Attention network training promotes selective attention of children with low socioeconomic status.

The objectives of this study were to evaluate the difference of selective attention efficiency between children with low and high socioeconomic status (SES) and the promotional effect of attention network training (an attention network test was used as the training task) on selective attention in children with the low SES. A total of 139 10- to 12-year-old children participated in two experiments (71 in Experiment 1 and 68 in Experiment 2). The results suggest that selective attention and switch ability of children with high SES are better than those of children with low SES. After attention network training, selective attention, switch ability, and working memory of low-SES children improved significantly. The findings provide evidence that attention network training could enhance selective attention in low-SES children and that the beneficial training effect could also transfer to switch ability and working memory. The research may provide a promising method to compensate cognitive delay of low-SES children.

Preoperative frailty assessment could be a predictive factor for the prognosis of elderly patients undergoing coronary artery bypass grafting: a retrospective case-control study.

BACKGROUND: Frailty has been considered to be associated with major mortality and increased length of stay after cardiac surgery. This study aimed to explore the predictive potential of frailty assessment in the prognosis of elderly patients undergoing bypass surgery. METHODS: This study assessed the preoperative frailty according to the Fried's frailty phenotype, and included 150 frail and 150 non-frail elderly patients (≥ 65 y) who underwent bypass surgery. The present study evaluated the prognosis of elderly patients based on sequential organ failure assessment (SOFA) score, and collected clinical indicators to construct logistic regression models with the prognosis as the dependent variable, to explore the potential predictive ability of preoperative frailty. Moreover, this study focused on the complications and analyzed the relationship between preoperative frailty and postoperative complications. RESULTS: In the present study, 244 patients were divided into the favorable prognosis group and 56 patients were divided into the unfavorable prognosis group. Logistic regression analysis showed that increased myoglobin and high cardiac function classification were independent risk factors for unfavorable prognosis in elderly patients undergoing bypass surgery. The discrimination of the clinical prediction model was determined by the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve, and the area under curve (AUC) was 0.928. After adding preoperative frailty assessment, the AUC was improved to 0.939. This study found a significant correlation between preoperative frailty and postoperative complications, mainly in the circulatory system. CONCLUSION: Preoperative frailty assessment could be a predictive factor for the prognosis of elderly patients undergoing coronary artery bypass grafting. According to our study, frailty assessment and appropriate intervention before bypass surgery may be beneficial to the enhanced recovery after cardiac surgery. TRIAL REGISTRATION: The clinical study was approved by the Medical Ethics Committee of The First Affiliated Hospital of Nanjing Medical University (2021-SR-393). All patients signed an informed consent form.

Strategic Shift of Statistical Review on Data Quality Assessment for New Drug Applications in China.

Data quality is critical for clinical trials to obtain robust conclusions about drug safety and efficacy evaluation. Effective data quality evaluation has been one of the major obstacles to new drug approvals in China, which hinders innovation in drug discovery and development ultimately. To improve the data quality submitted for regulatory drug approval, the China Food and Drug Administration (CFDA) has issued serial official announcements and industry guidelines regarding improvement of the clinical trial data integrity and quality since 2015. These announcements and follow-up measures are shaping up the entire pharmaceutical industry in China. While data quality is being strongly emphasized more than ever at the trial conduction phase, it is still an open question about how to assess data quality effectively at the review stage. Thus, this article describes the authors' standpoints to assess the quality and integrity of submitted clinical data via statistical review methods including advanced risk-based approaches, which may bring significant impact to new drug applications and motivate sustainable development of innovative medicines in China.