Publications by authors named "Baumgartner M"

Splenic rupture leads to massive hemorrhage and requires immediate surgical intervention. Splenic rupture results from trauma or from underlying disease processes. Lymphoma is a rare cause of atraumatic splenic rupture (ASR) with high mortality rates.

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De-regulated protein expression contributes to tumor growth and progression in medulloblastoma (MB), the most common malignant brain tumor in children. MB is associated with impaired differentiation of specific neural progenitors, suggesting that the deregulation of proteins involved in neural physiology could contribute to the transformed phenotype in MB. Calsynthenin 1 (CLSTN1) is a neuronal protein involved in cell-cell interaction, vesicle trafficking, and synaptic signaling.

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Introduction: Children represent a large and vulnerable patient group. However, the evidence base for most paediatric diagnostic and therapeutic procedures remains limited or is often inferred from adults. There is an urgency to improve paediatric healthcare provision based on real-world evidence generation.

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Prior research has established that testosterone is an important modulator of social decision-making. However, evidence on the relationship between basal testosterone levels, commonly measured in saliva or blood, and social behavior has been inconsistent due to methodological shortcomings. Additionally, it has been suggested that cortisol might moderate the association between basal testosterone and social behavior.

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Background: The rising prevalence of acute ischemic stroke (AIS) in young adults, particularly with undetermined pathogenesis, is a growing concern. This study assessed risk factors, treatments, and outcomes between young AIS patients with undetermined and determined pathogeneses.

Methods And Results: This was a retrospective cohort study including AIS patients aged 18 to 55 years in Switzerland, treated between 2014 and 2022.

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Introduction: Population-level substance use research primarily relies on self-reports, which often underestimate actual use. Hair analyses offer a more objective estimate; however, longitudinal studies examining concordance are lacking. Previous studies showed that specific psychological and behavioral characteristics are associated with a higher likelihood of underreporting substance use, but the longitudinal stability of these associations remains unclear.

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The impact of the tissue context on tumor growth and drug response in medulloblastoma (MB) is poorly understood. To gain insights into the growth and dissemination behavior of the MB tumor cells under treatment, we combined three-dimensional cell culture screening with ex vivo organotypic cerebellum slice co-culture (OCSC), which allowed the assessment of tumor cell behavior in the tissue context. To identify druggable kinase pathways involved in invasion, we screened a panel of 274 kinase inhibitors and identified aurora kinase B (AURKB) as a potential anti-invasion drug target in MB.

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In forensic toxicology, it has been debated if hair testing allows an estimation of the intensity of cocaine use-an assumption that may have risen because self-reports in a forensic setting are of uncertain validity per se. We therefore investigated the relationship between self-reported cocaine use and cocaine hair concentrations (including its main metabolites benzoylecgonine and norcocaine) in chronic cocaine users voluntary participating in psychiatric study settings. Additionally, we tested whether hair testing can distinguish between individuals with and without a diagnosis of cocaine dependency.

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Developmental epileptic encephalopathy with spike-wave activation in sleep (DEE-SWAS) is an epilepsy syndrome of childhood characterized by developmental delay or regression with significant abnormal epileptiform activity during sleep. In some cases, DEE-SWAS with an identified focal lesion is treated with surgical resection. The authors report an unusual case of focal DEE-SWAS that was successfully treated via transorbital resection with intraoperative electrocorticography (iECoG).

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Article Synopsis
  • The study investigates healthcare access for Swiss adults with rare diseases, aiming to find patterns and their effects on health-related quality of life (HRQoL).
  • Utilizing surveys from 341 participants, two groups were identified: those with high access (227 individuals) and those with low access (114 individuals).
  • Factors linked to lower access included unstable disease conditions, higher misdiagnoses, and neurological diseases, which also correlated with poorer HRQoL, underscoring the need for improved healthcare strategies.
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  • Scientists are creating a smart computer program called CTA-DEFACE to hide faces in CT angiography images to keep people's data safe.
  • They tested their program using images from different places and it worked really well, making faces much harder to recognize.
  • The program is available for everyone to use online, and it's better at hiding faces than other similar programs.
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Objective: Telehealth paradigms are essential for remotely managing patients with chronic conditions. To assist clinicians in handling the large volumes of data collected through these systems, clinical decision support systems (CDSSs) have been developed. However, the effectiveness of CDSSs depends on the quality of remotely recorded physiological data and the reliability of the algorithms used for processing this data.

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  • * Disruptions in BA functions can lead to various liver diseases, including cholestatic disorders and conditions like metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD), as well as increase risks for certain cancers.
  • * The review aims to discuss the latest findings on BA signaling, metabolism, and transport, highlighting new therapeutic approaches targeting BAs for treating liver and metabolic diseases.
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Here, we report a rapid and accurate optical method for detecting cells from liquid samples in a label-free manner. The working principle of the method is based on the interference of parts of a conical laser beam, coming from a single-mode optical fiber directly, and reflected from a flat glass surface. The glass is functionalized by antibodies against the cells to be detected from the liquid sample.

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Objective: Children and adolescents with rare diseases face significant barriers when accessing healthcare. We aimed to assess and predict these barriers and investigate associations with health-related quality of life (HRQoL).

Method: We conducted a cross-sectional survey of Swiss parents (N = 189) of children with rare diseases including the Barriers to Care Questionnaire (BCQ), containing six barriers and the Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory (PedsQL).

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Background: Inhibition of androgen receptor (AR) signaling is the main treatment strategy in advanced prostate cancer (PCa). A subset of castration resistant prostate cancer (CRPC) bypasses the AR blockade by increased fibroblast growth factor receptor (FGFR) signaling. The first- and second-generation, non-covalent FGFR inhibitors (FGFRis) have largely failed in the clinical trials against PCa.

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Transcriptional enhancers orchestrate cell type- and time point-specific gene expression programs. Genetic variation within enhancer sequences is an important contributor to phenotypic variation including evolutionary adaptations and human disease. Certain genes and pathways may be more prone to regulatory evolution than others, with different patterns across diverse organisms, but whether such patterns exist has not been investigated at a sufficient scale.

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Uniquely human physical traits, such as an expanded cerebral cortex and changes in limb morphology that allow us to use tools and walk upright, are in part due to human-specific genetic changes that altered when, where, and how genes are expressed during development. Over 20 000 putative regulatory elements with potential human-specific functions have been discovered. Understanding how these elements contributed to human evolution requires identifying candidates most likely to have shaped human traits, then studying them in genetically modified animal models.

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Article Synopsis
  • Tonic and atonic drop attack seizures are common and problematic in Lennox-Gastaut syndrome, leading to injuries and cognitive issues, and there's increasing interest in safer surgical options like corpus callosotomy.
  • A 5-year-old boy with severe seizures underwent a fully endoscopic transventricular corpus callosotomy due to risks associated with traditional surgical methods, resulting in fewer and less intense seizures and improved quality of life reported by his family.
  • This technique may offer a safer alternative for patients with drug-resistant seizures and abnormal brain anatomy, reducing potential complications during surgery.
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Disruptive variants in the chromodomain helicase , which acts as a transcriptional regulator during neurodevelopment, are strongly associated with risk for autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Loss of CHD8 function is hypothesized to perturb gene regulatory networks in the developing brain, thereby contributing to ASD etiology. However, insight into the cell type-specific transcriptional effects of CHD8 loss of function remains limited.

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As cocaine (COC) is not only incorporated into hair via blood following ingestion but also by external contamination, hair samples are commonly tested for COC metabolites to prove ingestion. However, COC metabolites can also be present as degradation products in typical street COC samples. The present study investigates minor hydroxycocaine (OH-COC) metabolites p- and m-OH-COC together with p- and m-hydroxybenzoylecgonine (OH-BE) in seized COC (n = 200) and hair samples from routine case work (n = 2389).

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Large datasets in paediatric oncology are inherently rare. Therefore, it is paramount to fully exploit all available data, which are distributed over several resources, including biomaterials, images, clinical trials, and registries. With privacy-preserving record linkage (PPRL), personalised or pseudonymised datasets can be merged, without disclosing the patients' identities.

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Human Accelerated Regions (HARs) are highly conserved across species but exhibit a significant excess of human-specific sequence changes, suggesting they may have gained novel functions in human evolution. HARs include transcriptional enhancers with human-specific activity and have been implicated in the evolution of the human brain. However, our understanding of how HARs contributed to uniquely human features of the brain is hindered by a lack of insight into the genes and pathways that HARs regulate.

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Article Synopsis
  • Classical homocystinuria results from mutations in the cystathionine β-synthase (CBS) gene, leading to elevated homocysteine levels and various clinical impairments including neurological and vascular issues.
  • A new method using hemoglobin from the clam Lucina pectinata allows for real-time quantification of hydrogen sulfide (HS) production by both normal and mutated CBS enzymes.
  • The findings demonstrate that wild-type CBS produces more HS than pathogenic variants, providing insights into how CBS structure affects HS production and potentially impacts patient outcomes.
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Background: Hyperbilirubinemia is a common condition in newborns. While mild cases of jaundice are common and typically resolve spontaneously, severe hyperbilirubinemia can lead to serious neurologic complications if left untreated. With the constant adaptation of guidelines, clinical management has significantly improved, and treatment has become routine for pediatricians.

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