Combining a traditional weather station with radiation monitors draws the public's attention to the magnitude of background radiation and its typical variation while providing early indications of unplanned radiological releases, such as nuclear power plant accidents or terrorist acts. Several networks of combined weather and radiation monitoring sensors exist, but these fail to be affordable for broad distribution. This work involves creating an affordable system to accumulate data from multiple locations into a single open-source database.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRed foxes (Vulpes vulpes) are found throughout the United Kingdom (UK), and can reach high population densities in urban areas. They are often infested with ticks which may carry tick-borne pathogens, leading to a risk of transmission to domestic animals and humans. This study investigated the prevalence of tick-borne pathogens in ticks sourced from red fox carcasses across Great Britain between 2018 and 2022.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFImportance: Although robotic surgery has become an established approach for a wide range of elective operations, data on its utility and outcomes are limited in the setting of emergency general surgery.
Objectives: To describe temporal trends in the use of laparoscopic and robotic approaches and compare outcomes between robotic and laparoscopic surgery for 4 common emergent surgical procedures.
Design, Setting, And Participants: A retrospective cohort study of an all-payer discharge database of 829 US facilities was conducted from calendar years 2013 to 2021.
Background: Management strategies and clinical outcomes vary substantially in patients newly diagnosed with Crohn's disease. We evaluated the use of a putative prognostic biomarker to guide therapy by assessing outcomes in patients randomised to either top-down (ie, early combined immunosuppression with infliximab and immunomodulator) or accelerated step-up (conventional) treatment strategies.
Methods: PROFILE (PRedicting Outcomes For Crohn's disease using a moLecular biomarker) was a multicentre, open-label, biomarker-stratified, randomised controlled trial that enrolled adults with newly diagnosed active Crohn's disease (Harvey-Bradshaw Index ≥7, either elevated C-reactive protein or faecal calprotectin or both, and endoscopic evidence of active inflammation).
Background And Aims: We sought to determine whether six commonly used immunosuppressive regimens were associated with lower antibody responses after seasonal influenza vaccination in patients with inflammatory bowel disease [IBD].
Methods: We conducted a prospective study including 213 IBD patients and 53 healthy controls: 165 who had received seasonal influenza vaccine and 101 who had not. IBD medications included infliximab, thiopurines, infliximab and thiopurine combination therapy, ustekinumab, vedolizumab, or tofacitinib.
Digital holography (DH) has been widely used for imaging and characterization of microstructures and nanostructures in materials science and biology and also has the potential to provide high-resolution, nondestructive measurement of fluid surfaces. DH setups capture the complex wavefronts of light scattered by an object or reflected from a surface, allowing the quantitative measurements of their shape and deformation. However, their use in fluid profilometry is scarce and has not been explored in much depth to the best of our knowledge.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) receiving anti-TNF and JAK-inhibitor therapy have attenuated responses to COVID-19 vaccination. We aimed to determine how IBD treatments affect neutralising antibody responses against the Omicron BA.4/5 variant.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOutput-based standards set a prescribed target to be achieved by a surveillance system, but they leave the selection of surveillance parameters, such as test type and population to be sampled, to the responsible party in the surveillance area. This allows proportionate legislative surveillance specifications to be imposed over a range of unique geographies. This flexibility makes output-based standards useful in the context of zoonotic threat surveillance, particularly where animal pathogens act as risk indicators for human health or where multiple surveillance streams cover human, animal, and food safety sectors.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis article is linked to Saifuddin et al papers. To view these articles, visit https://doi.org/10.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Trauma patients have diverse resource needs due to variable mechanisms and injury patterns. The aim of this study was to build a tool that uses only data available at time of admission to predict prolonged hospital length of stay (LOS).
Methods: Data was collected from the trauma registry at an urban level one adult trauma center and included patients from 1/1/2014 to 3/31/2019.
Background: The COVID-19 pandemic offered a unique opportunity to understand inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) management during unexpected disruption. This could help to guide practice overall.
Aims: To compare prescribing behaviour for IBD flares and outcomes during the early pandemic with pre-pandemic findings METHODS: We performed an observational cohort study comprising patients who contacted IBD teams for symptomatic flares between March and June 2020 in 60 National Health Service trusts in the United Kingdom.
Lancet Gastroenterol Hepatol
November 2022
Background: COVID-19 vaccine-induced antibody responses are reduced in patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) taking anti-TNF or tofacitinib after two vaccine doses. We sought to assess whether immunosuppressive treatments were associated with reduced antibody and T-cell responses in patients with IBD after a third vaccine dose.
Methods: VIP was a multicentre, prospective, case-control study done in nine centres in the UK.
Background & Aims: Autoimmune sclerosing cholangitis (ASC) is a childhood sclerosing cholangitis frequently associated with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). We describe the IBD phenotype in ASC patients and associated liver disease outcomes.
Methods: Single center retrospective observational review of ASC patients, with a control population of pediatric IBD.
Lancet Gastroenterol Hepatol
April 2022
Background: The effects that therapies for inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) have on immune responses to SARS-CoV-2 vaccination are not yet fully known. Therefore, we sought to determine whether COVID-19 vaccine-induced antibody responses were altered in patients with IBD on commonly used immunosuppressive drugs.
Methods: In this multicentre, prospective, case-control study (VIP), we recruited adults with IBD treated with one of six different immunosuppressive treatment regimens (thiopurines, infliximab, a thiopurine plus infliximab, ustekinumab, vedolizumab, or tofacitinib) and healthy control participants from nine centres in the UK.
Introduction: Acute severe ulcerative colitis (ASUC) traditionally requires inpatient hospital management for intravenous therapies and/or colectomy. Ambulatory ASUC care has not yet been evaluated in large cohorts.
Aims: We used data from PROTECT, a UK multicentre observational COVID-19 inflammatory bowel disease study, to report the extent, safety and effectiveness of ASUC ambulatory pathways.
Introduction: The interaction of increasing age, Injury Severity Score (ISS), and complications is not well described in geriatric trauma patients. We hypothesized that failure to rescue rate from any complication worsens with age and injury severity.
Methods: The National Trauma Data Bank (NTDB) was queried for injured patients aged 65 years or older from January 1, 2013 through December 31, 2016.
Objective: The aims of this study were to describe community antibiotic prescribing patterns in individuals hospitalised with COVID-19, and to determine the association between experiencing diarrhoea, stratified by preadmission exposure to antibiotics, and mortality risk in this cohort.
Design/methods: Retrospective study of the index presentations of 1153 adult patients with COVID-19, admitted between 1 March 2020 and 29 June 2020 in a South London NHS Trust. Data on patients' medical history (presence of diarrhoea, antibiotic use in the previous 14 days, comorbidities); demographics (age, ethnicity, and body mass index); and blood test results were extracted.
Background: There are three cardiothoracic surgery (CTS) training pathways-general surgery residency followed by a CTS residency of 2-3 years (traditional), 4 years of general surgery and 3 years of CTS residency (4+3), and an integrated 6-year pathway (I-6). The goal of this study was to survey early career cardiothoracic surgeons regarding their training experiences.
Methods: An email-based survey was sent to cardiothoracic surgeons, who graduated between 2012-2017.
LINKED CONTENT This article is linked to Taxonera et al paper. To view this article, visit https://doi.org/10.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: There is a paucity of evidence to support safe and effective management of patients with acute severe ulcerative colitis during the COVID-19 pandemic. We sought to identify alterations to established conventional evidence-based management of acute severe ulcerative colitis during the early COVID-19 pandemic, the effect on outcomes, and any associations with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection and severe COVID-19 outcomes.
Methods: The PROTECT-ASUC study was a multicentre, observational, case-control study in 60 acute secondary care hospitals throughout the UK.
Screening for lung cancer has changed substantially in the past decade since The National Lung Screening Trial. The resultant increased discovery of incidental pulmonary nodules has led to a growth in the number of lesions requiring tissue diagnosis. Bronchoscopy is one main modality used to sample lesions, but peripheral lesions remain challenging for bronchoscopic biopsy.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSemin Thorac Cardiovasc Surg
July 2021
Introduction: Bouveret Syndrome is a rare but important variant of gallstone ileus with high potential for morbidity and mortality. Bouveret syndrome is a complication of gallstone disease resulting from chronic inflammation and subsequent fistulization between the gallbladder and duodenum or stomach with subsequent impaction of the stone in the proximal GI tract. Here we present a case in an elderly man with moderate medical comorbidities.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLaminin-111 (Ln1) is an essential part of the extracellular matrix in epithelia, muscle and neural systems. We have previously demonstrated that the microstructure of Ln1 alters the way that it signals to cells, possibly because Ln1 assembly into networks exposes different adhesive domains. In this protocol, we describe three methods to generate polymerized Ln1.
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