Although COVID-19 vaccines have been available in Jordan for more than a year, Jordan suffers from a low vaccination rate. The aim of this study was to explore attitudes towards recent issues in vaccination among university students in Jordan. We adopted a cross sectional study design using an online questionnaire distributed in a Jordanian university with a medical school chosen at random. The survey asked about COVID-19 vaccine preferences, factors affecting COVID-19 vaccine preferences, child vaccination, and booster vaccines. A total of 417 students completed the survey. Most respondents (54.7%) preferred the Pfizer vaccine, and 6.2% refused to take any vaccine. Pfizer’s efficacy against new strains is a main factor in preferring Pfizer over other vaccines (p < 0.01). Most respondents (71%) believed that vaccination is crucial to prevent COVID-19 surges from new COVID-19 strains, while 44.6% of respondents believed that children should be included in vaccination campaigns, and 70% believed that booster vaccines required more studies to prove their efficacy. Students had mixed attitudes towards many recent issues concerning COVID-19 vaccination. Studying these factors and attitudes in more depth and in different populations can pave the way towards improving vaccination rates worldwide.
e13640 Background: Sharing findings of clinical trials using the internet and social media is increasing. Altmetric attention scores are instantaneous evaluations of the influence and popularity of science in a variety of media, such as news, blogs, and different social media platforms. Altmetrics’ distributions and trends for subgroup analyses were not previously investigated. Our study aimed to characterize altmetrics of the studies reporting subgroup analyses of breast cancer clinical trials and to assess the association between altmetrics and other characteristics of publications. Methods: We performed a systematic review of all published secondary analyses of breast cancer clinical trials form Jan 2020 until Feb 15, 2022. 1491 secondary analysis of solid malignancies were identified of which 287 were related to breast cancer. The altmetric scores for the included studies were obtained from a website named Bookmarklet for Researchers on the 12th of Feb 2023. Pearson’s correlation, Independent Samples t test, the one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), and Chi-Square test were utilized to identify associations between a number of the studies’ characteristics and altmetrics. Statistical analysis was completed using SPSS Statistics. Results: Altmetric scores were captured for 211 (73.5%) of the 287 included publications. The median score was 4 (IQR 2-19). The captured altmetric scores ranged from 1 to 882. Around 45% of the included studies were first-authored by women and pharmaceutical companies funded approximately 35%. Both gender and funding source did not show any effect on the altmetric scores. Higher altmetric scores ( > = 4) were associated with authors who reported conflicts of interest (COI) (P = 0.001), studies published in 2015 or after (P = 0.003), papers published in journals with higher impact factors (P < 0.001), and publications with a higher number of authors (P = 0.019). Conclusions: Higher number of authors, presence of COI, higher impact factor of the publishing journal, and a publication year of 2015 or after are associated with higher altmetric scores in subgroup analyses of breast cancer-based clinical trials. Given the observational nature of secondary analysis and possible inaccurate conclusions, caution must be entertained when interpreting their findings.
e13618 Background: The use of secondary (subgroup) analyses in medical literature is increasing. Findings from subgroup analyses may be misleading given they are observational in nature and do not resemble a randomized comparisons. Our study aimed to characterize the use of post hoc subgroup analysis in interventional clinical trials across solid malignancies. Methods: We searched OVID database for articles subgroup analyses from the year 2000 until Feb 15, 2022. Some of the used search terms were post-hoc, subgroup, secondary, cancer, tumor, breast, colorectal. 11641 articles were screened to include all secondary analyses of interventional solid tumor clinical trials. We excluded original trials, secondary analyses of cohort/observational studies. Results: Our final analysis included 1491 articles. Most studied malignancy was gastrointestinal cancers (22.6%), followed by genitourinary cancers (21%), and breast cancer (19%). The number of papers published per year increased steadily over the years with a peak in 2021 (16% of all articles). About 78% of articles reported receiving funding, with 40% reporting pharma-related funding. 29% of articles reported the usage of a medical writer. 55% of articles reported that authors had conflicts of interest (COI). Pharma-related funding was significantly associated with usage of a medical writer (p < 0.001). The mean percentage of authors with COI was 31.8 ± 0.95%. Articles that reported usage of a medical writer had a higher percentage of authors with COI (p < 0.0001). Women represented 32.7% and 25.9% of first and last authors, respectively. About 44% of both first and last authors resided in North America. Half of the articles explicitly indicated that they were secondary analyses in their titles. [Table]. Conclusions: Our study indicated that the use of secondary subgroup analysis in solid malignancies clinical trials is increasing. Half of the studies did not clarify the nature of them being secondary analyses in the title. Given their increased use, caution must be entertained when interpreting the results of secondary analysis. [Table: see text]
e13661 Background: With the increasing number of clinical trials and data availability in recent years, the number of secondary analyses had subsequently increased at a global level. However, the results of such analyses must be interpreted carefully. Our study aimed to study the differences of secondary analyses based on the country of residence of the first author. Methods: We searched OVID database for articles subgroup analyses from the year 2000 until Feb 15, 2022. post-hoc, subgroup, secondary, cancer, tumor, breast, colorectal were some of the terms used in the search. Original trials, observational and secondary analyses of cohort studies were excluded. The country of the first author was used for categorizing the articles. Results: 1491 articles were included in final analysis. The first authors of 646 articles were from North America (43.9%), 476 articles from Europe (32.4%), 258 articles from East Asia (17.6%), and 86 articles from the rest of the globe (5.9%). There was a significant increase in the number of secondary analyses from East Asia especially in the last 4 years (<.001). In addition, East Asian secondary analyses were more likely to have had medical writing assistance compared to other regions (<.001). North American contribution to secondary analyses has been decreasing over the years (<.001). European analyses and analyses from the rest of the world didn’t have a significant increase over the years. Although European publication were less likely to be funded, those that were funded had a higher chance of being funded by pharmaceutical companies in comparison to the different regions (<.001). International trials that included US and non-US participants were more likely to be funded by pharmaceutical companies, had medical writing assistance, and had a higher percentage of authors with conflicts of interest than trials that only included US participants or non-US participants (<.001). Conclusions: The results show that there was an increase in secondary analyses especially from the East Asian region and those secondary analyses of international trials are highly funded and supported by pharmaceutical companies. [Table: see text]
Reticulocyte hemoglobin (CHr) is a measure of the amount of hemoglobin in reticulocytes and a marker of cell hemoglobinization. In this study, we aimed to find the optimal cut-off point for reticulocyte hemoglobin to diagnose iron deficiency anemia using multiple methods. A total of 309 patients were included. The median age at diagnosis was 54 years. Most were females (71.2%). 68% had iron deficiency anemia. Patients with IDA had significantly lower levels of CHr compared to those who had non-IDA (p < 0.0001). The optimal cut-off value of CHr for detecting IDA, determined using various methods, was 30.15 pg. This cut-off point had a sensitivity of 87.8% and a specificity of 77.7%. CHr showed a significant positive correlation with hemoglobin, mean corpuscular volume, serum iron, serum ferritin, and transferrin saturation and a significant negative correlation with total iron-binding capacity. CHr levels correlate with most established laboratory tests for IDA. It reliably detects IDA. Our results indicate the importance of CHr in diagnosing IDA, and that CHr should be used more widely in suspected cases of IDA since it is a cheap, fast, and reliable test.
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