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Large language models (LLMs) have the potential to enhance evidence synthesis efficiency and accuracy. This study assessed LLM-only and LLM-assisted methods in data extraction and risk of bias assessment for 107 trials on complementary medicine. Moonshot-v1-128k and Claude-3.5-sonnet achieved high accuracy (≥95%), with LLM-assisted methods performing better (≥97%). LLM-assisted methods significantly reduced processing time (14.7 and 5.9 min vs. 86.9 and 10.4 min for conventional methods). These findings highlight LLMs' potential when integrated with human expertise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a branch-delete-bound algorithm for effectively solving the global minimum of quadratically constrained quadratic programs problem, which may be nonconvex. By utilizing the characteristics of quadratic function, we construct a new linearizing method, so that the quadratically constrained quadratic programs problem can be converted into a linear relaxed programs problem. Moreover, the established linear relaxed programs problem is embedded within a branch-and-bound framework without introducing any new variables and constrained functions, which can be easily solved by any effective linear programs algorithms. By subsequently solving a series of linear relaxed programs problems, the proposed algorithm can converge the global minimum of the initial quadratically constrained quadratic programs problem. Compared with the known methods, numerical results demonstrate that the proposed method has higher computational efficiency.

AbstractA plethora of systematic reviews with meta-analyses (SRMAs) evaluating sodium intake on cardiovascular health have been published. However, the quality of the SRMAs, that report absolute estimates of effect for major cardiovascular events and the corresponding certainty of the evidence has not been explicitly summarized. We conducted an umbrella review to assess the strength and validity of associations between lower sodium intake and cardiovascular outcomes. We used a modified, more stringent, version of the AMSTAR 2 instrument and the GRADE approach to assess SRMA methodological quality and evidence certainty, respectively. Across three cardiovascular risk strata, we computed the absolute risk reduction (ARR) for binary outcomes. We included 56 SRMAs. In various cardiovascular risk populations, moderate to high certainty evidence suggested that lower sodium intake reduced systolic blood pressure (BP) by −8.69 to −2.00 mmHg, and had concordant but smaller effects on diastolic BP. Salt substitutes conferred a small but important reduction in all-cause and cardiovascular mortality [ARR 12 fewer per 1000; 9 fewer per 1000; respectively], and had little to no effect on the risk of stroke [ARR 1 fewer per 1000]. Moderate to high certainty evidence suggested that lower sodium intake is probably beneficial for the prevention of major cardiovascular events, especially in low cardiovascular risk populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]