DCP is a more effective tumor marker than AFP and AFP-L3. AFP-L3 showed comparable accuracy to AFP but no benefit was found in their combination. GP73 did not play a significant role in this context. Indices of tumor invasiveness were most closely associated with DCP.

Educational Testing Serviceis an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer.Copyright© 1995 by Educational Testing Service.All rights reserved.No part of this report may bereproduced or transmittedin any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, withoutpermission in writingfrom the publisher. Violatorswill be prosecutedin accordancewithbothU.S. and international copyrightand trademarklaws.EDUCATIONAL TESTING SERVICE, ETS, the ETS logo, GRE, TOEFL, the TOEFL logo, and TWE are registeredtrademarksof EducationalTesting Service. AbstractWhen individuals perform tasks, they differ from each other not only in their ability to perform the tasks correctly, but also in their speed. Even though the traditional indicator of test speededness, missing responses, clearly indicates a lack of time to respond (thereby indicating the speededness of the test), it is inadequate for evaluating speededness in a multiple-choice test scored as number correct and underestimates test speededness. Conventional IRT parameter estimation ignores the mixture of random responses during calibration; consequently, estimated parameters are biased.The HYBRID model (Yamamoto, 1989) was extended (Yamamoto, 1990) to characterize when each examinee switches from an ability-based response strategy to a strategy of responding randomly. The model has allowed us to evaluate test speededness by estimating the proportions of examinees who switch strategies at any possible point in the test. The estimated IRT parameters based on the HYBRID model were more accurate than the ordinary IRT-only analysis.With the extended HYBRID model applied to the data taken from an experimental form of TOEFL~, we found that 1) the test length had a small impact on the proportion of the examinees affected by the speededness of the test, 2) a greater proportion of examinees were affected by speededness of a test with a 50-minute time limit than a test with a 55-or 6O-minute time limit, and 3) the difference in the proportions of examinees affected by speededness of tests under 55-and 6O-minute time limits was small. However, nearly 20 percent of the examinees were affected by speededness after completing 80 percent of the test. In other words, the last 20 percent of the responses of 20 percent of the examinees did not represent their true ability. A continuing programof research relatedto the TOEFL test is carriedout under the direction of the TOEFL Research Committee. Its six members include representatives of the Policy Council, the TOEFLCommittee of Examiners, anddistinguished Englishas a secondlanguagespecialists from the academic community. The Committee meets twice yearlyto reviewand approveproposals for testrelatedresearchand to set guidelines for the entirescopeof theTOEFLresearchprogram. Members of theResearch Committeeservethree-year termsat theinvitation of thePolicy Council; thechairof the committee serves on the Policy Council.The Test of English as a Foreign Language was deve...

DCP is a more accurate, albeit complementary, HCC marker than AFP. While the levels of both markers increased with advancing tumor growth, no specific associations were found. The marker values at recurrence indicated the type of recurrence.

No abstract

No abstract

The generalized partial-credit model (GPCM) is used frequently in educational testing and in large-scale assessments for analyzing polytomous data. Special cases of the generalized partial-credit model are the partial-credit model-or Rasch model for ordinal data-and the two-parameter logistic (2PL) model. This article extends the GPCM to the class of discrete mixture distribution models. The developments presented here extend models such as the mixed Rasch model and dichotomous multiparameter item response theory (IRT) mixture models. In addition, the model proposed here allows estimation of multigroup models with partially missing grouping information. An application of the proposed partially observed mixture IRT model to a sparse matrix sample of item responses from a national large-scale assessment program is also presented. Index terms: item response theory (IRT), discrete mixture IRT models, multiple group IRT, generalized partial credit model (GPCM), missing data.Item response theory (IRT) models (Lord & Novick, 1968) idealize response behavior by a number of assumptions that commonly include local independence assumptions, monotonicity assumptions, and often specific functional forms modeling the dependency of the probability of correct item responses on ability. It is also common to include certain item and person homogeneity assumptions, which leads to very simple model structures. Most, if not all, of these simplifying assumptions can and have been relaxed in model extensions, which has led to models that are more appropriate for specific applications.Still, most extended models assume a continuous person variable, which may be unidimensional or multidimensional, and has-at least conceptually-indefinitely many different outcomes. In contrast to this continuity assumption, the actual estimation procedures that model the person variable as a nuisance parameter use a discrete approximation to the continuous person parameter distribution. For the Rasch model, conditional maximum likelihood (CML) estimation exploits the fact that the number of distinguishable ability estimates equals the number of sum scores. For the two-and three-parameter IRT models, the marginal maximum likelihood (MML) estimation uses a discrete approximation of the continuous integral to "marginalize" the likelihood. In this way, MML enables the estimation of item parameters without jointly estimating ability parameters.

| INTRODUC TI ONHelicobacter pylori infection of the gastric epithelial mucosa affects approximately 50% of the population worldwide. In developing countries, H pylori infection has been observed in more than 90% of the population because this infection remains asymptomatic in early childhood, resulting in an enormous economic burden on healthcare resources. 1,2 Standard triple antibiotic therapy (proton-pump inhibitor (PPI) in combination with two of the following: amoxicillin, clarithromycin, or metronidazole) has been the preferred initial approach for H pylori eradication. 3 However, due to increased resistance of H pylori to clarithromycin and/or metronidazole, the eradication rate with triple therapy has reduced to <70% presently, down from >90% observed in the 1990s. 4 In Japan, decreased eradication of H pylori with the Abstract Background: Probiotics are beneficial to patients with Helicobacter pylori infections by modulating the gut microbiota. Biofermin-R (BFR) is a multiple antibiotic-resistant lactic acid bacteria preparation of Enterococcus faecium 129 BIO 3B-R and is effective in normalizing the gut microbiota when used in combination with antibiotics. This study aimed to determine the effect of BFR in combination with vonoprazan (VPZ)based therapy on gut microbiota. Methods: Patients with positive urinary anti-H pylori antibody test (primary test) and fecal H pylori antigen test (secondary test) were examined. Patients in group 1 (BFR − )received VPZ (20 mg twice daily), amoxicillin (750 mg twice daily), and clarithromycin (400 mg twice daily) for 7 days. Patients in group 2 (BFR + ) received BFR (3 tablets/ day) for 7 days, in addition to the aforementioned treatments. Following treatment, the relative abundance, α-diversity, and β-diversity of gut microbiota were assessed.Results: Supplementation with BFR prevented the decrease in α-diversity after eradication therapy (Day 7). β-diversity was similar between groups. The incidence rate of diarrhea was non-significantly higher in the BFR − than in the BFR + group (73.1% vs 56.5%; P = .361). Stool consistency was comparable in the BFR + group on Days 7 and 1 (3.86 ± 0.95 vs 3.86 ± 1.46; P = .415). Conclusion:Biofermin-R combined with VPZ-based therapy resulted in higher microbial α-strain diversity and suppressed stool softening during H pylori eradication therapy. K E Y W O R D S Biofermin-R, gut microbiota, Helicobacter pylori, vonoprazan S U PP O RTI N G I N FO R M ATI O N Additional supporting information may be found online in the Supporting Information section. How to cite this article: Kakiuchi T, Mizoe A, Yamamoto K, et al. Effect of probiotics during vonoprazan-containing triple therapy on gut microbiota in Helicobacter pylori infection: A randomized controlled trial. Helicobacter. 2020;25:e12690.

No abstract