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The student-led research process enabled identification of issues that may not have been otherwise revealed by students, facilitated a better understanding of teamwork teaching and developed ownership of the curriculum among students. The project enabled the development of recommendations for designing learning, teaching, and assessment methods that were likely to be more effective from a student perspective.

ObjectiveThe study aimed to determine factors that are associated with physicians’ decision to offer treatment for latent tuberculosis infection (LTBI) in contacts of patients with tuberculosis.MethodsWe performed a nested case-control study in a cohort of contacts of patients with pulmonary tuberculosis who had a tuberculin skin test (TST) ≥ 10 mm. Cases were those who were offered treatment for LTBI. Controls were randomly selected from those who were not offered treatment for LTBI by the reviewing physician. Odds ratios were estimated by multivariate logistic regression.ResultsThere were 195 cases and 279 controls. The following factors were significantly (positively or negatively) associated with being offered LTBI treatment in the multivariate analysis: female gender (OR 2.9; 95% CI 1.6–5.5), TST conversion (OR 3.9; 2.0–7.9), TST > 20 mm (OR 4.1; 1.8–9.1, for TST of 21–30 mm and OR 7.9; 2.6–23.8, for TST >30 mm), sputum smear positive index case (OR 12.7; 4.5–36.1), being overseas-born and immigration more than 2 years ago (OR 0.1; 0.06–0.3), being a health care worker (OR 0.2; 0.1–0.6), being a non-household contact of the TB index case (OR 0.3; 0.2–0.6) and age >35 years (OR 0.2; 0.1–0.5 for age 35 to 54.9 years and OR 0.04; 0.01–0.2 for age ≥55 years). Previous BCG vaccine and chest x-ray findings were not significantly associated with physicians’ decision to offer treatment for LTBI.ConclusionsMost factors that influenced physicians’ decisions on treatment for LTBI were based on evidence of an association with risk of developing TB or risk of having an adverse reaction to treatment for LTBI. However, the decreased likelihood of offering treatment for LTBI to people born overseas, men and health care workers, was apparently not based on any evidence of risk. Efforts should be made to ensure that these groups are given access to treatment for LTBI.

Objective. To externally validate the European League Against Rheumatism/American College of Rheumatism (EULAR/ACR) classification criteria for idiopathic inflammatory myositis (IIM) and determine the optimal cut points for Australian patients. To determine the level of agreement with traditional criteria and assess the effect of including magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and an extended myositis antibody panel as well as extending histological criteria to include myofiber invasion. Methods. Data were collected on adult patients referred for muscle biopsy to two Australian teaching hospitals. Patients were scored for "risk of IIM" according to EULAR/ACR criteria, using clinician diagnosis as the gold standard. Results. Overall, 87 of 204 patients had IIM. For patients with muscle biopsy, the optimal cut point of 5.25 (sensitivity 90%, specificity 89%) was lower than the EULAR/ACR cut point of 6.7, which in our cohort showed reduced sensitivity (71% vs 93%) but comparable specificity (89% vs 88%). We found moderate agreement between the EULAR/ACR criteria and Bohan and Peter (κ = 0.45, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.28, 0.62, P < 0.001) and Targoff (κ = 0.40, 95% CI = 0.23, 0.57, P < 0.001). Inclusion of MRI (area under curve [AUC] = 0.86, 95% CI = 0.79, 0.93) or non-Jo1 antibodies (AUC = 0.84, 95% CI = 0.77, 0.91) as covariates improved the probability of IIM diagnosis (AUC = 0.80, 95% CI = 0.75, 0.86). Extending histologic criteria to include myofiber invasion slightly improved sensitivity (75% vs 71%) with the same level of specificity (89% vs 89%). Conclusion. Application of the EULAR/ACR criteria to an Australian cohort showed comparable specificity but lower sensitivity, and a lower optimal cut point. Inclusion of MRI or non-Jo1 antibodies as covariates may improve the accuracy of determining the probability of IIM diagnoses. Extending the histologic criteria to include myofiber invasion did not reduce specificity.