Objective To perform a systematic review and meta-analysis of the predictive abilities of CHADS2 and CHA2DS2-VASc in stroke and thromboembolism risk stratification of atrial fibrillation (AF) patients. Methods We searched PubMed and EMBASE for Eng-lish-language literature on comparisons of the diagnostic performance between CHADS2 and CHA2DS2-VASc in predicting stroke, or sys-temic embolism, in AF. We then assessed the quality of the included studies and pooled the C-statistics and 95%confidence intervals (95%CI). Results Eight studies were included. It was unsuitable to perform a direct meta-analysis because of high heterogeneity. When analyzed as a continuous variable, the C-statistic ranged from 0.60 to 0.80 (median 0.683) for CHADS2 and 0.64-0.79 (median 0.673) for CHA2DS2-VASc. When analyzed as a continuous variable in anticoagulation patients, the subgroup analysis showed that the pooled C-statistic (95%CI) was 0.660 (0.655-0.665) for CHADS2 and 0.667 (0.651-0.683) for CHA2DS2-VASc (no significant difference). For non-anticoagulation patients, the pooled C-statistic (95%CI) was 0.685 (0.666-0.705) for CHADS2 and 0.675 (0.656-0.694) for CHA2DS2-VASc (no significant differ-ence). The average ratio of endpoint events in the low-risk group of CHA2DS2-VASc was less than CHADS2 (0.41%vs. 0.94%, P<0.05). The average proportion of the moderate-risk group of CHA2DS2-VASc was lower than CHADS2 (11.12%vs. 30.75%, P<0.05). Conclu-sions The C-statistic suggests a similar clinical utility of the CHADS2 and CHA2DS2-VASc scores in predicting stroke and thromboem-bolism, but CHA2DS2-VASc has the important advantage of identifying extremely low-risk patients with atrial fibrillation, as well as classi-fying a lower proportion of patients as moderate risk.

The current World Health Organization classification system of primary brain tumors is solely based on morphologic criteria. However, there is accumulating evidence that tumors with similar histology have distinct molecular signatures that significantly impact treatment response and survival. Recent practice-changing clinical trials have defined a role for routine assessment of O-6-methylguanine-DNA methyltransferase (MGMT) promoter methylation in glioblastoma patients, especially in the elderly, and 1p and 19q codeletions in patients with anaplastic glial tumors. Recently discovered molecular alterations including mutations in IDH-1/2, epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), and BRAF also have the potential to become targets for future drug development. This article aims to summarize current knowledge on the molecular biology of high-grade gliomas relevant to daily practice.