Prevalence and determinants of discrimination or harassment of women: Analysis of cross-sectional data from Bangladesh.

This study aimed to explore the prevalence and determinants of discrimination against or harassment among Bangladeshi women. The nationally representative cross-sectional data of the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey 2019 were employed in the study. Women aged 15-49 were asked whether they felt discrimination or harassment due to seven potential reasons in the last twelve months before the survey. The outcome was a binary variable indicating whether a woman has experienced discrimination or harassment for any of the seven reasons. Responses were obtained from 64378 women and analysed through bivariate and multivariate procedures. The data had a hierarchical structure since women were nested within the clusters. A mixed-effects logistic regression model was used to analyse the data appropriately. A strong association between discrimination or harassment was seen with the functional difficulties of women. Notably, women with functional difficulties were 1.629 times more likely to experience discrimination or harassment than women without such difficulties. Other significant factors were the respondents' area, age, education, current marital status, wealth index quintile and ethnicity. The study concludes that education, marital status, functional difficulties and wealth index are the most important determinants of discrimination or harassment of women.

Functional difficulty among young children in Bangladesh: An analysis of nationally representative data.

Functional difficulty in children is a crucial public health problem still undervalued in developing countries. This study explored the socio-demographic factors and anthropometry associated with children's functional difficulty in Bangladesh. Data for 2-4-year-old children, obtained from Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey 2019, were used in this study. The mixed-effects logistic regression model was used to analyse the data. Children whose mothers had functional difficulty were found to be 2.75 times more likely to have functional difficulty than children whose mothers had no functional difficulty (95% CI 1.63-4.63). Male children were more likely to experience functional difficulty than female children (OR = 1.48). Furthermore, stunting was found to be significantly associated with functional difficulty (OR = 1.50). The study also revealed that division and mother's education, specifically, children with mothers having higher secondary + education, had significant association with the outcome variable. The findings provided a vital overview of child disability in a developing country.

Early stopping in seamless phase I/II clinical trials.

In recent years, seamless phase I/II clinical trials have drawn much attention, as they consider both toxicity and efficacy endpoints in finding an optimal dose (OD). Engaging an appropriate number of patients in a trial is a challenging task. This paper attempts a dynamic stopping rule to save resources in phase I/II trials. That is, the stopping rule aims to save patients from unnecessary toxic or subtherapeutic doses. We allow a trial to stop early when widths of the confidence intervals for the dose-response parameters become narrower or when the sample size is equal to a predefined size, whichever comes first. The simulation study of dose-response scenarios in various settings demonstrates that the proposed stopping rule can engage an appropriate number of patients. Therefore, we suggest its use in clinical trials.

Combined criteria for dose optimisation in early phase clinical trials.

This paper aims to investigate whether any bridge is possible between so-called best intention and D-optimum designs. It introduces combined criteria for dose optimisation in seamless phase I/II adaptive clinical trials. Each of the optimality criteria considers efficacy and toxicity as endpoints and is based on the probability of a successful outcome and on the determinant of the Fisher information matrix for estimation of the dose-response parameters. In addition, one of the criteria incorporates penalties for choosing a toxic or inefficacious dose. Starting with the lowest dose, the adaptive design selects the dose for each subsequent cohort that maximises the respective defined criterion. The methodology is illustrated with a dose-response model that assumes trinomial responses. Simulation studies show that the method is capable of identifying the optimal dose accurately without exposing many patients to toxic doses.