Experts and international organizations hypothesize that the number of cases of fatal intimate partner violence against women increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, primarily due to social distancing strategies and the implementation of lockdowns to reduce the spread of the virus. We described cases of attempted femicide and femicide in Chile before (January 2014 to February 2020) and during (March 2020 to June 2021) the pandemic. The attempted-femicide rate increased during the pandemic (incidence rate ratio: 1.22 [95% confidence interval: 1.04 to 1.43], p value: 0.016), while the rate of femicide cases remained unchanged. When a comparison between attempted-femicide and femicide cases was performed, being a foreigner, having an intimate partner relationship with a perpetrator aged 40 years or more, and the use of firearms during the assault were identified as factors associated independently with a higher probability of being a fatal victim in Chile. In conclusion, this study emphasizes that attempted femicide and femicide continued to occur frequently in family contexts both before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

To estimate the prevalence and risk factors associated with the primary angle-closure disease spectrum in participants of the Colombian Glaucoma Study. A cross-sectional study in subjects older than 50 years with a diagnosis of diabetes mellitus or/and systemic hypertension was conducted in Colombia to estimate glaucoma prevalence. This study included 1749 patients and classified them using gonioscopy into either open-angle or primary angle-closure disease spectrum groups. The patients in the primary angle-closure disease spectrum group were then subdivided into the following categories: primary angle-closure suspect, primary angle-closure, and primary angle-closure glaucoma. A logistic regression model was carried out to identify factors related to the primary angle-closure disease spectrum, including age, sex, height, and refraction. The prevalence of primary angle-closure disease spectrum was 19.3% (338) (95% CI: 17.5–21.2). The prevalence of primary angle-closure suspect, primary angle-closure, and primary angle-closure glaucoma was 8.0% (140) (95% CI: 6.8–9.4), 10.1% (176) (95% CI: 8.7–11.6), and 1.2% (22) (95% CI: 0.8–1.9), respectively. In the multivariate analysis, advanced age (+80 years), female sex, and high hyperopia (p = 0.000, 0.021, and 0.001, respectively) were identified as independent factors related to the primary angle-closure disease spectrum. A high prevalence of primary angle-closure disease spectrum was found in Colombian patients with a diagnosis of diabetes mellitus or/and systemic hypertension, especially primary angle-closure and primary angle-closure glaucoma. Age, female sex, and high hyperopia were identified as risk factors for the primary angle-closure disease spectrum.

Background: The aim was to compare the effects of high-flux hemodialysis (HF-HD) versus high-volume post-dilution hemodiafiltration (HV-HDF) on mortality risk. Methods: Retrospective observational study of prevalent patients on hemodialysis who were followed for two years and treated in 28 kidney centers in Colombia. In this study, we included all adult patients who had been on dialysis for at least 90 days treated with an arteriovenous fistula. They were classified as HF-HD if they underwent this treatment exclusively (100% of time). For HV-HDF, if they received this treatment in more than 90% of the observation period. The primary outcome variable was mortality, and the type of hemodialysis therapy was considered as the exposure variable. Propensity score matching (PSM) and Cox regression models were used to evaluate the effect of dialysis modality on the mortality risk. Results: A total of 2933 patients were analyzed, 2361 patients with HF-HD and 572 with HV-HDF. After PSM, 1010 prevalent patients remained; mortality rate was 14.2% (95% Confidence Interval—CI: 11.3–17.6%) and 5.9% (95%CI: 4.0–8.4%) in HF-HD and HV-HDF group, respectively. HV-HDF therapy was associated with a 55% reduction in mortality compared with the HF-HD group (Hazards ratio-HR: 0.45 [95%CI 0.32–0.64] p < 0.001). Cardiovascular mortality rate was not statistically different between groups (HF-HD: 7.1% (36), HV-HDF: 3.4% (17), HR: 0.51 (95%CI: 0.21–1.28), p: 0.152). However, in patients younger than 60 years, a beneficial effect was observed in favor to HV-HDF therapy with a 79% reduction in cardiovascular mortality risk (HR: 0.21, (95%CI: 0.05–0.79), p: 0.021). Conclusion: After adjustment for different confounders, this study suggests that HV-HDF could reduce all-cause mortality compared to HF-HD therapy in prevalent patients on hemodialysis.

Background: Calcific aortic valve stenosis (CAVS) is a fatal disease and there is no pharmacological treatment to prevent the progression of CAVS. This study aims to identify genes potentially implicated with CAVS in patients with congenital bicuspid aortic valve (BAV) and tricuspid aortic valve (TAV) in comparison with patients having normal valves, using a knowledge-slanted random forest (RF). Results: This study implemented a knowledge-slanted random forest (RF) using information extracted from a protein-protein interactions network to rank genes in order to modify their selection probability to draw the candidate split-variables. A total of 15,191 genes were assessed in 19 valves with CAVS (BAV, n = 10; TAV, n = 9) and 8 normal valves. The performance of the model was evaluated using accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity to discriminate cases with CAVS. A comparison with conventional RF was also performed. The performance of this proposed approach reported improved accuracy in comparison with conventional RF to classify cases separately with BAV and TAV (Slanted RF: 59.3% versus 40.7%). When patients with BAV and TAV were grouped against patients with normal valves, the addition of prior biological information was not relevant with an accuracy of 92.6%. Conclusion: The knowledge-slanted RF approach reflected prior biological knowledge, leading to better precision in distinguishing between cases with BAV, TAV, and normal valves. The results of this study suggest that the integration of biological knowledge can be useful during difficult classification tasks.