Understanding How, Why and for Whom Link Work Interventions Promote Access in Community Healthcare Settings in the United Kingdom: A Realist Review.

Introduction: Inequity in access to healthcare in the United Kingdom can have a profound impact on people's ability to manage their health problems. Link work interventions attempt to overcome the socioeconomic and structural barriers that perpetuate health inequalities. Link workers are typically staff members without professional clinical qualifications who support patients to bridge the gap between services.

Well controlled maternal inflammatory bowel disease does not increase the risk of abnormal neurocognitive outcome screening in offspring.

Background: Exposure to maternal inflammation is associated with an increased risk of neurocognitive and developmental disorders in offspring. Early diagnosis and intervention improves childhood motor and cognitive functioning. Neonatal cerebral MRI and remote app-based generalised movement assessments (GMAs) are both predictive of adverse neurocognitive outcomes but have only been used in infants at significantly increased risk for these outcomes, rather than following in utero exposure to maternal inflammatory disorders.

Evaluating the impact of a ward environment with 20 single occupancy rooms and two four-bedded bays on patient and staff experiences and outcomes in an acute NHS Trust: a mixed-methods study protocol.

Introduction: Traditionally, wards in acute care hospitals consist predominately of multioccupancy bays with some single rooms. There is an increasing global trend towards a higher proportion of single rooms in hospitals, with the UK National Health Service (NHS) advocating for single-room provision in all new hospital builds. There is limited evidence on the impact of a ward environment incorporating mostly single and some multioccupancy bays on patient care and organisational outcomes.

Development and external validation of a head and neck cancer risk prediction model.

Background: Head and neck cancer (HNC) incidence is on the rise, often diagnosed at late stage and associated with poor prognoses. Risk prediction tools have a potential role in prevention and early detection.

Methods: The IARC-ARCAGE European case-control study was used as the model development dataset.

Oversight of Dual-Use Research: What Role for Ethics Committees?

The World Health Organization (WHO) addresses the governance of biorisks, including dual-use research, for countries. It emphasizes engaging multisectoral stakeholders such as governments, scientific bodies, health and research institutes, standard-setting organizations, funding bodies, and others. Ethics constitutes a key component of the framework.

Vedolizumab and Ustekinumab Levels in Pregnant Women With Inflammatory Bowel Disease and Infants Exposed In Utero.

Background & Aims: Vedolizumab and ustekinumab pharmacokinetics in pregnancy and the infant after in utero exposure remain incompletely defined. We aim to define the antenatal stability of ustekinumab and vedolizumab levels and the time at which infant drug levels become undetectable.

Methods: This multicenter prospective observational cohort study recruited pregnant or preconception women with inflammatory bowel disease receiving vedolizumab or ustekinumab.

Tracking global resources and capacity for health research: time to reassess strategies and investment decisions.

The COVID-19 pandemic and more recently the Monkeypox outbreak emphasize the urgency and importance of improving the availability and equitable distribution of resources for health research across rich and poor countries. Discussions about the persistent imbalances in resource allocation for health research between rich and poor countries are not new, but little or no progress has been made in redressing these imbalances over the years. This is critical not only for emergency preparedness, but for the worlds' ability to improve population health in an equitable manner.

WHO target product profiles to shape global research and development.

Research and development leading to new and improved health products is essential for achieving healthier lives for populations worldwide. However, new products in development do not always match the global need for products for neglected diseases and populations. To promote research, provide an incentive for investment and align products with the needs of end-users, research needs to be better coordinated and prioritized.

Terahertz Spectroscopic Molecular Sensor for Rapid and Highly Specific Quantitative Analytical Gas Sensing.

Quantitative analytical gas sampling is of great importance in a range of environmental, safety, and scientific applications. In this article, we present the design, operation, and performance of a recently developed tabletop terahertz (THz) spectroscopic molecular sensor capable of rapid (minutes) and sensitive detection of polar gaseous analytes with near "absolute" specificity. A novel double-coil absorption cell design and an array of room-temperature sorbent-based preconcentration modules facilitate quantitative THz detection of light polar volatile compounds, which often challenge the capabilities of established gas sensing techniques.

Evaluating the Clinical and Immune Responses to Spotted Fever Rickettsioses in the Guinea Pig-Tick-Rickettsia System.

The guinea pig was the original animal model developed for investigating spotted fever rickettsiosis (SFR). This model system has persisted on account of the guinea pig's conduciveness to tick transmission of SFR agents and ability to recapitulate SFR in humans through clinical signs that include fever, unthriftiness, and in some cases the development of an eschar. The guinea pig is the smallest animal model for SFR that allows the collection of multiple blood and skin samples antemortem for longitudinal studies.

Multiplex TaqMan Quantitative PCR Assays for Host-Tick-Pathogen Studies Using the Guinea Pig-Tick- System.

Spotted Fever Rickettsiosis (SFR) is caused by spotted fever group spp. (SFGR), and is associated with symptoms common to other illnesses, making it challenging to diagnose before detecting SFGR-specific antibodies. The guinea pig is a valuable biomedical model for studying Spotted Fever Rickettsiosis (SFR); its immune system is more like the human immune system than that of the murine model, and guinea pigs develop characteristic clinical signs.

Skin in the Game: An Assay to Monitor Leukocyte Infiltration in Dermal Lesions of a Guinea Pig Model for Tick-Borne Rickettsiosis.

Intact, the skin typically serves as an effective barrier to the external world; however, once pathogens have breached this barrier via a wound, such as a tick bite, the surrounding tissues must recruit immune cells from the blood to neutralize the pathogen. With innate and adaptive immune systems being similar between the guinea pig and human systems, the ability of guinea pigs to show clinical signs of many infectious diseases, and the large size of guinea pigs relative to a murine model, the guinea pig is a valuable model for studying tick-borne and other pathogens that invade the skin. Here, we report a novel assay for assessing guinea pig leukocyte infiltration in the skin.

Ustekinumab levels in pregnant women with inflammatory bowel disease and infants exposed in utero.

Background: Ustekinumab is increasingly used in pregnant women with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Existing safety data are reassuring, but the stability of ustekinumab levels in pregnancy, degree of transfer to the infant and time to infant clearance are unknown.

Methods: In this prospective observational study, ustekinumab-exposed women with IBD had trough levels measured in each trimester of pregnancy and at delivery.

Communicating With Parents and Preschool Children: A Qualitative Exploration of Dental Professional-Parent-Child Interactions During Paediatric Dental Consultations to Prevent Early Childhood Caries.

The aim of this study was to explore communication interactions and identify phases adopted by dental professionals with parents and their young children and to examine the hypothesis that successful social talking between the actors together with the containment of worries allows the formation of a triadic treatment alliance, which leads to achieving preventive dental treatment goals. Conversation analysis of the transcribed data from video recordings of dental professionals, parents and preschool children when attending for preventive dental care was conducted. The transcriptions were read, examined and analysed independently to ensure the trustworthiness of the analysis.

Eliminating mother-to-child transmission of human immunodeficiency virus, syphilis and hepatitis B in sub-Saharan Africa.

Triple elimination is an initiative supporting the elimination of mother-to-child transmission of three diseases - human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection, syphilis and hepatitis B. Significant progress towards triple elimination has been made in some regions, but progress has been slow in sub-Saharan Africa, the region with the highest burden of these diseases. The shared features of the three diseases, including their epidemiology, disease interactions and core interventions for tackling them, enable an integrated health-systems approach for elimination of mother-to-child transmission.