Josep Lluís Carrasco

University of Barcelona | UB · Department of Basic Clinical Practice

Background: Lung ultrasound (LUS) and invasive blood biomarkers have been evaluated to improve bacterial pneumonia (BP) diagnosis, but it is still needed to assess the efficacy of some novel biomarkers such as Lung Shear Wave Elastography (LSWE), quantification of lung microvascularization ratio pattern by Superb Microvascular Imaging (SMI) or dete...

Ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) is common in Pediatric Intensive Care Units. Although early detection is crucial, current diagnostic methods are not definitive. This study aimed to identify lung ultrasound (LUS) findings and procalcitonin (PCT) values in pediatric patients with VAP to create a new early diagnosis score combined with the Clini...

Background Pneumonia is a major public health problem with an impact on morbidity and mortality. Its management still represents a challenge. The aim was to determine whether a new diagnostic algorithm combining lung ultrasound (LUS) and procalcitonin (PCT) improved pneumonia management regarding antibiotic use, radiation exposure, and associated c...

Repeatability involves the assessment of the agreement among repeated measurements from the same cluster of subjects, and this concept has been widely used in different scientific fields when data is structured in clusters. In the context of spatial trajectories, a degree of repeatability implies that individual trips can be distinguished from thos...

The evolution of pain and quality of life after a symptomatic vertebral fracture differs according to patient gender, with a worse evolution in women independently of the treatment received. In a previous randomized clinical study comparing the effect of vertebroplasty (VP) vs. conservative therapy (CT) on pain evolution and quality of life (QoL) o...

1. Culturally dependent human social behaviours involving artificial light usage can potentially affect light pollution patterns and thereby impact the night-time ecology in populated areas, although to date this has not been examined globally. 2. By analysing continuous (monthly), highly resolved, spatially explicit data on global night lights (Vi...

Fibrillar collagens are the most abundant extracellular matrix components in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Yet, the potential of collagen fiber descriptors as a source of clinically-relevant biomarkers in NSCLC is mainly unknown. Likewise, our understanding of the aberrant collagen organization and associated tumor-promoting effects needs to...

Human activities provide opportunistic species with abundant and predictable feeding opportunities that may shape their ecology, including their movement patterns and behaviour. Investigating human-wildlife interactions in marine ecosystems is challenging because of the logistic constraints of surveying vast and remote geographical areas. Fortunate...

Tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinase-1 (TIMP-1) is an important regulator of extracellular matrix turnover that has been traditionally regarded as a potential tumor suppressor owing to its inhibitory effects of matrix metalloproteinases. Intriguingly, this interpretation has been challenged by the consistent observation that increased expression o...

Introducción: El desarrollo de osteoporosis es una complicación frecuente tras una lesión medular (LM), especialmente bajo el nivel de la lesión. Sin embargo, su abordaje terapéutico continúa siendo incierto. Objetivo: Analizar la evolución de la densidad mineral ósea (DMO) y de los marcadores de remodelado óseo (MRO) en individuos con una LM reci...

Background Glucocorticoid (GC) treatment is the most frequent cause of osteoporosis (OP) in young subjects. However, the factors related to the development of glucocorticoid-induced osteoporosis (GIOP) and fragility fractures (FF), and consequently, the therapeutic approach to GIOP in young populations is not well established. Objectives Analyze t...

Background Lung ultrasound (LUS) and procalcitonin (PCT) are independently used to improve accuracy when diagnosing lung infections. The aim of the study was to evaluate the accuracy of a new algorithm combining LUS and PCT for the diagnosis of bacterial pneumonia. Methods Randomized, blinded, comparative effectiveness clinical trial. Children <18...

Objectives: Accurate assessment of disease extent is required to select the best primary treatment for advanced epithelial ovarian cancer patients. Estimation of tumour burden is challenging and it is usually performed by means of a surgical procedure. Imaging techniques and tumour markers can help to estimate tumour burden non-invasively. 2-[18F]...

Bone turnover markers are decreased in GC-treated subjects with DM. Decreased OC levels in GC-treated patients were associated with an increased risk of DM. These results suggest the involvement of OC in glucose homeostasis regulation in DM.IntroductionOsteocalcin (OC) is involved in the regulation of glucose homeostasis. Glucocorticoid (GC) treatm...

Wetlands such as rice paddies are important ecosystems that provide habitat for a numerous range of species but are considered as a major source of mercury in the most toxic form of methylmercury. An in situ mesocosm experiment was conducted during the rice cultivation season of 2018 in rice paddies from the Ebro Delta (NE, Spain) to investigate th...

Cloth-dragging is the most widely-used method for collecting and counting ticks, but there are few studies of its reliability. By using cloth-dragging, we applied a replicated line tran-sects survey method, in two areas in Sweden with different Ixodes ricinus tick-densities (low at Grimsö and high at Bogesund) to evaluate developmental stage specif...

Background and aim There is increasing interest regarding SARS-CoV-2 infection in patients with autoimmune and immune-mediated inflammatory diseases (AI/IMID) with some discrepancies in different cohorts about their risk and outcomes. The aim was to describe a multidisciplinary cohort of patients with AI/IMID and symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection in...

As top-predators in marine ecosystems, seabirds are regarded as appropriate bioindicator species for a variety of contaminants. Mercury (Hg) is a global pollutant, which can biomagnify along marine and freshwater food webs. Therefore, mercury body burden in seabirds, such as gulls, will integrate information about pollution in the environment. In t...

Objective: The aim of this study was to identify the risk factors associated with fragility fracture (FF) development in glucocorticoid (GC)-treated patients. Methods: 127 patients (aged 62±18 years, 63% women) on GC-treatment (mean dose 14.5±14.1 mg/day and duration 47.7±69 months) were included. The clinical data collected included bone metabo...

Human fisheries provide scavengers with abundant and predictable feeding opportunities that may schedule their behavioural patterns. Using miniaturized global positioning system (GPS) tracking technology, we evaluated how Audouin’s gull (Ichthyaetus audouinii), a Mediterranean endemic seabird that makes extensive use of feeding opportunities provid...

Background Increasing evidence indicates that osteocalcin (OC) is involved in the regulation of glucose homeostasis. Glucocorticoid (GC) treatment is associated with impaired osteoblast function and decreased OC levels and also with the development of CG-induced diabetes mellitus (GIDM). However, whether decreased OC levels in GC-treated subjects c...

Research focused on evaluating how human food subsidies influence the foraging ecology of scavenger species is scarce but essential for elucidating their role in shaping behavioral patterns, population dynamics, and potential impacts on ecosystems. We evaluate the potential role of humans in shaping the year‐round distribution and habitat use of in...

Objective: To analyse the clinical utility of trabecular bone score (TBS) evaluation for fracture risk assessment in glucocorticoid (GC)-treated patients compared with BMD assessment. Methods: One hundred and twenty-seven patients on GC treatment were included [mean age 62 (18) years, 63% women] in this cross-sectional study. The medical history...

Tumor associated fibroblasts (TAFs) are essential contributors of the rogression of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Most lung TAFs exhibit an activated henotye characterized by the exression of α-SMA and fibrillar collagens. However, the rognostic value of these activation markers in NSCLC remains unclear. To address this question we conducted...

Objectives: Tumor associated fibroblasts (TAFs) are essential contributors of the progression of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Most lung TAFs exhibit an activated phenotype characterized by the expression of α-SMA and fibrillar collagens. However, the prognostic value of these activation markers in NSCLC remains unclear. Material and method...

Tumor associated fibroblasts (TAFs) are essential contributors of the rogression of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Most lung TAFs exhibit an activated henotye characterized by the exression of α-SMA and fibrillar collagens. However, the rognostic value of these activation markers in NSCLC remains unclear. To address this question we conducted...

Background Glucocorticoid-induced osteoporosis (GIOP) is the one of the most common forms of secondary osteoporosis (OP). Fractures in GIOP frequently occur with higher than expected bone mineral density (BMD) values. The Trabecular Bone Score (TBS) is a gray-level textural index derived from DXA images that provides information about bone microarc...

Background Glucocorticoid-induced osteoporosis (GIOP) is a common form of secondary osteoporosis (OP). Fractures in GIOP frequently occur with higher bone mineral density (BMD) than expected and typically at treatment initiation, complicating the identification of patients at risk for fracture. Objectives Identify risk factors associated with frag...

A logistic regression with random effects model is commonly applied to analyze clustered binary data, and every cluster is assumed to have a different proportion of success. However, it could be of interest to obtain the proportion of success over clusters (i.e. the marginal proportion of success). Furthermore, the degree of correlation among data...

A major hallmark of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and other solid tumors is a desmoplastic tumor stroma rich in activated fibroblasts and fibrillar collagens. Previous studies have revealed that these tumor-associated fibroblasts contribute to virtually all steps of tumor progression and even therapy resistance. However, our knowledge of the p...

We introduce an R package that estimates decision thresholds in diagnostic settings with a continuous marker and two or three underlying states. The package implements parametric and non-parametric estimation methods based on minimizing an overall cost function, as well as confidence interval estimation approaches to account for the sampling variab...

Methods: Serum values of total 25-OHD (25-OHDT), vitamin D binding protein (DBP) (by R&D Systems ELISA), calculated 25-OHDF (by DBP, albumin and 25-OHDT) and direct 25-OHDF (by DIAsource ELISA) were analysed in 173 healthy women (aged 35-45years). Assessment of concordance was evaluated by the Bland-Altman plot and the total deviation index (TDI)....

Introduction: Bone turnover and bone loss are markedly increased shortly after SCI. However, the pathogenesis and clinical management of this process remain unclear, especially the role of the osteoprotegerin (OPG)/RANKL system in this disorder. The aim of this study was to analyze serum levels of OPG and RANKL in bone loss associated with recent...

Introduction: Determination of 25-OH vitamin D serum levels (25-OHD) constitutes the method of choice for evaluating vitamin D deficiency. However, vitamin D-binding protein (DBP) may modulate its bioavailability thereby affecting correct evaluation of 25-OHD status. We analysed the impact of the determination of 25-OHD (total, free and bioavailab...

Objective: To validate the bronchiolitis score of Sant Joan de Déu (BROSJOD) and to examine the previously defined scoring cutoff. Patients and methods: Prospective, observational study. BROSJOD scoring was done by two independent physicians (at admission, 24 and 48 hr). Internal consistency of the score was assessed using Cronbach's α. To deter...

Objective: Neuroimaging is crucial in the presurgical evaluation of patients with medically refractory epilepsy. To improve the moderate sensitivity of [(18) F]fluorodeoxyglucose-positron emission tomography ((18) F-FDG-PET), our aim was to evaluate the usefulness of statistical parametric mapping (SPM) to localize the seizure-onset zone (SOZ) in...

Background: Osteoporosis development is a frequent complication related to spinal cord injury (SCI), especially at the sublesional level. However, although treatment with bisphosphonates may attenuate bone loss after SCI, no effective treatment has been reported to treat this clinical complication. Thus, the aim of this study was to analyze the eff...

Osteoporosis is a frequent complication related to spinal cord injury (SCI), and data on osteoporosis treatment after SCI is scarce. Treatment with denosumab increases lumbar and femoral BMD and decreases bone turnover markers in individuals with recent SCI. This drug may be a promising therapeutic option in SCI-related osteoporosis. Introduction O...

The carryover effect is a recurring issue in the pharmaceutical field. It may strongly influence the final outcome of an average bioequivalence study. Testing a null hypothesis of zero carryover is useless: not rejecting it does not guarantee the non-existence of carryover, and rejecting it is not informative of the true degree of carryover and its...

Concordance indices are used to assess the degree of agreement between different methods that measure the same characteristic. In this context, the total deviation index (TDI) is an unscaled concordance measure that quantifies to which extent the readings from the same subject obtained by different methods may differ with a certain probability. Com...

Unlabelled: Spinal cord injury (SCI) has been associated with a marked bone loss after injury and a consequent increased risk of osteoporosis. The evaluation of bone mineral density shortly after SCI is a simple and effective method for predicting the development of osteoporosis during the first year after SCI. Introduction: Spinal cord injury (...

Generalized linear mixed models are flexible tools for modeling non-normal data and are useful for accommodating overdispersion in Poisson regression models with random effects. Their main difficulty resides in the parameter estimation because there is no analytic solution for the maximization of the marginal likelihood. Many methods have been prop...

In a recent randomized controlled trial comparing vertebroplasty (VP) versus conservative treatment (CT) in patients with symptomatic vertebral fractures (VF), we observed the development of chronic back pain (CBP) in nearly one-quarter of patients. The aim of this study was to identify the risk factors related to the development of severe CBP in t...

Spinal cord injury (SCI) has been associated with a marked increase in bone loss and bone remodeling, especially short‐term after injury. The absence of mechanical load, mediated by osteocyte mechanosensory function, seems to be a causative factor related to bone loss in this condition. However, the pathogenesis and clinical management of this proc...

Modeling count and binary data collected in hierarchical designs have increased the use of Generalized Linear Mixed Models (GLMMs) in medicine. This article presents a systematic review of the application and quality of results and information reported from GLMMs in the field of clinical medicine. A search using the Web of Science database was perf...

The analysis of concordance among repeated measures has received a huge amount of attention in the statistical literature leading to a range of different approaches. However, because all the approaches are able to assess the closeness among the readings taken on the same subject, the conclusions about the degree of concordance should be similar reg...

Objective: To analyse the incidence and factors related to the development and clinical evolution of fractures in patients with traumatic spinal cord injury. Design: A retrospective 10-year follow-up study. Setting: Neurorehabilitation centre. Subjects: Sixty-three patients (50M/13F) with a mean age of 36 ± 20 years with recent traumatic spi...

We have recently observed an increased risk for vertebral fractures (VF) in a randomized controlled trial comparing the analgesic effect of vertebroplasty (VP) versus conservative treatment in symptomatic VF. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the risk factors related to the development of VF after VP in these patients. We evaluated risk...

Abstract Cohen's kappa coefficient, which was introduced in 1960, serves as the most widely employed coefficient to assess inter-observer agreement for categorical outcomes. However, the original kappa can only be applied to cross-sectional binary measurements and, therefore, cannot be applied in the practical situation when the observers evaluate...

Purpose: Interim (18)F-FDG PET performed early during the course of therapy in diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) is a good predictor of outcome. However, interpretation criteria for interim PET for the evaluation of tumour response are still not clearly defined. The study aim was to assess whether interim PET can predict overall survival (OS)...

The concordance correlation coefficient is one of the most common approaches used to assess agreement among different observers or instruments when the outcome of interest is a continuous variable. A SAS macro and R package are provided here to estimate the concordance correlation coefficient (CCC) where the design of the data involves repeated mea...

In the diagnostic area, the usual setting considers two populations: nondiseased and diseased. The use of the standard ROC analysis methodology is well established. Sometimes, however, diagnostic problems inherently include more than two classification states. For example, 'yes, uncertain, no' or 'low, normal, high'. Here we consider a three-normal...

Uncertainty regarding the benefits of vertebroplasty (VP) for the treatment of acute osteoporotic vertebral fractures has recently arisen. A prospective, controlled, randomized single-center trial (ClinicalTrials.gov registration number NCT00994032) was designed to compare the effects of VP versus conservative treatment on the quality of life and p...

Stroke causes CNS injury associated with strong fast microglial activation as part of the inflammatory response. In rat models of stroke, sulphonylurea receptor blockade with glibenclamide reduced cerebral edema and infarct volume. We postulated that glibenclamide administered during the early stages of stroke might foster neuroprotective microglia...

To compare and evaluate the reliability of several indexes of adherence to the Mediterranean diet. The ten indexes included in the analysis were: Mediterranean Diet Score (MDS), Mediterranean Score (MS), Dietary Score (DS), Mediterranean-Dietary Quality Index (Med-DQI), Mediterranean Dietary Pattern adherence index (MDP), Mediterranean Adequacy Ind...

Energy or nutritional constraints associated to female dietary shifts during the clutch production period may play a role in generating intra-clutch egg size variation in yellow-legged gulls Larus michahellis. To explore this possibility, we determined albumen δ13C and δ15N values in three-egg clutches (modal clutch size) from three different breed...

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of residual variability and carryover on average bioequivalence (ABE) studies performed under a 2×2 crossover design. ABE is usually assessed by means of the confidence interval inclusion principle. Here, the interval under consideration was the standard ‘shortest’ interval, which is the mainstre...

Aim Bringing new approaches to trace spatiotemporal variations in animals’ feeding ecology, which is fundamental for wildlife management and conservation since the accessibility of animals to trophic resources plays a key role in the dynamics of populations and metapopulations. Location Western Mediterranean coast. Methods The analysis of naturally...

SAS syntax details. SAS syntax details for the Poisson regression mixed models parameter estimates.

To evaluate the reporting of critical design issues and methods of statistical analysis in pharmacogenetic studies published in the medical literature. Systematic review of 65 original pharmacogenetic studies published in the literature over the last 15 years. The sample size determination and the planned sample size were lacking in 63 papers. The...

Reducing childhood mortality is the fourth goal of the Millennium Development Goals agreed at the United Nations Millennium Summit in September 2000. However, childhood mortality in developing countries remains high. Providing an accurate picture of space and time-trend variations in child mortality in a region might generate further ideas for heal...

The dog is increasingly considered as a natural animal model for the study of normal and pathological human brain aging, because it exhibits anatomical, biochemical and cognitive changes that parallel those seen in humans. This study presents a novel visual semi-quantitative rating scale of canine cerebral magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Ninety-e...

Medical diagnostic tests are used to classify subjects as non-diseased or diseased. The classification rule usually consists of classifying subjects using the values of a continuous marker that is dichotomised by means of a threshold. Here, the optimum threshold estimate is found by minimising a cost function that accounts for both decision costs a...

The purpose of the present study was to analyse the evolution of the Spanish population's global and regional adherence to the Mediterranean diet (MD) since 1987. A cross-sectional study was conducted analysing food consumption from the Spanish Household Consumption Surveys administered by the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. Th...

The concordance correlation coefficient (Lin, 1989) has been defined as a specific intraclass correlation coefficient when subjects are considered as a random effect and observers as a fixed effect (Carrasco and Jover, 2003). Using this result, the concordance correlation coefficient was extended for measuring agreement between counts by means of t...

Software codes. Description of a SAS macro and an R function developed to compute the TDI estimate and upper confidence bound.

2CP simulation results. Simulation results about the performance of the coverage probability (CP) index.

In an agreement assay, it is of interest to evaluate the degree of agreement between the different methods (devices, instruments or observers) used to measure the same characteristic. We propose in this study a technical simplification for inference about the total deviation index (TDI) estimate to assess agreement between two devices of normally-d...

The classical concordance correlation coefficient (CCC) to measure agreement among a set of observers assumes data to be distributed as normal and a linear relationship between the mean and the subject and observer effects. Here, the CCC is generalized to afford any distribution from the exponential family by means of the generalized linear mixed m...

Cigarette smoking may contribute to pulmonary hypertension in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease by altering the structure and function of pulmonary vessels at early disease stages. The objectives of this study were to evaluate the effects of long-term exposure to cigarette smoke on endothelial function and smooth muscle-cell proliferation in pu...

We decided to assess the geographical variability of the incidence of Type 1 diabetes in Catalonia (Spain) in subjects younger than 30 years at onset during the period 1989-1998. The effect of sex, age at onset, periods of years, and population density was also analyzed. Data were obtained from the prospective Catalan Registry of Diabetes Mellitus....