Publications by authors named "Anna Hoffmann"

Unlabelled: In 2022, over 1,000,000 people from Ukraine fled to Germany, mostly women and children. The aim of this study was to determine health status and socio-demographic background of Ukrainian refugee minors in Germany and to compare that to German minors. In this study, Ukrainian refugees of all ages, who voluntarily made contact with the study centres via flyers or refugee shelters, were interviewed with the help of trained interpreters from 09-12/2022.

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Objective: Currently, there is an intensive discussion about enhancing and expanding outpatient rhinosurgical procedures. Many questions about how to stratify into out- and inpatient procedures are still not sufficiently clarified. Particularly, the use of nasal packing materials is not adequately discussed.

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Article Synopsis
  • - Objective: There's an ongoing debate about which rhinosurgical procedures should be done on an outpatient basis versus inpatient, highlighting a lack of clarity, especially about nasal packing materials.
  • - Material and Methods: A checklist was created to help categorize sinunasal procedures into inpatient or outpatient based on current research and identified risk factors.
  • - Results and Conclusions: The study identifies specific sinunasal procedures best suited for inpatient treatment and provides a thorough checklist to guide decisions on procedure type and patient discharge readiness.
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Background: The mental health benefits of cannabidiol (CBD) are promising but can be inconsistent, in part due to challenges in defining an individual's effective dosage. In schizophrenia, alterations in anandamide (AEA) concentrations, an endocannabinoid (eCB) agonist of the eCB system, reflect positively on treatment with CBD. Here, we expanded this assessment to include eCBs alongside AEA congeners, comparing phytocannabinoids and dosage in a clinical setting.

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  • - Primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD) is a rare genetic disorder affecting cilia function, impacting respiratory health, with no cure available; supportive therapies like physical activity are recommended despite a lack of scientific backing.
  • - A multi-center randomized controlled trial will involve 158 participants to test whether a personalized physical activity program improves quality of life (QoL) compared to standard recommendations over six months, utilizing activity trackers and regular assessments.
  • - The trial aims to address challenges posed by the diversity of PCD cases and age variation through stratified randomization, emphasizing individualized approaches and maintaining close contact with trainers to enhance outcomes.
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Randomized clinical trials substantiate cannabidiol (CBD) as a next-generation antipsychotic, effective in alleviating positive and negative symptoms associated with psychosis, while minimising the adverse effects seen with established treatments. Although the mechanisms remain debated, CBD is known to induce drug-responsive changes in lipid-based retrograde neurotransmitters. Lipid aberrations are also frequently observed with antipsychotics, which may contribute to their efficacy or increase the risk of undesirables, including metabolic dysfunction, obesity and dyslipidaemia.

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  • - The CRISPR-Cas9 system has improved the ability to genetically manipulate the pathogenic yeast, enabling single-step creation of homozygous mutants for swift gene screening related to specific phenotypes.
  • - However, the use of Cas9 can lead to unintended loss of heterozygosity (LOH), which may produce changes in the yeast that are unrelated to the targeted gene function.
  • - The study aimed to explore genes overexpressed in fluconazole-resistant strains by using dual antibiotic resistance markers for gene deletion, but while it increased homozygous deletion mutants, it didn't prevent unwanted LOH, highlighting a critical issue in the method.
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Despite its high prevalence, the determinants of smelling impairment in COVID-19 remain not fully understood. In this work, we aimed to examine the association between olfactory bulb volume and the clinical trajectory of COVID-19-related smelling impairment in a large-scale magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) analysis. Data of non-vaccinated COVID-19 convalescents recruited within the framework of the prospective Hamburg City Health Study COVID Program between March and December 2020 were analyzed.

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Purpose: Paranasal anomalies, frequently identified in routine radiological screenings, exhibit diverse morphological characteristics. Due to the diversity of anomalies, supervised learning methods require large labelled dataset exhibiting diverse anomaly morphology. Self-supervised learning (SSL) can be used to learn representations from unlabelled data.

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Background: In high-resource settings, the survival of children with immunocompromise (IC) has increased and immunosuppressive therapies are increasingly being used. This study aimed to determine the clinical characteristics, performance of diagnostic tools, and outcome of IC children with tuberculosis (TB) in Europe.

Methods: Multicenter, matched case-control study within the Pediatric Tuberculosis Network European Trials Group, capturing TB cases <18 years diagnosed 2000-2020.

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  • Chronic rhinosinusitis with nasal polyps (CRSwNP) is an inflammatory condition often treated with the anti-IL-5 antibody mepolizumab, which was approved as an additional therapy in 2021 when other treatments fail.
  • Current guidelines for using mepolizumab in CRSwNP lack detailed instructions on monitoring, documentation, and discontinuation protocols.
  • A literature review led to recommendations for following up on treatment, ensuring adherence to therapy schedules, and guidance on possible therapy interruptions or discontinuation for patients under the German healthcare system.
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Objective: Computer aided diagnostics (CAD) systems can automate the differentiation of maxillary sinus (MS) with and without opacification, simplifying the typically laborious process and aiding in clinical insight discovery within large cohorts.

Methods: This study uses Hamburg City Health Study (HCHS) a large, prospective, long-term, population-based cohort study of participants between 45 and 74 years of age. We develop a CAD system using an ensemble of 3D Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) to analyze cranial MRIs, distinguishing MS with opacifications (polyps, cysts, mucosal thickening) from MS without opacifications.

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  • The study examined the health of Ukrainian refugees in Germany, focusing on the presence of infectious diseases, immunity levels, and chronic conditions post-arrival in 2022.
  • A total of 1,793 refugees participated, revealing a notable percentage with positive tuberculosis tests and insufficient immunity to diseases like measles, diphtheria, and hepatitis B.
  • The findings highlight the need for improved health screening protocols for migrants and suggest targeted communication strategies to address low vaccine immunity among Ukrainian refugees.
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The analysis of ceramide (Cer) and sphingomyelin (SM) lipid species using liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) continues to present challenges as their precursor mass and fragmentation can correspond to multiple molecular arrangements. To address this constraint, we developed ReTimeML, a freeware that automates the expected retention times (RTs) for Cer and SM lipid profiles from complex chromatograms. ReTimeML works on the principle that LC-MS/MS experiments have pre-determined RTs from internal standards, calibrators or quality controls used throughout the analysis.

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Chronic rhinosinusitis is one of the most common chronic diseases in the population. Chronic rhinosinusitis with nasal polyps (CRSwNP) in adults is predominantly characterized by a type 2 inflammatory endotype. If sufficient control cannot be achieved through primary drug therapy, surgical intervention is usually recommended as the next stage of treatment.

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Background: Olfactory dysfunction associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection in children has not been verified by a validated olfactory test. We aimed to determine whether these complaints are objectifiable (test-based hyposmia), how often they occur during acute SARS-CoV-2 infection compared to other upper respiratory tract infections (URTI), as well as in children recovered from COVID-19 compared to children with long COVID.

Methods: Olfactory testing (U-sniff test; hyposmia<8 points) and survey-based symptom assessments were performed in 434 children (5-17 years; 04/2021-06/2022).

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Unlabelled: This work presents the results of a transdisciplinary analysis performed on Harward's Almanac (Dublin, 1666), an extremely rare volume currently housed in the National Library of Ireland. The uniqueness and historical value of the Almanac is related to the presence of nineteen handwritten poems, entered by an anonymous scribe. These record textually important English clandestine satire circulating anonymously in Dublin in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century.

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Background And Objectives: This paper presents an overview on nasal packing materials which are available in Germany. The current literature is analyzed whether there are robust criteria regarding use nasal packing after sinonasal surgery, whether there are fundamental and proven advantages or disadvantages of products, and what this means in clinical practice.

Materials And Methods: Selective literature analysis using the PubMed database (key words "nasal packing", "nasal tamponade", "nasal surgery", "sinonasal surgery", or "sinus surgery"), corresponding text books and resulting secondary literature.

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Background And Objectives: Dementia-specific care units vary in their organizational characteristics and are difficult to compare in empirical studies. Based on a representative sample of care units in German nursing homes, we present a typology of organizational characteristics focusing on dementia-specific care structures. We also examine the relationships between organizational types and the provision of nonpharmacological interventions for people with dementia.

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Purpose: Paranasal anomalies are commonly discovered during routine radiological screenings and can present with a wide range of morphological features. This diversity can make it difficult for convolutional neural networks (CNNs) to accurately classify these anomalies, especially when working with limited datasets. Additionally, current approaches to paranasal anomaly classification are constrained to identifying a single anomaly at a time.

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Background: Systematic reviews summarize and evaluate relevant studies to contribute to evidence-based practice. Internationally, researchers have reached a consensus that the active involvement of the public leads to better research. Despite this agreement, there are many reviews of research concerning healthcare interventions intended to promote the care of people living with dementia and those from their social network (e.

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Objectives: In head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC), tumors negative for Human Papillomavirus (HPV) remain a difficult to treat entity and the morbidity of current multimodal treatment is high. Radiotherapy in combination with molecular targeting could represent suitable, less toxic treatment options especially for cisplatin ineligible patients. Therefore, we tested dual targeting of PARP and the intra-S/G2 checkpoint through Wee1 inhibition for its radiosensitizing capacity in radioresistant HPV-negative HNSCC cells.

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Developing and evaluating health interventions for the benefit of patients is notoriously difficult. This also applies to the discipline of nursing, owing to the complexity of nursing interventions. Following significant revision, the updated guidance of the Medical Research Council (MRC) adopts a pluralistic view to intervention development and evaluation, including a theory-based perspective.

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