SearCh for humourIstic and Extravagant acroNyms and Thoroughly Inappropriate names For Important Clinical trials (SCIENTIFIC): qualitative and quantitative systematic study

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Abstract

Objectives To describe the development of acronym use across five major medical specialties and to evaluate the technical and aesthetic quality of the acronyms.

Design Acronyms obtained through a literature search of Pubmed.gov followed by a standardised assessment of acronym quality (BEAUTY and CHEATING criteria).

Participants Randomised controlled trials within psychiatry, rheumatology, pulmonary medicine, endocrinology, and cardiology published between 2000 and 2012.

Main outcome measures Prevalence proportion of acronyms and composite quality score for acronyms over time.

Results 14 965 publications were identified, of which 18.3% (n=2737) contained an acronym in the title. Acronym use was more common among cardiological studies than among the other four medical specialties (40% v 8-15% in 2012, P<0.001). Except for within cardiology, the prevalence of acronyms increased over time, with the average prevalence proportion among the remaining four specialties increasing from 4.0% to 12.4% from 2000 to 2012 (P<0.001). The median combined acronym quality score decreased significantly over the study period (P<0.001), from a median 9.25 in 2000 to 5.50 in 2012.

Conclusion From 2000 to 2012 the prevalence of acronyms in trial reports increased, coinciding with a substantial decrease in the technical and aesthetic quality of the acronyms. Strict enforcement of current guidelines on acronym construction by journal editors is necessary to ensure the proper use of acronyms in the future.

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Rapid planetesimal formation in turbulent circumstellar discs

Anders Johansen, Jeffrey S. Oishi, Mordecai-Mark Mac Low … (2007)

The initial stages of planet formation in circumstellar gas discs proceed via dust grains that collide and build up larger and larger bodies (Safronov 1969). How this process continues from metre-sized boulders to kilometre-scale planetesimals is a major unsolved problem (Dominik et al. 2007): boulders stick together poorly (Benz 2000), and spiral into the protostar in a few hundred orbits due to a head wind from the slower rotating gas (Weidenschilling 1977). Gravitational collapse of the solid component has been suggested to overcome this barrier (Safronov 1969, Goldreich & Ward 1973, Youdin & Shu 2002). Even low levels of turbulence, however, inhibit sedimentation of solids to a sufficiently dense midplane layer (Weidenschilling & Cuzzi 1993, Dominik et al. 2007), but turbulence must be present to explain observed gas accretion in protostellar discs (Hartmann 1998). Here we report the discovery of efficient gravitational collapse of boulders in locally overdense regions in the midplane. The boulders concentrate initially in transient high pressures in the turbulent gas (Johansen, Klahr, & Henning 2006), and these concentrations are augmented a further order of magnitude by a streaming instability (Youdin & Goodman 2005, Johansen, Henning, & Klahr 2006, Johansen & Youdin 2007) driven by the relative flow of gas and solids. We find that gravitationally bound clusters form with masses comparable to dwarf planets and containing a distribution of boulder sizes. Gravitational collapse happens much faster than radial drift, offering a possible path to planetesimal formation in accreting circumstellar discs.

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Long Term Outcomes Following Hospital Admission for Sepsis Using Relative Survival Analysis: A Prospective Cohort Study of 1,092 Patients with 5 Year Follow Up

Joshua Davis, Vincent He, Nicholas Anstey … (2014)

Background Sepsis is a leading cause of death in intensive care units and is increasing in incidence. Current trials of novel therapeutic approaches for sepsis focus on 28-day mortality as the primary outcome measure, but excess mortality may extend well beyond this time period. Methods We used relative survival analysis to examine excess mortality in a cohort of 1,028 patients admitted to a tertiary referral hospital with sepsis during 2007–2008, over the first 5 years of follow up. Expected survival was estimated using the Ederer II method, using Australian life tables as the reference population. Cumulative and interval specific relative survival were estimated by age group, sex, sepsis severity and Indigenous status. Results Patients were followed for a median of 4.5 years (range 0–5.2). Of the 1028 patients, the mean age was 46.9 years, 52% were male, 228 (22.2%) had severe sepsis and 218 (21%) died during the follow up period. Mortality based on cumulative relative survival exceeded that of the reference population for the first 2 years post admission in the whole cohort and for the first 3 years in the subgroup with severe sepsis. Independent predictors of mortality over the whole follow up period were male sex, Indigenous Australian ethnicity, older age, higher Charlson Comorbidity Index, and sepsis-related organ dysfunction at presentation. Conclusions The mortality rate of patients hospitalised with sepsis exceeds that of the general population until 2 years post admission. Efforts to improve outcomes from sepsis should examine longer term outcomes than the traditional primary endpoints of 28-day and 90-day mortality.

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Preparation of Artificial Plasma Membrane Mimicking Vesicles with Lipid Asymmetry

Qingqing Lin, Erwin London (2014)

Lipid asymmetry, the difference in lipid distribution across the lipid bilayer, is one of the most important features of eukaryotic cellular membranes. However, commonly used model membrane vesicles cannot provide control of lipid distribution between inner and outer leaflets. We recently developed methods to prepare asymmetric model membrane vesicles, but facile incorporation of a highly controlled level of cholesterol was not possible. In this study, using hydroxypropyl-α-cyclodextrin based lipid exchange, a simple method was devised to prepare large unilamellar model membrane vesicles that closely resemble mammalian plasma membranes in terms of their lipid composition and asymmetry (sphingomyelin (SM) and/or phosphatidylcholine (PC) outside/phosphatidylethanolamine (PE) and phosphatidylserine (PS) inside), and in which cholesterol content can be readily varied between 0 and 50 mol%. We call these model membranes “artificial plasma membrane mimicking” (“PMm”) vesicles. Asymmetry was confirmed by both chemical labeling and measurement of the amount of externally-exposed anionic lipid. These vesicles should be superior and more realistic model membranes for studies of lipid-lipid and lipid-protein interaction in a lipid environment that resembles that of mammalian plasma membranes.

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Author and article information

Contributors

Anton Pottegård: Role: research fellow

Maija Bruun Haastrup: Role: medical doctor

Tore Bjerregaard Stage: Role: PhD student

Morten Rix Hansen: Role: PhD student

Kasper Søltoft Larsen: Role: PhD student

Peter Martin Meegaard: Role: pharmacist

Line Haugaard Vrdlovec Meegaard: Role: pharmacist

Henrik Horneberg: Role: editorial manager

Charlotte Gils: Role: medical doctor

Dorthe Dideriksen: Role: pharmacist

Lise Aagaard: Role: professor

Anna Birna Almarsdottir: Role: professor

Jesper Hallas: Role: professor

Per Damkier: Role: consultant, assistant professor

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): BMJ

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): BMJ

Journal ID (publisher-id): bmj

Title: BMJ : British Medical Journal

Publisher: BMJ Publishing Group Ltd.

ISSN (Print): 0959-8138

ISSN (Electronic): 1756-1833

Publication date Collection: 2014

Publication date (Electronic): 16 December 2014

Volume: 349

Electronic Location Identifier: g7092

Affiliations

[1 ]Clinical Pharmacology, Institute of Public Health, University of Southern Denmark, DK-5000 Odense C, Denmark

[2 ]Department of Clinical Chemistry and Pharmacology, Odense University Hospital, Odense C, Denmark

[3 ]Capital Region Pharmacy, Clinical pharmaceutical Services, Rigshospitalet, Copenhagen, Denmark

[4 ]Capital Region Pharmacy, Clinical pharmaceutical Services, Nordsjællands Hospital, Hillerød, Denmark

Author notes

Correspondence to: A Pottegård apottegaard@ 123456health.sdu.dk

Article

Publisher ID: pota022787

DOI: 10.1136/bmj.g7092

PMC ID: 4267482

PubMed ID: 25516539

SO-VID: 412ac20d-e19a-4914-8fec-f0a7213abc1b

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This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.

SearCh for humourIstic and Extravagant acroNyms and Thoroughly Inappropriate names For Important Clinical trials (SCIENTIFIC): qualitative and quantitative systematic study

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Estudio del peso al nacer

Most cited references 23

Rapid planetesimal formation in turbulent circumstellar discs

Long Term Outcomes Following Hospital Admission for Sepsis Using Relative Survival Analysis: A Prospective Cohort Study of 1,092 Patients with 5 Year Follow Up

Preparation of Artificial Plasma Membrane Mimicking Vesicles with Lipid Asymmetry

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