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The obesity epidemic progresses everywhere across the globe, and implementing frequent nationwide surveys to measure the percentage of obese population is costly. Conversely, country-level food sales information can be accessed inexpensively through different suppliers on a regular basis. This study applies a methodology to predict obesity prevalence at the country-level based on national sales of a small subset of food and beverage categories. Three machine learning algorithms for nonlinear regression were implemented using purchase and obesity prevalence data from 79 countries: support vector machines, random forests and extreme gradient boosting. The proposed method was validated in terms of both the absolute prediction error and the proportion of countries for which the obesity prevalence was predicted satisfactorily. We found that the most-relevant food category to predict obesity is baked goods and flours, followed by cheese and carbonated drinks.

Background Most data on mortality and prognostic factors of universal healthcare waiting lists come from North America, Australasia, and Europe, with little information from South America. We aimed to determine the relationship between medical center-specific waiting time and waiting list mortality in Chile. Method Using data from all new patients listed in medical specialist waitlists for non-prioritized health problems from 2008 to 2015 in three geographically distant regions of Chile, we constructed hierarchical multivariate survival models to predict mortality risk at two years after registration for each medical center. Kendall rank correlation analysis was used to measure the association between medical center-specific mortality hazard ratio and waiting times. Result There were 987,497 patients waiting for care at 77 medical centers, including 33,546 (3.40%) who died within two years after registration. Male gender (hazard ratio [HR] = 1.17, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.1–1.24), older age (HR = 2.88, 95% CI 2.72–3.05), urban residence (HR = 1.19, 95% CI 1.09–1.31), tertiary care (HR = 2.2, 95% CI 2.14–2.26), oncology (HR = 3.57, 95% CI 3.4–3.76), and hematology (HR = 1.6, 95% CI 1.49–1.73) were associated with higher risk of mortality at each medical center with large region-to-region variations. There was a statistically significant association between waiting time variability and death (Z = 2.16, P = 0.0308). Conclusion Patient wait time for non-prioritized health conditions was associated with increased mortality in Chilean hospitals. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s12889-019-6526-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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Background: Most data on mortality and prognostic factors of universal healthcare waiting lists come from North America, Australasia, and Europe, with little information from South America. We aimed to determine the relationship between medical center-specific waiting time and waiting list mortality in Chile. Method: Using data from all new patients listed in medical specialist waitlists for non-prioritized health problems from 2008 to 2015 in three geographically distant regions of Chile, we constructed hierarchical multivariate survival models to predict mortality risk at two years after registration for each medical center. Kendall rank correlation analysis was used to measure the association between medical center-specific mortality hazard ratio and waiting times. Result: There were 987,497 patients waiting for care at 77 medical centers, including 33,546 (3.40%) who died within two years after registration. Male gender (hazard ratio [HR] = 1.17, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.1-1.24), older age (HR = 2.88, 95% CI 2.72-3.05), urban residence (HR = 1.19, 95% CI 1.09-1.31), tertiary care (HR = 2.2, 95% CI 2.14-2.26), oncology (HR = 3.57, 95% CI 3.4-3.76), and hematology (HR = 1.6, 95% CI 1.49-1.73) were associated with higher risk of mortality at each medical center with large region-to-region variations. There was a statistically significant association between waiting time variability and death (Z = 2.16, P = 0.0308). Conclusion:Patient wait time for non-prioritized health conditions was associated with increased mortality in Chilean hospitals.

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a systemic autoimmune disease that affects 0.8% of the world population, it affects the synovial membrane of joints and the clinical presentation encompasses a wide spectrum, ranging from a mild to a severe and erosive disease that causes joint and cartilage destruction which finally provokes irreversible structural damage and patient disability. In the last years, there have been important advances in the pathogenesis of this disease, the efforts have been concentrated on pro-inflammatory cytokines such as tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNFalpha). This protein guides numerous events in the synovial and systemic inflammatory process and is encoded in the Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC), one of the most polymorphic of the genome. Polymorphisms affecting the TNFalpha gene and its regulatory regions are associated with RA prevalence and course. There is a possible association between these polymorphisms and the clinical response to the use of monoclonal antibodies anti-TNFalpha. The possibility that the determination of genotypes -238 and -308 may have prognostic and therapeutic consequences is debated nowadays.

Introducción L a vacunación antineumocócica se ha realizado desde principios del siglo pasado, es decir, antes del inicio de los antimicrobianos, con células bacterianas completas o polisacáridos capsulares. Siendo una causa importante de morbimortalidad, el interés por las inmunizaciones contra Streptococcus pneumoniae ha sido permanente en diferentes países; no obstante, las decisiones son muy variadas de país a país. Por ejemplo, Estados Unidos de América (E.U.A.) recomienda una vacunación secuencial con vacuna conjugada 13 valente (PCV13) seguida de vacuna polisacárida 23 valente (PSV23) para la protección de los adultos mayores 1 , mientras que en Europa los esquemas son, en general, más simples. De 31 países europeos, en cinco se utiliza la estrategia combinada de PCV13 seguida de PSV23, en cinco se utiliza sólo PCV13, en 11 se recomienda PSV23 y en 10 no hay recomendación de vacuna antineumocócica 2. En este contexto, se decidió realizar una recomendación para Chile basada en su epidemiología local. La infección neumocócica invasora es una enfermedad grave y de alta mortalidad. En Chile, entre los Recomendación del CAVEI de vacunación antineumocócica en adultos CAVEI recommendation for pneumococcal vaccine use in adults

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