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Purpose: Little is known about how adolescent sexual behaviors develop and the influence of personal or perceived social attitudes. We sought to describe how personal, perceived peer, and perceived family attitudes toward adolescent sexual activity influence sexual behaviors of adolescent females' over time., Methods: Between the years of 1999 and 2006, 358 English-speaking female adolescents, aged 14-17 years, were recruited from three urban adolescent clinics. Participants completed quarterly and annual questionnaires over a span of 4 years. Primary outcomes included engagement in any of the following eight sexual behaviors: kissing, having breasts touched, having genitals touched, touching partners' genitals, oral giving, oral receiving, anal, or vaginal sex. Three attitudinal scales assessed personal importance of abstinence, perceived peer beliefs about when to have sex, and perceived family beliefs that adolescent sex is negative. We used generalized estimating equations to identify predictors of each sexual behavior and compared whether personal, perceived peer, or perceived family attitudes predicted sexual behaviors over time., Results: The odds of reporting each sexual behavior increased with age but were lower among those whose personal or perceived family attitudes were less positive. Participants' personal attitudes toward adolescent sex were the strongest predictor of engagement in all eight sexual behaviors even after controlling for perceived peer and perceived family attitudes., Conclusions: Female adolescent's personal attitudes toward abstinence appear to be the strongest predictor of engagement in a variety of sexual behaviors. Efforts to influence adolescent attitudes toward abstinence may be an important approach to reducing sexual behaviors that increase the risk of pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections., (Copyright © 2011 Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Objective: Despite demonstrated benefits, few healthcare organizations have implemented clinical event monitors to detect adverse drug events (ADEs). The objective of this study was to conduct a systematic review of pharmacy and laboratory signals used by clinical event monitors to detect ADEs in hospitalized adults., Design: We performed a comprehensive search of MEDLINE, CINHAL and EMBASE to identify studies published between 1985 through 2006. Studies were included if they: described a clinical event monitor to detect ADEs in an adult hospital setting; described laboratory or pharmacy ADE signals; and, provided positive predictive values (PPVs) or information to allow the calculation of PPVs for individual ADE signals., Measurements: We calculated overall estimates of PPVs and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for signals reported in 2 or more studies and contained no evidence heterogeneity. Results were examined by signal category: medication levels, laboratory tests, or antidotes., Results: We identified 12 observational studies describing 36 unique ADE signals. Fifteen signals (3 antidotes, 4 medication levels, and 8 laboratory values) contained no evidence of heterogeneity. The pooled PPVs for these individual signals ranged from 0.03 [CI=0.03-0.03] for hypokalemia, to 0.50 [CI=0.39-0.61] for supratherapeutic quinidine level. In general, antidotes (range=0.09-0.11) had the lowest PPVs, followed by laboratory values (0.03-0.27), and medication levels (0.03-0.50)., Conclusion: Results from this study should help clinical information system and computerized decision support producers develop or improve existing clinical event monitors to detect ADEs in their own hospitals by prioritizing those signals with the highest PPVs [corrected]