Biostatistics Commons^™

Association Of Chronic Pain With Participation In Motor Skill Activities In Children With Cerebral Palsy, Haresh Rochani, Christopher M. Modlesky, Barbara Weissman, Joshua Vova, Gavin T. Colquitt

Biostatistics, Epidemiology & Environmental Health Sciences: Faculty Publications

Many children with cerebral palsy (CP) experience the secondary condition of pain, which is problematic because children with CP face barriers to participation in motor skill activities.^1,2 Motor performance in activities of daily living among children with CP is markedly lower than that among their age-matched peers.³ Because of the potential effect of pain on children with CP, we sought to examine the association between pain and activities requiring motor skill performance (ie, difficulty dressing or bathing and participation in sport) among a nationally representative sample of US children with CP.

Covid-19 And The Impact On Rural And Black Church Congregants: Results Of The C-M-C Project, Lovoria B. Williams, Anita F. Fernander, Tofial Azam, Maria L. Gomez, Junghee Kang, Cassidy L. Moody, Hannah Bowman, Nancy E. Schoenberg

Nursing Faculty Publications

The COVID-19 pandemic has had devastating effects on Black and rural populations with a mortality rate among Blacks three times that of Whites and both rural and Black populations experiencing limited access to COVID-19 resources. The primary purpose of this study was to explore the health, financial, and psychological impact of COVID-19 among rural White Appalachian and Black nonrural central Kentucky church congregants. Secondarily we sought to examine the association between sociodemographics and behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs regarding COVID-19 and intent to vaccinate. We used a cross sectional survey design developed with the constructs of the Health Belief and Theory …

Traveling Wave Solutions For Two Species Competitive Chemotaxis Systems, T. B. Issa, Richadi B. Salako, W. Shen

Mathematical Sciences Faculty Research

In this paper, we consider two species chemotaxis systems with Lotka–Volterra competition reaction terms. Under appropriate conditions on the parameters in such a system, we establish the existence of traveling wave solutions of the system connecting two spatially homogeneous equilibrium solutions with wave speed greater than some critical number c∗. We also show the non-existence of such traveling waves with speed less than some critical number c0∗, which is independent of the chemotaxis. Moreover, under suitable hypotheses on the coefficients of the reaction terms, we obtain explicit range for the chemotaxis sensitivity coefficients ensuring c∗=c0∗, which implies that the minimum …

Identification Of Novel And Rare Variants Associated With Handgrip Strength Using Whole Genome Sequence Data From The Nhlbi Trans-Omics In Precision Medicine (Topmed) Program, Chloé Sarnowski, Han Chen, Mary L. Biggs, Sylvia Wassertheil-Smoller, Jan Bressler, Marguerite R. Irvin, Kathleen A. Ryan, David Karasik, Donna K. Arnett, L. Adrienne Cupples, David W. Fardo, Stephanie M. Gogarten, Benjamin D. Heavner, Deepti Jain, Hyun Min Kang, Charles Kooperberg, Arch G. Mainous, Braxton D. Mitchell, Alanna C. Morrison, Jeffrey R. O'Connell

Epidemiology and Environmental Health Faculty Publications

Handgrip strength is a widely used measure of muscle strength and a predictor of a range of morbidities including cardiovascular diseases and all-cause mortality. Previous genome-wide association studies of handgrip strength have focused on common variants primarily in persons of European descent. We aimed to identify rare and ancestry-specific genetic variants associated with handgrip strength by conducting whole-genome sequence association analyses using 13,552 participants from six studies representing diverse population groups from the Trans-Omics in Precision Medicine (TOPMed) Program. By leveraging multiple handgrip strength measures performed in study participants over time, we increased our effective sample size by 7-12%. Single-variant …

Mental Health Services Provision In Primary Care And Emergency Department Settings: Analysis Of Blended Fee-For-Service And Blended Capitation Models In Ontario, Canada., Thyna Vu, Kelly K Anderson, Nibene H Somé, Amardeep Thind, Sisira Sarma

Epidemiology and Biostatistics Publications

Treating mental illnesses in primary care is increasingly emphasized to improve access to mental health services. Although family physicians (FPs) or general practitioners are in an ideal position to provide the bulk of mental health care, it is unclear how best to remunerate FPs for the adequate provision of mental health services. We examined the quantity of mental health services provided in Ontario's blended fee-for-service and blended capitation models. We evaluated the impact of FPs switching from blended fee-for-service to blended capitation on the provision of mental health services in primary care and emergency department using longitudinal health administrative data …

A Comparison Of Spatial Clustering Assessment Methods, Nadeesha Dilhani Vidanapathirana

Theses and Dissertations

Spatial clustering detection methods are widely used in many fields of research including sociology, epidemiology, ecology, and criminology. The objective of this study is to assess the performance of four spatial clustering detection methods: the average nearest neighbor ratio, Ripley’s K function, local Moran’s I and Getis-Ord Gi* statistics. We conduct a simulation study to evaluate the performance of each method for areal data under different types of spatial dependence and three different areal structures; a 20x20 regular grid, United States counties in six states and Canadian forward sortation areas (FSAs) in three provinces. The results shows that the empirical …

Accurate And Integrative Detection Of Copy Number Variants With High-Throughput Data, Xizhi Luo

Theses and Dissertations

Copy number variation, as a major source of genetic variation in the human genome, are gains or losses of the DNA segments. Copy number variation has gained considerable interest as it plays important roles in human complex diseases. Therefore, accurate detection of CNVs with data generated by modern genotyping technologies, such as SNP array and whole-exome sequencing (WES), comprises a critical step toward a better understanding of disease etiology. However, current statistical methodologies for CNV detection still face analytical challenges due to numerous genetic and technological factors that may lead to spurious findings. First, existing methods assume the independent observations …

Evaluation Of Circulating Levels Of Interleukin-10 And Interleukin-16 And Dietary Inflammatory Index In Lebanese Knee Osteoarthritis Patients, Zeina El-Ali, Germine El-Kassas, Fouad M. Ziade, Nitin Shivappa Mbbs, Mph, Ph.D., James Hébert Scd, Nisrine Bissar

Faculty Publications

Objectives

To investigate plasma concentrations of Interleukin-16 (IL-16) and Interleukin-10 (IL-10) in Lebanese knee osteoarthritis (KOA) patients and to examine the association between the diet-associated inflammation and increased risk for KOA.

Methods

A total of 208 study participants were assigned to one of the 3 groups: Diagnosed Knee Osteoarthritis group (DKOA) (N = 78); Undiagnosed Knee Osteoarthritis group (UKOA) (N = 60) and controls matched on age, sex and sociodemographic characteristics (N = 70). UKOA represents KOA features before they are altered by therapeutic intervention and lifestyle modifications that follow the diagnosis. Energy-adjusted dietary inflammatory index (E-DII™) scores were calculated …

Comparing Dietary Score Associations With Lipoprotein Particle Subclass Profiles: A Cross-Sectional Analysis Of A Middle-To Older-Aged Population, Seán R. Millar, Pilar Navarro, Janas M. Harrington, Nitin Shivappa Mbbs, Mph, Ph.D., James Hébert Scd, Ivan J. Perry, Catherine M. Phillips

Faculty Publications

Background and objectives: Lipoprotein particle concentrations and size are associated with increased risk for atherosclerosis and premature cardiovascular disease. Studies also suggest that certain dietary behaviours may be cardioprotective. Limited comparative data regarding any dietary score/index-lipoprotein particle subclass associations exist. Thus, our objective was to assess relationships between the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH), Health Eating Index-2015 (HEI-2015), Mediterranean Diet (MD) and Energy-adjusted Dietary Inflammatory Index (E-DII™) scores and plasma lipids and lipoprotein profiles to test the hypothesis that healthier diet (better quality and more anti-inflammatory) would be associated with a more favourable lipoprotein profile.

Materials and methods: This …

Statistical Modeling For High-Dimensional Compositional Data With Applications To The Human Microbiome, Thy Dao

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Compositional data refer to the data that lie on a simplex, which are common in many scientific domains such as genomics, geology, and economics. As the components in a composition must sum to one, traditional tests based on unconstrained data become inappropriate, and new statistical methods are needed to analyze this special type of data. This dissertation is motivated by some statistical problems arising in the analysis of compositional data. In particular, we focus on the high-dimensional and over-dispersed setting, where the dimensionality of compositions is greater than the sample size and the dispersion parameter is moderate or large. In …

Analysis Of Genetic Variants Associated With Levels Of Immune Modulating Proteins For Impact On Alzheimer’S Disease Risk Reveal A Potential Role For Siglec14, Benjamin C. Shaw, Yuriko Katsumata, James F. Simpson, David W. Fardo, Steven Estus

Biostatistics Faculty Publications

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified immune-related genes as risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease (AD), including TREM2 and CD33, frequently passing a stringent false-discovery rate. These genes either encode or signal through immunomodulatory tyrosine-phosphorylated inhibitory motifs (ITIMs) or activation motifs (ITAMs) and govern processes critical to AD pathology, such as inflammation and amyloid phagocytosis. To investigate whether additional ITIM and ITAM-containing family members may contribute to AD risk and be overlooked due to the stringent multiple testing in GWAS, we combined protein quantitative trait loci (pQTL) data from a recent plasma proteomics study with AD associations in a recent …

Bayesian Multivariate Joint Modeling For Skewed-Longitudinal And Time-To-Event Data, Lan Xu

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In epidemiologic and clinical studies, a relatively large number of biomarkers are repeatedly measured in patients over time, often associated with data on epidemiologic and clinical interest events. So, much attention is focused on developing the specific patterns of the longitudinal measurements, and the associations between those patterns and the time to a certain event, such as heart attack, diagnose of disease, time to transplantation, or death. In the last two decades, the research into joint modeling of longitudinal and time-to-event data has received a tremendous amount of attention.

Numerous researchers have proposed joint modeling approaches for a single longitudinal …

Impact Of Neoantigen Expression And T-Cell Activation On Breast Cancer Survival, Wenjing Li, Amei Amei, Francis Bui, Saba Norouzifar, Lingeng Lu, Zuoheng Wang

Mathematical Sciences Faculty Research

Neoantigens are derived from tumor-specific somatic mutations. Neoantigen-based syn-thesized peptides have been under clinical investigation to boost cancer immunotherapy efficacy. The promising results prompt us to further elucidate the effect of neoantigen expression on patient survival in breast cancer. We applied Kaplan–Meier survival and multivariable Cox regression models to evaluate the effect of neoantigen expression and its interaction with T-cell activation on overall survival in a cohort of 729 breast cancer patients. Pearson’s chi-squared tests were used to assess the relationships between neoantigen expression and clinical pathological variables. Spearman correlation analysis was conducted to identify correlations between neoantigen expression, mutation …

Asymmetric Multivariate Archimedean Copula Models And Semi-Competing Risks Data Analysis, Ziyan Guo

Dissertations

Many multivariate models have been proposed and developed to model high dimensional data when the dimension of a data set is greater than 2 (d ≥ 3). The existing multivariate models often force the “exchangeable” structure for part or the whole model, are not very flexible which tends to be of limited use in practice. There is a demand for developing and studying multivariate models with any pre-specified bivariate margins.

Suppose there exists such a class of flexible models with any pre-specified bivariate margins. Given a multivariate data, what is the distribution function and how to easily estimate the parameters …

The Essence Of Telemedicine For Bridging The Gap In Health Services, Budi Wiweko, Sarah Chairani Zakirah, Atha Luthfi

Kesmas

This study aimed to review the essence of telemedicine in this modern era of technology and innovation, especially in developing countries. It also investigated the regulation aspect as the main component for healthcare services. There were five main categories of telemedicine: revenue stream and technology literacy, health facilities, human resources, data authorization and security, and health protocol. Furthermore, when combined with wearable devices, it enhanced healthcare delivery opportunities. There were two major components of global electronic health, namely telehealth and health informatics, based one-commerce and e-learning systems. The World Health Organization (WHO) has been able to describe the roles of …

The Determinants Of Stunting For Children Aged 24-59 Months In Kulon Progo District 2019, Chatrine Aprilia Hendraswari, Yuliasti Eka Purnamaningrum, Tri Maryani, Yani Widyastuti, Sakinah Harith

Kesmas

This study pertains to stunting in children in Indonesian with z-scores of less than -2 Standard Deviation (SD) and less than -3 SD. The preliminary study results showed the highest prevalence of stunting to be 22.6%, at the Temon II Primary Health Care in Kulon Progo District. The study aimed to assess the determinants of stunting children aged 24–59 months. This study was conducted from September 2018–May 2019. The design of this study was analytical observational with study design case-control. The sample was 60 children aged 24–59 months. The method utilized proportional sampling, whereas the data analysis applied chi-square and …

A Path Analysis Model For Explaining The Factors Influencing Wearing A Mask Among Commuting Workers Using Commuter Line Bogor-Jakarta, David Kusmawan, Shofi Andari, Ira Gustina, Indri Hapsari Susilowati, Mufti Wirawan

Kesmas

Jakarta is one of the most air-polluted cities in the world, which can increase the health risk of commuting workers exposed to pollutants. This study aimed to determine the factors that directly and indirectly affect healthy behavior (wearing a mask) for commuters using the Bogor-Jakarta Commuter Line. Furthermore, a total of 155 respondents participated and the data collected were analyzed using descriptive and path analysis. The commuters aware of the hazard potential related to air pollution during commuting were 137 people (88.4%). While 104 people (67.1%) were aware of the good perception of pollution and 125 uses masks during commuting …

Empowering Health Cadres To Support Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis (Dr-Tb) Patient To Enroll In Treatment, Esty Febriani, Adik Wibowo, Neeraj Kak, Hala Jassim Al Mossawi

Kesmas

Tuberculosis (TB) remains a big challenge globally, while the involvement of health cadres’ constitutes one of the key strategies for the TB program in Indonesia. These roles were further expanded to providing support to DR-TB patients. This study was a qualitative study, conducted in 2015 to explore the various factors which influence the performance of health cadres’ in supporting DR-TB patients to enroll in treatment. A total of 39 informants consisting of 24 health cadres, three nurses, four DR-TB patients, and three family members, two peer support, a head of primary health care, and two TB staffs from the District …

National Health Insurance Scheme: Internal And External Barriers In The Use Of Reproductive Health Services Among Women, Evi Martha, Herna Lestari, Resvi Siti Zulfa, Yoslien Sopamena

Kesmas

Lack of familiarity among the community, medical workers, and administrative staff regarding reproductive health services covered by Badan Penyelenggara Jaminan Sosial (BPJS) or the National Health Insurance (NHI) in Indonesia remained a problem. Therefore, this resulted in sub-optimal use of the medical services, as shown by surveys from the Women's Health Foundation for three consecutive years (2015-2017). This qualitative study was conducted with a Rapid Assessment Procedure design in three cities within Indonesia: Padang Pariaman, Manado, and Kupang. Data were collected through IDIs (n = 47informants) and 6 FGDs (7 persons/group). Participants also consisted of NHI RHS users (mothers and …

Prevalence And Determinants Of Pre-Lacteal Feeding: Insights From The 2017 Indonesia Demographic And Health Survey, Siti Nurokhmah, Siti Masitoh, Kusuma Estu Werdani

Kesmas

Pre-lacteal feeding is widely known as a distraction to exclusive breastfeeding, and the malpractice continues to be prevalent in Indonesia. Therefore, this study aimed to explore the potential determinants of pre-lacteal feeding among mothers of infants below 24 months. A sample of 6,455 mother-infant pairs from the 2017 Indonesia Demographic and Health Survey (IDHS) was used. Also, multivariate logistic regression was employed to identify factors associated with pre-lacteal feeding practice. In Indonesia, 44% of infants were introduced to solid/liquid feeds in their first three days of life. Infant formula was the most common pre-lacteal feed given, followed by any other …