Yin Bun Cheung's research while affiliated with Tampere University and other places
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Publications (330)
Maternal malaria and infections during pregnancy are risk factors for fetal growth restriction. We assessed the impact of preventive treatment in pregnancy on maternal malaria and fetal growth. Between 2003 and 2006, we enrolled 1,320 pregnant Malawian women, 14–26 gestation weeks, in a randomized trial and treated them with two doses of sulfadoxin...
Importance:
Although multiple modifiable risk factors have been identified for reduced fecundability (defined as lower probability of conception within a menstrual cycle), no scoring system has been established to systematically evaluate fecundability among females who are attempting to conceive.
Objective:
To examine the association of a risk s...
We describe five asymptotically unbiased estimators of intervention effects on event rates in nonmatched and matched-pair cluster randomized trials, and we present a bias-corrected version of the estimators for use when the number of clusters is small. The estimators are the ratio of mean counts ( r 1 ), ratio of mean cluster-level event rates ( r...
Background
Mass drug administration (MDA) of azithromycin (AZI) has been shown to reduce under-5 mortality in some but not all sub-Saharan African settings. A large-scale cluster-randomized trial conducted in Malawi, Niger, and Tanzania suggested that the effect differs by country, may be stronger in infants, and may be concentrated within the firs...
Subfertility is a global problem affecting millions worldwide, with declining total fertility rates. Preconception dietary supplementation may improve fecundability, but the magnitude of impact remains unclear. This prospective cohort study aimed to examine the association of preconception micronutrient supplements with fecundability, measured by t...
Background:
The Integrated Palliative Care Outcome Scale (IPOS) was developed in the United Kingdom for health assessment in advanced illness.
Objectives:
To evaluate the validity and reliability of a culturally adapted IPOS (both patient and staff versions) for heart failure (HF).
Design/setting:
We recruited HF patients and staff from a tert...
Protective efficacy of vaccines and pharmaceutical products for prevention of infectious diseases usually vary over time. Information on the trajectory of the level of protection is valuable. We consider a parsimonious, non-linear and non-monotonic function for modelling time-varying intervention effects and compare it with several alternatives. Th...
Objectives
Little is known about the extent to which lifestyle practices at night influence sleep quality in pregnant women who are susceptible to sleep disturbances. This study aimed to examine the association between nocturnal lifestyle behaviour and sleep quality of women during pregnancy.
Methods
This observational cross-sectional study recrui...
The extent to which lifestyle practices at night influence sleep quality in pregnant women remains unknown. This study aimed to examine whether nocturnal behaviours were associated with poor sleep during pregnancy. We performed a cross-sectional analysis of a prospective cohort of pregnant women at 18–24 gestation weeks recruited from KK Women’s an...
Objectives:
This study examined the prevalence of anxiety, depression, and job burnout among frontline healthcare workers (HCWs) across six Southeast Asian countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam) during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021. We also investigated the associated risk and protective factors.
Methods:
Fron...
Background
Many patients with a solid metastatic cancer are treated aggressively during their last month of life. Using data from a large prospective cohort study of patients with an advanced cancer, we aimed to assess the number and predictors of aggressive interventions during last month of life among patients with solid metastatic cancer and its...
The extent of interpregnancy weight change and its association with subsequent pregnancy outcomes among Asians remain unclear. We aimed to examine the change in maternal body mass index (BMI) between the first two deliveries and outcomes in the second delivery. Medical records of women with their first two consecutive deliveries between 2015 and 20...
Stepped‐wedge cluster randomized trials (SW‐CRTs) are typically analyzed using mixed effects models. The fixed effects model is a useful alternative that controls for all time‐invariant cluster‐level confounders and has proper control of type I error when the number of clusters is small. In principle, all clusters in SW‐CRTs are designed to eventua...
Background
Environmental enteric dysfunction (EED) is common in low- and middle-income countries and associated with childhood undernutrition. The composition of gut microbiota has been implicated in the pathogenesis of EED. Our aim was to assess the associations between gut microbiota and EED biomarkers in rural Malawian children. We hypothesized...
Purpose
The Singapore Caregiver Quality of Life Scale – Dementia (SCQOLS-D), developed based on the Singapore Caregiver Quality of Life Scale (SCQOLS), comprises 5 domains and 63 items. It has been shown to be a valid and reliable measurement scale. This study aimed to develop and evaluate a short form of the SCQOLS-D.
Methods
Data were collected...
Purpose
The 15- and 10-item short forms of the Singapore Caregiver Quality of Life Scale (SCQOLS-15 and SCQOLS-10) were recently developed as a quick assessment of caregiver quality of life. Reference values describing the distribution of the total and domain scores are available for the full-length version, but they are not yet available for the s...
Background
Obesity compromises metabolic health and female fertility, yet not all obese women are similar in metabolic status. The extent to which fecundability is influenced by the metabolic health status of women who are overweight or obese before conception is unknown.
Objective
This study aimed to (1) determine the metabolic health status and...
The self-controlled case series is an important method in the studies of the safety of biopharmaceutical products. It uses the conditional Poisson model to make comparison within persons. In models without adjustment for age (or other time-varying covariates), cases who are never exposed to the product do not contribute any information to the estim...
Background:
This study investigated the immunogenicity and impact on nasopharyngeal carriage of a single dose of PCV10 given to 18-month-old Vietnamese children. This information is important for countries considering catch-up vaccination during PCV introduction and in the context of vaccination during humanitarian crises.
Methods:
Two groups of...
Objectives
Several studies have shown that patients with heart disease value hypothetical health states differently from the general population. We aimed to investigate the health preferences of patients with heart disease and develop a value set for the 5-level EQ-5D (EQ-5D-5L) based on these patient preferences.
Methods
Patients with confirmed h...
Background
Current treatment practices for comorbid conditions of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) remain limited. This study examined the feasibility of an EEG brain-computer interface (BCI) programme for children with ASD and co-occurring ADHD.
Method
Twenty children were randomised to the interv...
Aim:
The long-term stress, anxiety and job burnout experienced by healthcare workers (HCWs) are important to consider as the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic stresses healthcare systems globally. The primary objective was to examine the changes in the proportion of HCWs reporting stress, anxiety, and job burnout over six months during...
Abnormalities of red blood cell (RBC) indices may affect glycated haemoglobin (HbA1c) levels. We assessed the influence of haemoglobin (Hb) and mean corpuscular volume (MCV) on the performance of HbA1c in detecting dysglycaemia among reproductive aged women planning to conceive. Women aged 18–45 years (n = 985) were classified as normal (12 ≤ Hb ≤...
We consider five asymptotically unbiased estimators of intervention effects on event rates in non-matched and matched-pair cluster randomized trials, including ratio of mean counts (r 1), ratio of mean cluster-level event rates (r 2), ratio of event rates (r 3), double ratio of counts (r 4), and double ratio of event rates (r 5). In the absence of...
Meal regularity can influence metabolic health. However, habits of skipping and delaying meals are rarely studied among pregnant women. This study examined the incidence of maternal meal skipping and meal delaying, and their associated lifestyle patterns during pregnancy. Pregnant women in the second trimester (18-24 weeks' gestation; n = 90) were...
Many patients with advanced illness have unrealistic survival expectations, largely due to cognitive biases. Studies suggests that when people are motivated to be accurate, they are less prone to succumb to these biases. Using a randomized survey design, we test whether offering advanced cancer patients ( n = 200) incentives to estimate their progn...
Background
Female sexual dysfunction (FSD) is a prevalent problem, affecting up to 41% of reproductive aged women worldwide. However, the association between female sexual function (FSF) and fecundability in women attempting to conceive remains unclear. We aimed 1) to examine the association between FSF in reproductive-aged preconception Asian wome...
Spontaneous miscarriage is one of the most common complications of pregnancy. Even though some risk factors are well documented, there is a paucity of risk scoring tools during preconception. In the S-PRESTO cohort study, Asian women attempting to conceive, aged 18-45 years, were recruited. Multivariable logistic regression model coefficients were...
Evaluating whether an intervention works when trialled in groups of individuals can pose complex challenges for clinical research. Cluster randomised controlled trials involve the random allocation of groups or clusters of individuals to receive an intervention, and they are commonly used in global health research. In this paper, we describe the po...
An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.
Context:
Measurement of patient-centred outcomes enables clinicians to focus on patient and family priorities and enables quality of palliative care to be assessed.
Objectives:
This study aimed to evaluate the validity and reliability of the English and translated Chinese versions of the Integrated Palliative care Outcome Scale (IPOS) among adva...
Objective:
Many patients with advanced illness are unrealistically optimistic about their prognosis. We test for the presence of several cognitive biases, including optimism bias, illusion of superiority, self-deception, misattribution, and optimistic update bias, that could explain unrealistically optimistic prognostic beliefs among advanced canc...
The Singapore Preconception Study of Long-Term Maternal and Child Outcomes (S-PRESTO) is a preconception, longitudinal cohort study that aims to study the effects of nutrition, lifestyle, and maternal mood prior to and during pregnancy on the epigenome of the offspring and clinically important outcomes including duration of gestation, fetal growth,...
Background
Compared with the current inpatient consultation model, a novel corounding model of care whereby palliative specialists round with oncology teams, increases healthcare collaboration and may improve quality of care for inpatients. Whether this translates to better pain control for patients is unexplored.
Objective
To determine whether th...
Context: Measurement of patient-centred outcomes enables clinicians to focus on patient and family priorities and enables quality of palliative care to be assessed.
Objectives: This study aimed to evaluate the validity and reliability of the English and translated Chinese IPOS among advanced cancer patients in Singapore.
Methods: IPOS was forward a...
Purpose:
The Singapore Caregiver Quality of Life Scale (SCQOLS) was recently developed and validated in two languages - English and Chinese. The total and domain scores are scaled to range from 0 to 100. However, the scale is not at the interval-ratio level of measurement. To facilitate interpretation, we established the percentiles of the scale's...
Aim
This study was designed to determine whether faecal regenerating 1B protein (REG1B) concentration is associated with physical growth among 6–30‐month‐old children in rural Malawi.
Methods
This was a secondary analysis from a randomised controlled trial in rural Malawi in which we followed‐up 790 live‐born infants from birth to 30 months of age...
PurposeWe aimed to develop and calibrate an item bank to measure physical function (PF) in Singapore, a multi-ethnic city in Southeast Asia.Methods
We recruited participants from community and hospital settings stratified for age and gender, with and without medical conditions to administer candidate pool of 61-items derived from the people’s persp...
Purpose:
To develop and evaluate a measurement scale for multi-domain assessment of the quality of life of family caregivers of persons with dementia (PWD) in Singapore, a multi-ethic society in South-East Asia where English is the lingua franca.
Methods:
Items from the Singapore Caregiver Quality of Life Scale (SCQOLS), which was originally dev...
Objective: To examine the association between plasma glycemia in women attempting to conceive and fecundability, as measured by time-to-pregnancy (TTP).
Design: Prospective preconception population-based study.
Setting: KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital, Singapore.
Patient(s): Asian preconception women, aged 18-45 years, attempting conception f...
Recent evidence suggests that synchronizing eating-fasting schedules with body's circadian rhythms or day-night cycles is important for metabolic health. Besides food quantity and quality, food timing may contribute to weight regulation. However, it is unclear if this factor during pregnancy can influence maternal weight retention after childbirth....
Background
An effective malaria vaccine affects the risk of malaria directly, through the vaccine-induced immune response (the primary effect), and indirectly, as a consequence of reduced exposure to malaria infection and disease, leading to slower acquisition of natural immunity (the secondary effect). The beneficial primary effect may be offset b...
Context/ objectives: Advanced colorectal cancer and its treatment can bring about challenges associated with psychological distress. The primary aims of this study were to examine the feasibility and acceptability of a cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)-based intervention to improve coping with the disease. The secondary aim is to evaluate prelimin...
Background:
The concurrent sampling design was developed for case-control studies of recurrent events. It involves matching for time. Standard conditional logistic-regression (CLR) analysis ignores the dependence among recurrent events. Existing methods for clustered observations for CLR do not fit the complex data structure arising from the concu...
Background:
Gut microbiota composition is associated with child health, but the effect of the environment on microbiota composition is not well understood. Few studies have been conducted in low-income settings where childhood malnutrition is common and possibly related to microbiota composition.
Objectives:
To investigate whether gut microbiota...
Objective:
The Singapore Caregiver Quality of Life Scale (SCQOLS) comprises 5 domains and 51 items in total. This study aimed to develop and evaluate short forms of the SCQOLS.
Study design and setting:
Data were collected from 612 family caregivers of patients with advanced cancers in Singapore. Exploratory factor analysis and best subset regre...
Background:
Diet may alter the configuration of gut microbiota, but the impact of prenatal and postnatal nutritional interventions on infant gut microbiota has not been investigated.
Objective:
We evaluated whether providing lipid-based nutrient supplements (LNSs) to mother-infant dyads promotes a more diverse and mature infant gut microbiota, c...
Objectives:
To develop separate item banks for three health domains of health-related quality of life (HRQOL) ranked as important by Singaporeans - physical functioning, social relationships, and positive mindset.
Methods:
We adapted the Patient Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System Qualitative Item Review protocol, with input and end...
Background
Family caregivers of patients with advanced cancer have been reported to provide long hours of care and be at risk for poor psychological outcomes. Although research has focused on the nature of caregiving burden, little attention has been paid to identifying protective factors that improve caregiver psychological outcomes.
Aim
We exami...
Studies investigating timeliness for childhood vaccination are limited especially in Asia. We examined the timeliness of vaccine administration and associated factors among infant and young children in Singapore. Total of 782 children born between November 2009 and July 2011 from a prospective cohort in Singapore were studied. Vaccination records f...
Purpose
To map the Shah-modified Barthel Index (SBI) to the Health Utility Index Mark III (HUI-3) in stroke patients, and to compare the performance of a recently developed method called the Mean Rank Method (MRM) against a popular method, the Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) method.
Methods
A cohort of 473 patients who had their first clinical stroke...
Background:
The outcomes for those with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) in Singapore are poor. In this TRIal to slow the Progression Of Diabetes (TRIPOD), we will evaluate the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of a comprehensive diabetes management package (DMP), with or without a financial incentives program, M-POWER Rewards, in efforts to imp...
Besides food quantity and quality, food timing and frequency may contribute to weight regulation. It is unclear if these factors during pregnancy can influence maternal weight retention after childbirth. We thus aimed to examine the associations of maternal circadian eating pattern and diet quality in pregnancy with substantial postpartum weight re...
Objective:
Advanced breast cancer patients around the world experience high symptom burden (i.e., distress, pain, fatigue) and are in need of psychosocial interventions that target symptom management. This study examined the feasibility, acceptability, and engagement of a psychosocial intervention that uses cognitive-behavioral strategies along wi...
Kawasaki disease (KD) is a systemic vasculitis mainly affecting young children and the leading cause of acquired heart disease in developed countries. We performed a self-controlled case series analysis to investigate the association between PCV13 and KD. All hospitalized KD cases <2 y old from our hospital in Singapore from 2010 to 2014 were inclu...
Introduction
Coordinating eating schedules with day–night cycles has been shown to improve glucose regulation in adults, but its association with gestational glycaemia is less clear. A better understanding on how eating time can influence glucose levels in pregnancy may improve strategies for gestational glycaemic control. This study aims to examin...
Background: Outcomes for those with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM) in Singapore is poor. In this TRIal to slow the Progression Of Diabetes (TRIPOD), we will evaluate the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of a comprehensive diabetes management package (DMP), with or without a financial incentives program, M-POWER Rewards, in efforts to improve H...
We tested the hypotheses that a more mature or diverse gut microbiota will be positively associated with infant growth and inversely associated with inflammation. We characterized gut microbiota from the stool samples of Malawian infants at 6 mo (n = 527), 12 mo (n = 632) and 18 mo (n = 629) of age. Microbiota diversity and maturity measurements we...
Background: Outcomes for those with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM) in Singapore is poor. In this TRIal to slow the Progression Of Diabetes (TRIPOD), we will evaluate the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of a comprehensive diabetes management package (DMP), with or without a financial incentives program, M-POWER Rewards, in efforts to improve H...
Background & aims:
Maternal metabolic disturbance arising from inappropriate meal timing or sleep deprivation may disrupt circadian rhythm, potentially inducing pregnancy complications. We examined the associations of maternal night-time eating and sleep duration during pregnancy with gestation length and preterm birth.
Methods:
We studied 673 p...
Background
Positive mindset (PM) is an important domain of health-related quality of life in Singapore, a multi-ethnic urban city state in Southeast Asia. We therefore developed and calibrated a novel item bank to measure and improve PM.
Methods
We developed an initial candidate pool of 48 items from focus groups, in-depth interviews and existing i...
Objectives:
The determinants of gut microbiota composition and its effects on common childhood illnesses are only partly understood, especially in low-income settings. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether morbidity predicts gut microbiota composition in Malawian children and whether microbiota predicts subsequent morbidity. We t...
Aims:
The 59-item Comprehensive Needs Assessment Tool (CNAT) for cancer patients is an English language survey developed in South Korea. The objective of this study was to validate the English version of CNAT in advanced cancer patients in Singapore.
Methods:
This was a cross-sectional survey where advanced cancer patients completed the CNAT in...
Context:
Family satisfaction with care is an important quality indicator in palliative care.
Objectives:
This study aimed to translate and validate the 10-item Family Satisfaction with End-of-Life Care (FAMCARE) tool.
Methods:
Family caregivers of patients with advanced cancer were recruited. FAMCARE was translated from English to Chinese usin...
Background:
Previous simulation studies of the case-control study design using incidence density sampling, which required individual matching for time, showed biased estimates of association from conditional logistic regression (CLR) analysis; however, the reason for this is unknown. Separately, in the analysis of case-control studies using the ex...
The 41-item Comprehensive Needs Assessment Tool for Cancer Caregivers (CNAT-C) is an English language survey for needs assessment developed and validated in South Korean cancer caregivers. The objective of this study was to validate both the English and a translated Chinese version of the CNAT-C in cancer caregivers in Singapore.
This was a cross-s...
Background: Exposure therapy is highly effective for social anxiety disorder. However, there is room for improvement.
Objective: This is a first attempt to examine the feasibility of an arousal feedback–based exposure therapy to alleviate social
anxiety symptoms in an analogue adult sample.
Methods: A randomized, pilot, proof-of-concept trial was c...
Vaccination is an effective approach to reduce disease burden. High vaccination coverage blocks pathogen transmission to ensure herd immunity. However, the concept of herd immunity assumes that vaccinated individuals cannot be infected and mediate silent pathogen transmission. While the correlates of vaccine-mediated protection against disease have...
Objective
The use of brain-computer interface in neurofeedback therapy for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a relatively new approach. We conducted a randomized controlled trial (RCT) to determine whether an 8-week brain computer interface (BCI)-based attention training program improved inattentive symptoms in children with ADHD c...
