Virginia Commonwealth University

About: Virginia Commonwealth University is a education organization based out in Richmond, Virginia, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Poison control. The organization has 23822 authors who have published 49587 publications receiving 1787046 citations. The organization is also known as: VCU.

Trial of Short-Course Antimicrobial Therapy for Intraabdominal Infection

Abstract: Surgical-site infection, recurrent intraabdominal infection, or death occurred in 56 of 257 patients in the experimental group (21.8%), as compared with 58 of 260 patients in the control group (22.3%) (absolute difference, −0.5 percentage point; 95% confidence interval [CI], −7.0 to 8.0; P = 0.92). The median duration of antibiotic therapy was 4.0 days (interquartile range, 4.0 to 5.0) in the experimental group, as compared with 8.0 days (interquartile range, 5.0 to 10.0) in the control group (absolute difference, −4.0 days; 95% CI, −4.7 to −3.3; P<0.001). No signifi cant between-group differences were found in the individual rates of the components of the primary outcome or in other secondary outcomes. CONCLUSIONS In patients with intraabdominal infections who had undergone an adequate sourcecontrol procedure, the outcomes after fixed-duration antibiotic therapy (approximately 4 days) were similar to those after a longer course of antibiotics (approximately 8 days) that extended until after the resolution of physiological abnormalities. (Funded by the National Institutes of Health; STOP-IT ClinicalTrials .gov number, NCT00657566.)

Therapeutic cancer vaccines: past, present, and future.

Abstract: Therapeutic vaccines represent a viable option for active immunotherapy of cancers that aim to treat late stage disease by using a patient's own immune system. The promising results from clinical trials recently led to the approval of the first therapeutic cancer vaccine by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. This major breakthrough not only provides a new treatment modality for cancer management but also paves the way for rationally designing and optimizing future vaccines with improved anticancer efficacy. Numerous vaccine strategies are currently being evaluated both preclinically and clinically. This review discusses therapeutic cancer vaccines from diverse platforms or targets as well as the preclinical and clinical studies employing these therapeutic vaccines. We also consider tumor-induced immune suppression that hinders the potency of therapeutic vaccines, and potential strategies to counteract these mechanisms for generating more robust and durable antitumor immune responses.

National Lesbian Health Care Survey: implications for mental health care.

Abstract: This article presents demographic, lifestyle, and mental health information about 1,925 lesbians from all 50 states who participated as respondents in the National Lesbian Health Care Survey (1984-1985), the most comprehensive study on U.S. lesbians to date. Over half the sample had had thoughts about suicide at some time, and 18% had attempted suicide. Thirty-seven percent had been physically abused as a child or adult, 32% had been raped or sexually attacked, and 19% had been involved in incestuous relationships while growing up. Almost one third used tobacco on a daily basis, and about 30% drank alcohol more than once a week, 6% daily. About three fourths had received counseling at some time, and half had done so for reasons of sadness and depression. Lesbians in the survey also were socially connected and had a variety of social supports, mostly within the lesbian community. However, few had come out to all family members and coworkers. Level of openness about lesbianism was associated with less fear of exposure and with more choices about mental health counseling.

Cellular DNA content as a predictor of response to chemotherapy in infants with unresectable neuroblastoma

Abstract: We studied the relation between the DNA content of neuroblastoma cells and the response to therapy in 35 infants under one year of age with a diagnosis of neuroblastoma. Using flow cytometric techniques, we found that in 27 cases the primary malignant stem line consisted of neuroblasts with hyperdiploid DNA content, ranging from 1.07 to 2.42 times the finding in normal diploid cells. All remaining cases had diploid stem lines. Diploidy was more common in infants with clinical Stage D neuroblastoma (metastases beyond regional lymph nodes) than in those with other, less advanced stages: 6 of 10 as compared with 2 of 25 (P = 0.003). Of 17 evaluable patients with unresectable hyperdiploid tumors, 15 had complete responses and two had partial responses to cyclophosphamide and doxorubicin; six others with diploid tumors did not respond (P = 0.00001). We also found that each of the four infants with Evans' Stage IV-S neuroblastoma, an unusual form of disseminated neuroblastoma with a relatively good prognosis, had hyperdiploid tumor cells of clonal origin. We conclude that in neuroblastoma of infants, hyperdiploidy of tumor cells is associated with a better response to chemotherapy than is diploidy.

Applying Multigroup Confirmatory Factor Models for Continuous Outcomes to Likert Scale Data Complicates Meaningful Group Comparisons

Abstract: Treating Likert rating scale data as continuous outcomes in confirmatory factor analysis violates the assumption of multivariate normality. Given certain requirements pertaining to the number of categories, skewness, size of the factor loadings, and so forth, it seems nevertheless possible to recover true parameter values if the data stem from a single homogeneous population. It is shown that, in a multigroup context, an analysis of Likert data under the assumption of multivariate normality may distort the factor structure differently across groups. In that case, investigations of measurement invariance (MI), which are necessary for meaningful group comparisons, are problematic. Analyzing subscale scores computed from Likert items does not seem to solve the problem.