True Causal Factor Research Articles

Career duration and later-life health conditions among former professional American-style football players

ObjectivesCareer duration is often used as a metric of neurotrauma exposure in studies of elite athletes. However, as a proxy metric, career length may not accurately represent causal factors, and...

Beyond Relevance: Factor-level Causal Explanation for User Travel Decisions with Counterfactual Data Augmentation

Point-of-Interest (POI) recommendation, an important research hotspot in the field of urban computing, plays a crucial role in urban construction. While understanding the process of users’ travel decisions and exploring the causality of POI choosing is not easy due to the complex and diverse influencing factors in urban travel scenarios. Moreover, the spurious explanations caused by severe data sparsity, i.e., misrepresenting universal relevance as causality, may also hinder us from understanding users’ travel decisions. To this end, in this article, we propose a factor-level causal explanation generation framework based on counterfactual data augmentation for user travel decisions, named Factor-level Causal Explanation for User Travel Decisions (FCE-UTD), which can distinguish between true and false causal factors and generate true causal explanations. Specifically, we first assume that a user decision is composed of a set of several different factors. Then, by preserving the user decision structure with a joint counterfactual contrastive learning paradigm, we learn the representation of factors and detect the relevant factors. Next, we further identify true causal factors by constructing counterfactual decisions with a counterfactual representation generator, in particular, it can not only augment the dataset and mitigate the sparsity but also contribute to clarifying the causal factors from other false causal factors that may cause spurious explanations. Besides, a causal dependency learner is proposed to identify causal factors for each decision by learning causal dependency scores. Extensive experiments conducted on three real-world datasets demonstrate the superiority of our approach in terms of check-in rate, fidelity, and downstream tasks under different behavior scenarios. The extra case studies also demonstrate the ability of FCE-UTD to generate causal explanations in POI choosing.

MP20-13 QUANTIFYING TIME TO ORGASM AFTER GENDER AFFIRMING VAGINOPLASTY

You have accessJournal of UrologyCME1 May 2022MP20-13 QUANTIFYING TIME TO ORGASM AFTER GENDER AFFIRMING VAGINOPLASTY Gaines Blasdel, Elijah Castle, Carmen Kloer, Augustus Parker, Rachel Bluebond-Langner, and Lee Zhao Gaines BlasdelGaines Blasdel More articles by this author , Elijah CastleElijah Castle More articles by this author , Carmen KloerCarmen Kloer More articles by this author , Augustus ParkerAugustus Parker More articles by this author , Rachel Bluebond-LangnerRachel Bluebond-Langner More articles by this author , and Lee ZhaoLee Zhao More articles by this author View All Author Informationhttps://doi.org/10.1097/JU.0000000000002553.13AboutPDF ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints ShareFacebookLinked InTwitterEmail Abstract INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVE: Many transgender and nonbinary (henceforth, “trans”) patients have goals related to sexual health when seeking gender affirming vaginoplasty, and previous investigations have only studied ability to orgasm at cross-sectional timepoints. Our aim is to quantify the time to orgasm postoperative primary robotic peritoneal gender affirming vaginoplasty and describe potential correlative factors, including pre-operative orgasm to better inform preoperative counseling. METHODS: Retrospective chart review was utilized to extract factors thought to influence pre- and post-operative orgasm in patients undergoing robotic peritoneal flap vaginoplasty. Mean days to orgasm plus one standard deviation above that mean was used to define time at which patients would be considered anorgasmic. RESULTS: A total of 199 trans patients underwent surgery from September 2017 to August 2020. Median time to orgasm was 180 days. 178 patients had completed one year of follow up or greater, and of these patients, 153 (86%) were orgasmic and 25 patients (14%) were not (Figure 1). Difficulty in pre-operative orgasm was correlated only with older age (median age 45.9 years versus 31.7, p=.03). Post-operative orgasm was not significantly correlated with pre-operative orgasm. The only factor related to post-operative orgasm was smoking history: 12 of 55 patients (21.8%) who had a positive smoking history and sufficient follow up reported anorgasmia (p-value 0.046). CONCLUSIONS: Preoperative difficulty with orgasm appears to be treated with gender affirming vaginoplasty, conferring similar post-surgical orgasm rates to those who struggled with orgasm before surgery. Smoking had a negative impact on post-operative orgasm recovery despite negative cotinine test prior to surgery, signaling that prolonged smoking cessation may improve orgasmic outcomes, or that underlying exposures correlated with smoking may be the true causal factor inhibiting recovery of orgasm. The majority of patients were orgasmic at their six month follow up appointment, however patients became newly orgasmic in appreciable numbers more than one year after surgery. Interventions for anorgasmic patients include testosterone replacement, pelvic floor physical therapy, and psychotherapy. Source of Funding: None © 2022 by American Urological Association Education and Research, Inc.FiguresReferencesRelatedDetails Volume 207Issue Supplement 5May 2022Page: e322 Advertisement Copyright & Permissions© 2022 by American Urological Association Education and Research, Inc.MetricsAuthor Information Gaines Blasdel More articles by this author Elijah Castle More articles by this author Carmen Kloer More articles by this author Augustus Parker More articles by this author Rachel Bluebond-Langner More articles by this author Lee Zhao More articles by this author Expand All Advertisement PDF DownloadLoading ...

Carcinogenesis with mitochondrial respiratory degeneration was testified using a specific herbal medicine

Background: Oncologists continue to dispute whether the main factors underlying carcinogenesis are related to genetic abnormalities or rather protracted mitochondrial respiratory dysfunction, both are core reasons for the occurrence of carcinogenesis. Thus, the aim of this article is to demonstrate that mitochondrial respiratory degeneration might be the true causal factor underlying carcinogenesis by presenting evidence obtained from experiments with a specific herbal medicine to inhibit oxygen respiration in cancer cells. Methods: The tested herbal medicine (Sun Advance) was used to selectively impact mitochondrial respiration of cancer cells, which is a hallmark of cancer, the results would thereby obtain evidence that carcinogenesis originates from mitochondrial respiratory degeneration. Results: In cellular and animal experiments, the Sun Advance had good effects against most hallmarks of cancer. Conclusion: Carcinogenesis is a form of disease initiation due to mitochondrial respiratory degeneration testified using a specific herbal medicine. This demonstrate that mitochondrial respiratory degeneration might be re-differentiating factor with the use of herbal medicine. Therefore, primary cancer prevention programs should advocate for life-style changes and dietary energy restriction. Keywords: Genetic abnormalities, Protracted mitochondrial respiratory degeneration, Genetic instability, Herbal medicine, Cancer cell respiration, Defective immune-surveillance.

THE NEGATIVE IMPACT OF SOMATIC PATHOLOGIES ON THE CONDITION OF ORGANS AND TISSUES OF THE ORAL CAVITY

Relevance. The severity of manifestations and negative symptoms of pathological changes in the soft and hard tissues of the oral cavity are directly correlated with the frequency of use of potent drugs and the severity of the course of mental disorders.The purpose of the study was to assess the dental status in people with mental disorders.Material and research methods. The dental status of 210 patients with schizophrenia aged 20 to 45 years was stud-ied. The control group consisted of 208 people without mental pathology, as well as 190 patients suffering from borderline mental disorders. The incidence and intensity of caries was determined by the CPU index. The preva-lence and intensity of periodontal disease The prevalence of periodontal disease was evaluated by the CPITN index, WHO, 1980.The results of our own research. It should be noted that, in a comparative aspect, in individuals not exposed to somatic pathology, the indicators for the frequent detec-tion of periodontal pockets accompanied by varying de-grees of tooth mobility were almost two times lower. The incidence of dental caries was significantly higher in the main group and in the comparison group, compared with the data in the control group. With schizophrenia, the number of patients who were diagnosed with damage to the hard tissues of the teeth, as well as their opponents in the comparison group, was 100%, while in the third group, the number was determined to be within the range of 91.8 ± 1.90 %. According to the results of a statistical analysis of the results obtained for all groups and ages, the incidence of cross bite increased compared with other groups in the comparison group, which consisted of pa-tients with other mental disorders – 8.4±2.01 %, versus 3.2 ± 1.18 % and 0, in the main group of patients with schizophrenia and the control group of healthy individu-als, respectively.Conclusions. The identification at this stage of diagnosis of the true causal factors in the examined patient popula-tion is an important point in determining the need and planning the necessary amount of orthodontic interven-tion, which minimizes the risk of a deterioration in the quality of life of these patients and thereby greatly im-proves the effectiveness of complex treatment of the un-derlying background pathology.

The Promise of Well-Being Interventions for Improving Health Risk Behaviors

Accumulating evidence suggests that positive psychological well-being (e.g., optimism, life satisfaction) is associated with a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease. One possible explanation for this association is that individuals with greater positive psychological well-being tend to engage in health behaviors that are relevant to the prevention of cardiovascular disease (e.g., exercising, eating a healthy diet, avoiding smoking). If positive psychological well-being actually precedes and induces healthy behaviors such that it is a true causal factor, then well-being may be a useful target for intervention. In this article, we briefly review evidence linking well-being with health behaviors. We also describe possible strategies to enhance well-being (e.g., expressing gratitude, mindfulness meditation) and evaluate how effective such strategies may be for fostering behavior change.

FEPI-MB: identifying SNPs-disease association using a Markov Blanket-based approach

BackgroundThe interactions among genetic factors related to diseases are called epistasis. With the availability of genotyped data from genome-wide association studies, it is now possible to computationally unravel epistasis related to the susceptibility to common complex human diseases such as asthma, diabetes, and hypertension. However, the difficulties of detecting epistatic interaction arose from the large number of genetic factors and the enormous size of possible combinations of genetic factors. Most computational methods to detect epistatic interactions are predictor-based methods and can not find true causal factor elements. Moreover, they are both time-consuming and sample-consuming.ResultsWe propose a new and fast Markov Blanket-based method, FEPI-MB (Fast EPistatic Interactions detection using Markov Blanket), for epistatic interactions detection. The Markov Blanket is a minimal set of variables that can completely shield the target variable from all other variables. Learning of Markov blankets can be used to detect epistatic interactions by a heuristic search for a minimal set of SNPs, which may cause the disease. Experimental results on both simulated data sets and a real data set demonstrate that FEPI-MB significantly outperforms other existing methods and is capable of finding SNPs that have a strong association with common diseases.ConclusionsFEPI-MB algorithm outperforms other computational methods for detection of epistatic interactions in terms of both the power and sample-efficiency. Moreover, compared to other Markov Blanket learning methods, FEPI-MB is more time-efficient and achieves a better performance.

Depression and Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus: A Call to Explore the Common Cause Hypothesis

I read the recent article by Pan and colleagues1 with great interest. Their findings using the Short-Form 36 Health Status Survey suggest that even mood disturbances that do not require clinical intervention are predictive of diabetes. This interpretation, combined with the counterintuitive finding that nonsevere depression was similarly, and potentially more strongly, associated with diabetes risk than severe depression reported in another recent article,2 begs the question(s): What is it about depressed mood, regardless of severity, that predicts diabetes? Is there some omitted confounder that could explain this finding? The “Patient Perspective” that accompanied the recent article by Campayo and colleagues2 hints at a potential candidate: stress. The woman described in this vignette experienced both a major life event—widowhood—and complicated bereavement prior to onset of diabetes. Stressful life events are a well-documented cause of depression.3 Recent work on the physiologic consequences of stress (canonized in concepts such as allostatic load) suggests stress can also increase the risk of physical health conditions in later life.4 If stress, rather than depression, is the true causal factor, this would explain the consistent finding from epidemiologic research that antidepressant use is not associated with lower risk of developing diabetes (and may, as reported by Pan et al1 and others, be associated with an elevated risk of diabetes). Other depression treatment trials in the context of medical conditions have also failed to demonstrate reduced risk of medical conditions or complications, despite achieving psychopathologic improvements.5 If stress promotes development of both depression and diabetes,6 this suggests that treating depression without addressing the underlying sources of adversity and stress will not influence the risk of medical conditions subsequent to depression. It is clear that we need to move beyond characterizations of comorbid depression-diabetes and begin testing etiologic models of how this phenomenon arises. These models must be flexible and creative to account for counterintuitive findings and acknowledge that the salience of various etiologic mechanisms may change over the lifespan.

Response to: “AT1-Receptor Autoantibody: A True Causal Factor of Preeclampsia or Only a Marker of Poor Placentation?”

Response to: “AT1-Receptor Autoantibody: A True Causal Factor of Preeclampsia or Only a Marker of Poor Placentation?”

Understanding preventable hospital readmissions: Masqueraders, markers, and true causal factors

Understanding preventable hospital readmissions: Masqueraders, markers, and true causal factors

Absence of trends in relative risk estimates for the association between Black Smoke and daily mortality over a 34 years period in The Netherlands

A major issue in air pollution epidemiology is whether the associations that are found in the statistical analyses on the health effects of air pollution reflect real causal associations of single components or mixtures thereof, or just reflect statistical associations that are mainly the result of the high correlation between the separate components, one of them being the true causal factor. In a previous analysis on the relationship between daily SO 2 levels and daily mortality in The Netherlands [Buringh, E., Fischer, P., Hoek, G., 2000. Is SO 2 a causative factor for the PM-associated mortality risks in The Netherlands? Inhal. Toxicol. 12 (Suppl. 1), 55–60.], it was shown that the statistical significant association between daily variation in SO 2 and daily mortality did not reflect a causal relation. Black Smoke levels in The Netherlands have decreased 4-fold during the 34 years in the period 1972–2006 (annual average from 27 μg m −3 to 6 μg m −3). This large decrease in concentrations enabled us to use the same approach for this component as was done earlier for SO 2 to assess whether a decreasing trend in Black Smoke levels in The Netherlands is associated with an increasing trend in mortality relative risks or not. We used daily averaged Black Smoke (BS) data from 1972 to 2006. In the first two decades (1970–1990) only sparse data were available. Based on the availability of the data, we selected data from 1972 to 1974 and from 1982 to 1984 because during these two periods continuous daily measurement series were available. For the later years (1989–2006) data covering the whole of The Netherlands were available, giving a total of 24 years of daily data. Data on daily total mortality counts (excluding external causes), cardiovascular mortality and respiratory mortality for the whole population of The Netherlands were analyzed with regard to daily Black Smoke levels using generalized additive Poisson regression models (GAM). Period specific relative risk estimates were compared and differences in estimates between periods were evaluated. We found no consistent increase in relative risks for daily total and cause-specific mortality over time, despite the decreasing trend in the Black Smoke levels in The Netherlands. Average relative risks for total mortality varied over the different periods from 0.997 per 10 μg m −3 daily Black Smoke to 1.010 per 10 μg m −3. Average relative risks for cardiovascular mortality varied from 0.988 per 10 μg m −3 to 1.010 per 10 μg m −3 and for respiratory mortality from 1.000 to 1.010 per 10 μg m −3. For weekly averaged concentrations the average relative risks for total mortality varied over the different periods from 1.004 per 10 μg m −3 Black Smoke to 1.018 per 10 μg m −3. Average relative risks for cardiovascular mortality varied from 1.003 per 10 μg m −3 to 1.016 per 10 μg m −3 and for respiratory mortality from 1.000 to 1.050 per 10 μg m −3. The result of our analyses suggests that Black Smoke cannot be excluded as a potential causal agent because relative risks over time show no increasing trend despite the decreasing trend in Black Smoke concentrations.

Gender stereotypes and social-desirability effects on charity donation

Charities are competing as never before for consumers' donations. Simply asking individuals what influences their donation decisions may not reveal true causal factors. Social-desirability pressures may prompt potential donors to respond with answers that make them look good, instead of with factors that truly influence their behavior. In two experiments, subjects pledged lower amounts to the same charity when information about the organization's director and/or spouse reinforced a negative stereotype for the gender of those subjects. The manipulated variables were neither identified as important in pretests nor acknowledged by subjects in the experiments. The results of a final study suggest that peer interpretation research techniques can help to more fully reveal factors relevant to donation behavior. These research findings suggest that charities must be aware of social-desirability issues when selecting content for their advertisements. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Disputed Cause, Disputed Effect: The Postmaterialist Thesis Re-Examined

Using data from the 1990-93 World Values Survey and the earlier Political Action Survey, this article examines contending interpretations of the highly replicated relationship between education and support for allegedly postmaterialist value priorities. One interpretation, favored by Ronald Inglehart and his associates, holds that the relationship is the spurious result of the tendency for education to be associated with contemporary and especially formative material security. The other argues that education is a true causal factor, but that the dependent phenomenon is not postmaterialism but support for democratic values. After demonstrating that the evidence favors the latter interpretation, the nature of education's causal role is explored. Among the possibilities that are considered is that education increases support for pro-democratic values by enhancing political efficacy and cognitive mobilization and that schools are loci for the direct or indirect socialization of students into democratic values. Also investigated is whether simply living in democratic societies socializes individuals into democratic norms. The article concludes with a comparison of alternative measures of values priorities and an evaluation of the implications of these findings for our understanding of the nature of the global culture shift.