranti, MD, MPH James Floyd, MD, MS Myriam Fornage, PhD, FAHA Cathleen Gillespie, MS Carmen R. Isasi, MD, PhD, FAHA Monik C. Jiménez, ScD, SM Lori Chaffin Jordan, MD, PhD Suzanne E. Judd, PhD Daniel Lackland, DrPH, FAHA Judith H. Lichtman, PhD, MPH, FAHA Lynda Lisabeth, PhD, MPH, FAHA Simin Liu, MD, ScD, FAHA Chris T. Longenecker, MD Rachel H. Mackey, PhD, MPH, FAHA Kunihiro Matsushita, MD, PhD, FAHA Dariush Mozaffarian, MD, DrPH, FAHA Michael E. Mussolino, PhD, FAHA Khurram Nasir, MD, MPH, FAHA Robert W. Neumar, MD, PhD, FAHA Latha Palaniappan, MD, MS, FAHA Dilip K. Pandey, MBBS, MS, PhD, FAHA Ravi R. Thiagarajan, MD, MPH Mathew J. Reeves, PhD Matthew Ritchey, PT, DPT, OCS, MPH Carlos J. Rodriguez, MD, MPH, FAHA Gregory A. Roth, MD, MPH Wayne D. Rosamond, PhD, FAHA Comilla Sasson, MD, PhD, FAHA Amytis Towfighi, MD Connie W. Tsao, MD, MPH Melanie B. Turner, MPH Salim S. Virani, MD, PhD, FAHA Jenifer H. Voeks, PhD Joshua Z. Willey, MD, MS John T. Wilkins, MD Jason HY. Wu, MSc, PhD, FAHA Heather M. Alger, PhD Sally S. Wong, PhD, RD, CDN, FAHA Paul Muntner, PhD, MHSc On behalf of the American Heart Association Statistics Committee and Stroke Statistics Subcommittee Heart Disease and Stroke Statistics—2017 Update

Heart Disease and Stroke Statistics—2017 Update: A Report From the American Heart Association

We read the article by Ohara et al. with great interest. Although the results were very interesting, there is an important methodological issue that needs to be raised in order to avoid misinterpretation. The authors developed and validated the Geriatric Self-Efficacy Scale for Oral Health questionnaire on the same dataset. Here, is it crucial to emphasize that developing and validating a questionnaire on the same dataset can lead to over optimistic estimates of validity of the questionnaire. In other words, estimates of validity of the questionnaire might suffer from an overfitting problem; that is, performance of the questionnaire is well described only for the observed data, but its performance is still not valid for new and independent subjects. Split sampling is a commonly used method for questionnaire development and validation so that the dataset is split into two parts, one part for developing and the other for validation. In other words, in one part of the dataset the construct of the questionnaire will be identified by exploratory factor analysis, and in the reminder, its validity will be tested by confirmatory factor analysis. The authors recruited a remarkable sample size (n = 646 Japanese older people) for the study; however, we are wondering why the authors did no attempt to split the dataset and to determine the validity of the Geriatric Self-Efficacy Scale for Oral Health questionnaire in the proper way. A take home message for readers is that questionnaire development and validation on the same dataset is a common mistake in biomedical research.

Comments on the development of an oral health-related self-efficacy scale for use with older adults.

Passive smoking and Parkinson's disease in California teachers: Methodological issues

Detection of blaSPM-1 Metallo-β-Lactamase Gene in Imipenem-Resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa Strains Isolated From Hospitalized Patients in

Dose-dependent association between muscle-strengthening activities and all-cause mortality: Methodological issues.

Dear Editor-in-Chief, We have read the paper authored by Grace et al. published in International Journal of Cancer in January 2017 enthusiastically. The authors purposed to evaluate the associations of television (TV) viewing time with cancer and cardiovascular diseases (CVD) mortality, according to smoking status in the Australian Diabetes, Obesity and Lifestyle Study. They concluded that there is an association of TV with cancer mortality in current-smokers, whereas the association between TV with CVD mortality was less clear. Although the present study was valuable and interesting, there are some methodological issues that should be considered. First, the authors assessed the association of TV with cancer mortality as combined outcomes which are questionable. The scientists commonly used aggregated outcomes to avoid sparse data, but the main assumption of aggregated or combined outcomes is the homogeneity of direction and strength of associations between the exposure and multiple specific outcomes. This assumption is not established on the association between the TV and cancer-specific mortality such that a meta-analysis has shown that the strength and direction of associations between the TV and different cancer types is various. So, combining all of the cancers in one category and assessing its association with TV is not suggested. Recently, more advanced statistical methods have been presented to efficiently and robustly examine the association of single exposures such as TV with multiple specific outcomes including cancer-specific mortality, even with low number of cases. Second, the authors indicated that proportional hazards (PH) assumption was established for the study, whereas Figure 1, especially Figure 1B, does not confirm this assumption. This assumption needs to be further evaluated using the statistical methods such as Time-Dependent Covariates; and variants of the Cox PH regression model including Stratified or Extended Cox regression models are proposed to be applied to avoid misleading results when this important assumption is violated.

Saeid Safiri

Papers

Comments on the development of an oral health-related self-efficacy scale for use with older adults.

Passive smoking and Parkinson's disease in California teachers: Methodological issues

Detection of blaSPM-1 Metallo-β-Lactamase Gene in Imipenem-Resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa Strains Isolated From Hospitalized Patients in

Dose-dependent association between muscle-strengthening activities and all-cause mortality: Methodological issues.

Joint associations of smoking and television viewing time on cancer and cardiovascular disease mortality: Methodological issues