University of Alberta

About: University of Alberta is a education organization based out in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Health care. The organization has 65403 authors who have published 154847 publications receiving 5358338 citations. The organization is also known as: Ualberta & UAlberta.

Prognosis for mild traumatic brain injury: results of the WHO Collaborating Centre Task Force on Mild Traumatic Brain Injury.

Abstract: We searched the literature on the epidemiology, diagnosis, prognosis, treatment and costs of mild traumatic brain injury. Of 428 studies related to prognosis after mild traumatic brain injury, 120 (28%) were accepted after critical review. These comprise our best-evidence synthesis on prognosis after mild traumatic brain injury. There was consistent and methodologically sound evidence that children's prognosis after mild traumatic brain injury is good, with quick resolution of symptoms and little evidence of residual cognitive, behavioural or academic deficits. For adults, cognitive deficits and symptoms are common in the acute stage, and the majority of studies report recovery for most within 3-12 months. Where symptoms persist, compensation/litigation is a factor, but there is little consistent evidence for other predictors. The literature on this area is of varying quality and causal inferences are often mistakenly drawn from cross-sectional studies.

Fibromyalgia criteria and severity scales for clinical and epidemiological studies: a modification of the ACR Preliminary Diagnostic Criteria for Fibromyalgia

Abstract: Objective. To develop a fibromyalgia (FM) survey questionnaire for epidemiologic and clinical studies using a modification of the 2010 American College of Rheumatology Preliminary Diagnostic Criteria for Fibromyalgia (ACR 2010). We also created a new FM symptom scale to further characterize FM severity. Methods. The ACR 2010 consists of 2 scales, the Widespread Pain Index (WPI) and the Symptom Severity (SS) scale. We modified these ACR 2010 criteria by eliminating the physician’s estimate of the extent of somatic symptoms and substituting the sum of 3 specific self-reported symptoms. We also created a 0–31 FM Symptom scale (FS) by adding the WPI to the modified SS scale. We administered the questionnaire to 729 patients previously diagnosed with FM, 845 with osteoarthritis (OA) or with other noninflammatory rheumatic conditions, 439 with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), and 5210 with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Results. The modified ACR 2010 criteria were satisfied by 60% with a prior diagnosis of FM, 21.1% with RA, 16.8% with OA, and 36.7% with SLE. The criteria properly identified diagnostic groups based on FM severity variables. An FS score ≥ 13 best separated criteria+ and criteria− patients, classifying 93.0% correctly, with a sensitivity of 96.6% and a specificity of 91.8% in the study population. Conclusion. A modification to the ACR 2010 criteria will allow their use in epidemiologic and clinical studies without the requirement for an examiner. The criteria are simple to use and administer, but they are not to be used for self-diagnosis. The FS may have wide utility beyond the bounds of FM, including substitution for widespread pain in epidemiological studies.

Early infancy microbial and metabolic alterations affect risk of childhood asthma

Abstract: Asthma is the most prevalent pediatric chronic disease and affects more than 300 million people worldwide. Recent evidence in mice has identified a "critical window" early in life where gut microbial changes (dysbiosis) are most influential in experimental asthma. However, current research has yet to establish whether these changes precede or are involved in human asthma. We compared the gut microbiota of 319 subjects enrolled in the Canadian Healthy Infant Longitudinal Development (CHILD) Study, and show that infants at risk of asthma exhibited transient gut microbial dysbiosis during the first 100 days of life. The relative abundance of the bacterial genera Lachnospira, Veillonella, Faecalibacterium, and Rothia was significantly decreased in children at risk of asthma. This reduction in bacterial taxa was accompanied by reduced levels of fecal acetate and dysregulation of enterohepatic metabolites. Inoculation of germ-free mice with these four bacterial taxa ameliorated airway inflammation in their adult progeny, demonstrating a causal role of these bacterial taxa in averting asthma development. These results enhance the potential for future microbe-based diagnostics and therapies, potentially in the form of probiotics, to prevent the development of asthma and other related allergic diseases in children.

DBSCAN Revisited, Revisited: Why and How You Should (Still) Use DBSCAN

Abstract: At SIGMOD 2015, an article was presented with the title “DBSCAN Revisited: Mis-Claim, Un-Fixability, and Approximation” that won the conference’s best paper award. In this technical correspondence, we want to point out some inaccuracies in the way DBSCAN was represented, and why the criticism should have been directed at the assumption about the performance of spatial index structures such as R-trees and not at an algorithm that can use such indexes. We will also discuss the relationship of DBSCAN performance and the indexability of the dataset, and discuss some heuristics for choosing appropriate DBSCAN parameters. Some indicators of bad parameters will be proposed to help guide future users of this algorithm in choosing parameters such as to obtain both meaningful results and good performance. In new experiments, we show that the new SIGMOD 2015 methods do not appear to offer practical benefits if the DBSCAN parameters are well chosen and thus they are primarily of theoretical interest. In conclusion, the original DBSCAN algorithm with effective indexes and reasonably chosen parameter values performs competitively compared to the method proposed by Gan and Tao.