Tumour necrosis factor receptor-75 and risk of COPD exacerbation in the azithromycin trial
Bibliographic record
Abstract
To the Editor: We recently found that azithromycin taken daily for 1 year reduced the frequency of acute exacerbations of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (AECOPDs) in subjects who were selected as having an increased risk of exacerbations [1]. Since azithromycin has potentially adverse effects, identifying patients most likely to benefit might be useful for targeting therapy. Accordingly, we included a substudy in our trial that was prospectively designed to determine whether plasma levels at entry, or a change in levels at 3 months of any of four blood biomarkers, were associated with improved clinical response to azithromycin as compared to placebo. We chose to study biomarkers of inflammatory pathways likely to be relevant to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) including C-reactive protein (CRP), interleukin (IL)-6, IL-8 and soluble tumour necrosis factor receptor 75 (sTNFR75). The parent trial comprised 1142 subjects with COPD randomised to receive azithromycin (250 mg orally each day) or placebo (1:1) for 12 months (ClinicalTrials.gov NCT00325897) [1]. To enrich our population for subjects more likely to have an AECOPDs, we required that subjects used either systemic corticosteroids, visited an emergency room or were hospitalised for AECOPD in the preceding 12 months or were using continuous supplemental oxygen [2]. We required subjects to be free of AECOPDs or other acute illness for ≥4 weeks prior to enrolment and excluded subjects with known congestive heart failure (CHF) and those with clinically defined bronchiectasis. The primary outcome was time to first AECOPD defined as “a complex of respiratory symptoms (increased or new onset) of more than one of the following: cough, sputum, wheezing, dyspnoea, or chest tightness with a duration of at least 3 days requiring treatment with antibiotics or systemic steroids” [2]. We monitored participants for AECOPDs at follow-up clinic visits …
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.006 | 0.019 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.004 | 0.007 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".