University of Ioannina

About: University of Ioannina is a education organization based out in Ioannina, Greece. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Large Hadron Collider. The organization has 7654 authors who have published 20594 publications receiving 671560 citations. The organization is also known as: Panepistimio Ioanninon.

Birth weight in relation to health and disease in later life: an umbrella review of systematic reviews and meta-analyses

Abstract: Birth weight, a marker of the intrauterine environment, has been extensively studied in epidemiological research in relation to subsequent health and disease. Although numerous meta-analyses have been published examining the association between birth weight and subsequent health-related outcomes, the epidemiological credibility of these associations has not been thoroughly assessed. The objective of this study is to map the diverse health outcomes associated with birth weight and evaluate the credibility and presence of biases in the reported associations. An umbrella review was performed to identify systematic reviews and meta-analyses of observational studies investigating the association between birth weight and subsequent health outcomes and traits. For each association, we estimated the summary effect size by random-effects and fixed-effects models, the 95 % confidence interval, and the 95 % prediction interval. We also assessed the between-study heterogeneity, evidence for small-study effects and excess significance bias. We further applied standardized methodological criteria to evaluate the epidemiological credibility of the statistically significant associations. Thirty-nine articles including 78 associations between birth weight and diverse outcomes met the eligibility criteria. A wide range of health outcomes has been studied, ranging from anthropometry and metabolic diseases, cardiovascular diseases and cardiovascular risk factors, various cancers, respiratory diseases and allergies, musculoskeletal traits and perinatal outcomes. Forty-seven of 78 associations presented a nominally significant summary effect and 21 associations remained statistically significant at P < 1 × 10−6. Thirty associations presented large or very large between-study heterogeneity. Evidence for small-study effects and excess significance bias was present in 13 and 16 associations, respectively. One association with low birth weight (increased risk for all-cause mortality), two dose-response associations with birth weight (higher bone mineral concentration in hip and lower risk for mortality from cardiovascular diseases per 1 kg increase in birth weight) and one association with small-for-gestational age infants with normal birth weight (increased risk for childhood stunting) presented convincing evidence. Eleven additional associations had highly suggestive evidence. The range of outcomes convincingly associated with birth weight might be narrower than originally described under the “fetal origin hypothesis” of disease. There is weak evidence that birth weight constitutes an effective public health intervention marker.

Multiple interferons in the circulation of patients with systemic lupus erythematosus and vasculitis.

Abstract: Recently, we found interferon in the sera of patients with systemic lupus erythematosus, rheumatoid arthritis, scleroderma, and Sjogren's syndrome. In this study, we surveyed a variety of other immunologically mediated diseases. We did not find interferon in the sera of patients with Wegener's granulomatosis, sarcoidosis, infectious mononucleosis, minimal change nephritis, kidney transplants, myasthenia gravis, or uveitis, but we did find this protein in the sera of patients with active systemic and cutaneous vasculitis. Attempts to characterize the interferon in the sera of patients with systemic lupus erythematosus and vasculitis revealed that antibody to alpha (leukocyte) interferon, but not to beta (fibroblast) interferon, partially or completely neutralized the antiviral activity. The failure of antibody to alpha interferon to completely neutralize the antiviral activity in certain specimens and the lability of the antiviral activity in some specimens to pH 2.0 treatment both suggest that more than one type of interferon was present.

Multivariate Prediction of Subcutaneous Glucose Concentration in Type 1 Diabetes Patients Based on Support Vector Regression

Abstract: Data-driven techniques have recently drawn significant interest in the predictive modeling of subcutaneous (s.c.) glucose concentration in type 1 diabetes. In this study, the s.c. glucose prediction is treated as a multivariate regression problem, which is addressed using support vector regression (SVR). The proposed method is based on variables concerning: 1) the s.c. glucose profile; 2) the plasma insulin concentration; 3) the appearance of meal-derived glucose in the systemic circulation; and 4) the energy expenditure during physical activities. Six cases corresponding to different combinations of the aforementioned variables are used to investigate the influence of the input on the daily glucose prediction. The proposed method is evaluated using a dataset of 27 patients in free-living conditions. Tenfold cross validation is applied to each dataset individually to both optimize and test the SVR model. In the case, where all the input variables are considered, the average prediction errors are 5.21, 6.03, 7.14, and 7.62 mg/dl for 15-, 30-, 60-, and 120-min prediction horizons, respectively. The results clearly indicate that the availability of multivariable data and their effective combination can significantly increase the accuracy of both short-term and long-term predictions.