Background Identifying effective and accessible interventions for dementia caregivers is critical as dementia prevalence increases. Objective Examine the effects of a telephone-based intervention on caregiver well-being. Design Randomized, controlled trial. Setting Academic medical center. Participants 250 distressed, family, dementia caregivers. Intervention Caregivers randomized to receive 16 telephone contacts over 6 months of either the Family Intervention: Telephone Tracking–Caregiver (FITT-C) or Telephone Support (TS). Outcome Primary outcome variables were family caregivers’ depressive symptoms, burden, and reactions to care recipients’ behavior problems at 6 months. Results The FITT-C intervention resulted in significantly improved caregiver depressive symptoms (p = 0.003; 27% net improvement) and less severe reactions to care-recipient depressive behaviors (p = 0.009; 29% net improvement) compared to the control condition (TS). Conclusion An entirely telephone-based intervention improves caregivers’ depressive symptoms and reactions to behavior problems in the care recipient and is comparable to reported results of face-to-face interventions.

Radiomics is an emerging field of medical image analysis research where quantitative measurements are obtained from radiological images that can be utilized to predict patient outcomes and inform treatment decisions. Cancer patients routinely undergo radiological evaluations when images of various modalities including computed tomography, positron emission tomography, and magnetic resonance images are collected for diagnosis and for evaluation of disease progression. Tumor characteristics, often referred to as measures of tumor heterogeneity, can be computed using these clinical images and used as predictors of disease progression and patient survival. Several approaches for quantifying tumor heterogeneity have been proposed, including intensity histogram‐based measures, shape and volume‐based features, and texture analysis. Taking into account the topology of the tumors we propose a statistical framework for estimating tumor heterogeneity using clustering based on Markov random field theory. We model the voxel intensities using a Gaussian mixture model using a Gibbs prior to incorporate voxel neighborhood information. We propose a novel approach to choosing the number of mixture components. Subsequently, we show that the proposed procedure outperforms the existing approaches when predicting lung cancer survival.

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Background and Aims: Sofosbuvir-velpatasvir-voxilaprevir is a pangenotypic regimen for chronic HCV infection. In the USA and Europe, sofosbuvirvelpatasvir-voxilaprevir once daily for 12 weeks is indicated for adults who previously received an HCV NS5A inhibitor. In Europe, sofosbuvir-velpatasvirvoxilaprevir is also indicated in the absence of prior HCV direct-acting antiviral (DAA) therapy as an 8-week or 12-week regimen. In an open-label study, we evaluated the safety, efficacy, and pharmacokinetics of sofosbuvirvelpatasvir-voxilaprevir in adolescents 12 to 17 years with chronic HCV of any genotype. Methods:In this Phase 2, multicenter study, sofosbuvir-velpatasvirvoxilaprevir 400/100/100 mg daily was administered to adolescents for 8 weeks if DAA-naïve or for 12 weeks for cirrhosis or prior DAA failure. The key efficacy endpoint was sustained virologic response 12 weeks after therapy (SVR12). Intensive pharmacokinetic sampling was done in 14 patients at week 2 or 4, and samples for population pharmacokinetics were collected in all patients.Results: All patients (n = 21) were naïve to HCV DAAs, and none had cirrhosis. HCV genotype 3a infection was most common, occurring in 43% of patients. Overall, 100% of patients (21 of 21) reached SVR12. The most common adverse events were abdominal pain and headache (24% each) and nausea (19%); no adverse events led to discontinuation. The only serious adverse event, hypotension, was considered related to study drug and resolved the same day without interruption of treatment. Sofosbuvir-velpatasvirvoxilaprevir exposures were similar to those observed in adults.