Analytical reference framework to analyze non-COVID-19 events.

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the healthcare system, leading to delays in detection of other non-COVID-19 diseases. This paper presents ANE Framework (Analytics for Non-COVID-19 Events), a reliable and user-friendly analytical forecasting framework designed to predict the number of patients with non-COVID-19 diseases. Prior to 2020, there were analytical models focused on specific illnesses and contexts. Then, most models have focused on understanding COVID-19 behavior. There is a lack of analytical frameworks that enable disease forecasting for non-COVID-19 diseases. METHODS: The ANE Framework utilizes time series analysis to generate forecasting models. The framework leverages daily data from official government sources and employs SARIMA models to forecast the number of non-COVID-19 cases, such as tuberculosis and suicide attempts. RESULTS: The framework was tested on five different non-COVID-19 events. The framework performs well across all events, including tuberculosis and suicide attempts, with a Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) of up to 20% and the consistency remains independent of the behavior of each event. Moreover, a pairwise comparison of averages can lead to over or underestimation of the impact. The disruption caused by the pandemic resulted in a 17% gap (2383 cases) between expected and reported tuberculosis cases, and a 19% gap (2464 cases) for suicide attempts. These gaps varied between 20 and 64% across different cities and regions. The ANE Framework has proven to be reliable for analyzing several diseases and exhibits the flexibility to incorporate new data from various sources. Regular updates and the inclusion of new associated data enhance the framework's effectiveness. CONCLUSIONS: Current pandemic shows the necessity of developing flexible models to be adapted to different illness data. The framework developed proved to be reliable for the different diseases analyzed, presenting enough flexibility to update with new data or even include new data from different databases. To keep updated on the result of the project allows the inclusion of new data associated with it. Similarly, the proposed strategy in the ANE framework allows for improving the quality of the obtained results with news events.

Kangaroo mother care had a protective effect on the volume of brain structures in young adults born preterm.

AIM: The protective effects of Kangaroo mother care (KMC) on the neurodevelopment of preterm infants are well established, but we do not know whether the benefits persist beyond infancy. Our aim was to determine whether providing KMC in infancy affected brain volumes in young adulthood. METHOD: Standardised cognitive, memory and motor skills tests were used to determine the brain volumes of 20-year-old adults who had formed part of a randomised controlled trial of KMC versus incubator care. Multivariate analysis of brain volumes was conducted according to KMC exposure. RESULTS: The study comprised 178 adults born preterm: 97 had received KMC and 81 were incubator care controls. Bivariate analysis showed larger volumes of total grey matter, basal nuclei and cerebellum in those who had received KMC, and the white matter was better organised. This means that the volumes of the main brain structures associated with intelligence, attention, memory and coordination were larger in the KMC group. Multivariate lineal regression analysis demonstrated the direct relationship between brain volumes and duration of KMC, after controlling for potential confounders. CONCLUSION: Our findings suggest that the neuroprotective effects of KMC for preterm infants persisted beyond childhood and improved their lifetime functionality and quality of life.

Twenty-year Follow-up of Kangaroo Mother Care Versus Traditional Care.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Kangaroo mother care (KMC) is a multifaceted intervention for preterm and low birth weight infants and their parents. Short- and mid-term benefits of KMC on survival, neurodevelopment, breastfeeding, and the quality of mother-infant bonding were documented in a randomized controlled trial (RCT) conducted in Colombia from 1993 to 1996. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the persistence of these results in young adulthood. METHODS: From 2012 to 2014, a total of 494 (69%) of the 716 participants of the original RCT known to be alive were identified; 441 (62% of the participants in the original RCT) were re-enrolled, and results for the 264 participants weighing ≤1800 g at birth were analyzed. The KMC and control groups were compared for health status and neurologic, cognitive, and social functioning with the use of neuroimaging, neurophysiological, and behavioral tests. RESULTS: The effects of KMC at 1 year on IQ and home environment were still present 20 years later in the most fragile individuals, and KMC parents were more protective and nurturing, reflected by reduced school absenteeism and reduced hyperactivity, aggressiveness, externalization, and socio-deviant conduct of young adults. Neuroimaging showed larger volume of the left caudate nucleus in the KMC group. CONCLUSIONS: This study indicates that KMC had significant, long-lasting social and behavioral protective effects 20 years after the intervention. Coverage with this efficient and scientifically based health care intervention should be extended to the 18 million infants born each year who are candidates for the method.