University of Colorado Denver

About: University of Colorado Denver is a education organization based out in Denver, Colorado, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Poison control. The organization has 27444 authors who have published 57213 publications receiving 2539937 citations. The organization is also known as: CU Denver & UCD.

Development and cross-sectional validation of the Childhood Asthma Control Test

Abstract: Background For children younger than 12 years old with asthma, there are several quality-of-life instruments, clinical diaries, and questionnaires assessing symptoms; however, a validated tool for assessing asthma control is currently lacking. Objective To develop and validate the Childhood Asthma Control Test (C-ACT), a self-administered tool for identifying children aged 4-11 years whose asthma is inadequately controlled. Methods A 21-item questionnaire was administered to 343 patients with asthma and their caregivers, randomly assigning 75% (n = 257) for development and cross-sectional validation of the tool and 25% (n = 86) to a confirmatory sample. Stepwise logistic regression was used to reduce the 21 items to those best able to discriminate control as defined by the specialist's rating of asthma control. Results Seven items were selected from regression analyses of the development sample to comprise the C-ACT. The scores of each item were summed for a total score (0-27), with lower scores indicating poorer control. Summed scores discriminated between groups of patients differing in the specialists' rating of asthma control (F = 36.89; P Conclusion The C-ACT is a validated tool to assess asthma control and identify children with inadequately controlled asthma. Clinical implications The C-ACT can be valuable in clinical practice and research based on its validation, ease of use, input from the child and caregiver, and alignment with asthma guidelines.

Cardio-renal syndromes: report from the consensus conference of the acute dialysis quality initiative.

Abstract: A consensus conference on cardio-renal syndromes (CRS) was held in Venice Italy, in September 2008 under the auspices of the Acute Dialysis Quality Initiative (ADQI). The following topics were matter of discussion after a systematic literature review and the appraisal of the best available evidence: definition/classification system; epidemiology; diagnostic criteria and biomarkers; prevention/protection strategies; management and therapy. The umbrella term CRS was used to identify a disorder of the heart and kidneys whereby acute or chronic dysfunction in one organ may induce acute or chronic dysfunction in the other organ. Different syndromes were identified and classified into five subtypes. Acute CRS (type 1): acute worsening of heart function (AHF–ACS) leading to kidney injury and/or dysfunction. Chronic cardio-renal syndrome (type 2): chronic abnormalities in heart function (CHF-CHD) leading to kidney injury and/or dysfunction. Acute reno-cardiac syndrome (type 3): acute worsening of kidney function (AKI) leading to heart injury and/or dysfunction. Chronic reno-cardiac syndrome (type 4): chronic kidney disease leading to heart injury, disease, and/or dysfunction. Secondary CRS (type 5): systemic conditions leading to simultaneous injury and/or dysfunction of heart and kidney. Consensus statements concerning epidemiology, diagnosis, prevention, and management strategies are discussed in the paper for each of the syndromes.

Amazon mechanical turk: Gold mine or coal mine?

Abstract: Recently heard at a tutorial in our field: “It cost me less than one hundred bucks to annotate this using Amazon Mechanical Turk!” Assertions like this are increasingly common, but we believe they should not be stated so proudly; they ignore the ethical consequences of using MTurk (Amazon Mechanical Turk) as a source of labor. Manually annotating corpora or manually developing any other linguistic resource, such as a set of judgments about system outputs, represents such a high cost that many researchers are looking for alternative solutions to the standard approach. MTurk is becoming a popular one. However, as in any scientific endeavor involving humans, there is an unspoken ethical dimension involved in resource construction and system evaluation, and this is especially true of MTurk. We would like here to raise some questions about the use of MTurk. To do so, we will define precisely what MTurk is and what it is not, highlighting the issues raised by the system. We hope that this will point out opportunities for our community to deliberately value ethics above cost savings.

Contribution of copy number variants to schizophrenia from a genome-wide study of 41,321 subjects

Abstract: Copy number variants (CNVs) have been strongly implicated in the genetic etiology of schizophrenia (SCZ). However, genome-wide investigation of the contribution of CNV to risk has been hampered by limited sample sizes. We sought to address this obstacle by applying a centralized analysis pipeline to a SCZ cohort of 21,094 cases and 20,227 controls. A global enrichment of CNV burden was observed in cases (odds ratio (OR) = 1.11, P = 5.7 × 10-15), which persisted after excluding loci implicated in previous studies (OR = 1.07, P = 1.7 × 10-6). CNV burden was enriched for genes associated with synaptic function (OR = 1.68, P = 2.8 × 10-11) and neurobehavioral phenotypes in mouse (OR = 1.18, P = 7.3 × 10-5). Genome-wide significant evidence was obtained for eight loci, including 1q21.1, 2p16.3 (NRXN1), 3q29, 7q11.2, 15q13.3, distal 16p11.2, proximal 16p11.2 and 22q11.2. Suggestive support was found for eight additional candidate susceptibility and protective loci, which consisted predominantly of CNVs mediated by nonallelic homologous recombination.