Background: Functional constipation is a prevalent, burdensome gastrointestinal disorder whose treatment remains challenging. Probiotics have been increasingly investigated in its management.

Background: Citrulline has been described as a marker of intestinal function or absorption but evidence varies according to clinical settings.Objective: The objective of this article is to examine the evidence of plasma citrulline as a marker of intestinal function and absorption in various clinical settings.Methods: Studies were examined for p values, means and standard deviations, correlation coefficients or other metrics depicting the association of citrulline with intestinal function. A random effects model was used to produce a pooled estimate. A hierarchical summary receiver operating curve model was fitted for diagnostic accuracy measures.Results: Citrulline levels are correlated strongly with small bowel length in short bowel syndrome patients (r = 0.67). Citrulline is strongly negatively correlated (r = –0.56) with intestinal disease severity with regards to enteropathies (coeliac disease, tropical enteropathy, Crohn’s disease, mucositis, acute rejection in intestinal transplantation). Citrulline cut‐off levels have an overall sensitivity and specificity of 80% and 84% respectively. Citrulline levels in untreated coeliac patients compared to controls were reduced by 10 µmol/l. Citrulline levels increase with gluten‐free diet and with improvement of enteropathy. Citrulline is decreased in critical illness and sepsis.Conclusion: These findings allow us to advocate quite reasonably that citrulline is a marker of acute and chronic intestinal insufficiency.

The purpose of the present paper is to assess the efficacy of confidence intervals for Rosenthal’s fail-safe number. Although Rosenthal’s estimator is highly used by researchers, its statistical properties are largely unexplored. First of all, we developed statistical theory which allowed us to produce confidence intervals for Rosenthal’s fail-safe number. This was produced by discerning whether the number of studies analysed in a meta-analysis is fixed or random. Each case produces different variance estimators. For a given number of studies and a given distribution, we provided five variance estimators. Confidence intervals are examined with a normal approximation and a nonparametric bootstrap. The accuracy of the different confidence interval estimates was then tested by methods of simulation under different distributional assumptions. The half normal distribution variance estimator has the best probability coverage. Finally, we provide a table of lower confidence intervals for Rosenthal’s estimator.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the relationships between Problematic Internet Use (PIU) among university students in Greece and factors such as gender, age, family condition, academic performance in the last semester of their studies, enrollment in unemployment programs, amount of Internet use per week (in general and per application), additional personal habits or dependencies (number of coffees, alcoholic drinks drunk per day, taking substances, cigarettes smoked per day), and negative psychological beliefs. Data were gathered from 2,358 university students from across Greece. The prevalence of PIU was 34.7% in our sample, and PIU was significantly associated with gender, parental family status, grade of studies during the previous semester, staying or not with parents, enrollment of the student in an unemployment program, and whether the student paid a subscription to the Internet (p < 0.0001). On average, problematic Internet users use MSN, forums, YouTube, pornographic sites, chat rooms, advertisement sites, Google, Yahoo!, their e-mail, ftp, games, and blogs more than non-problematic Internet users. PIU was also associated with other potential addictive personal habits of smoking, drinking alcohol or coffee, and taking drugs. Significant risk factors for PIU were being male, enrolment in unemployment programs, presence of negative beliefs, visiting pornographic sites, and playing online games. Thus PIU is prevalent among Greek university students and attention should be given to it by health officials.