BackgroundPatient adherence is an important issue for health service providers and health researchers. However, the knowledge structure of diverse research on treatment adherence is unclear. This study used co-word analysis and social network analysis techniques to analyze research literature on adherence, and to show their knowledge structure and evolution over time.MethodsPublished scientific papers about treatment adherence were retrieved from Web of Science (2000 to May 2011). A total of 2308 relevant articles were included: 788 articles published in 2000–2005 and 1520 articles published in 2006–2011. The keywords of each article were extracted by using the software Biblexcel, and the synonym and isogenous words were merged manually. The frequency of keywords and their co-occurrence frequency were counted. High frequency keywords were selected to yield the co-words matrix. Finally the decomposition maps were used to comb the complex knowledge structures.ResultsResearch themes were more general in the first period (2000 to 2005), and more extensive with many more new terms in the second period (2006 to 2011). Research on adherence has covered more and more diseases, populations and methods, but other diseases/conditions are not as hot as HIV/AIDS and have not become specialty themes/sub-directions. Most studies originated from the United States.ConclusionThe dynamic of this field is mainly divergent, with increasing number of new sub-directions of research. Future research is required to investigate specific directions and converge as well to construct a general paradigm in this field.
Aims: To investigate the incidence and genotype of Cryptosporidium parvum oocysts in drinking water sources in Northern Ireland for the period 1996±1999, and to compare conventional and molecular methods of detection. Methods and Results: Four hundred and seventy-four waters were investigated by conventional methods, namely immuno-¯uorescent antibody detection (IFA; 380) and immuno-magnetic separation-IFA (IMS-IFA; 94), of which 14/474 (3%) were positive. Two hundred and fourteen samples (214/474) were also investigated by PCR techniques, targeting both the 18S rRNA and TRAP-C2 genes, of which 11/214 (5á1%) were positive. These 11 samples were classi®ed as genotype II following sequence analysis of the TRAP-C2 amplicon. Conclusions: This study demonstrated the low incidence of oocysts of C. parvum in water sources in Northern Ireland. Signi®cance and Impact of the Study: Such molecular-based techniques offer a number of advantages over conventional detection methodologies, namely greater sensitivity and speci®city as well as the ability to provide accurate genotyping data rapidly, which may be valuable in directing operational management in potential outbreak situations.
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