Nigerian medicinal plants with potential anticancer activity-a review.

Despite the fact that life expectancies are increasing and the burden of infectious diseases is decreasing, global cancer incidence rates are on the rise. Cancer outcome metrics are dismal for low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), including sub-Saharan Africa, where adequate resources and infrastructure for cancer care and control are lacking. Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa, exemplifies the miserable situation.

Generalizability, robustness, and correction bias of segmentations of thoracic organs at risk in CT images.

Objective: This study aims to assess and compare two state-of-the-art deep learning approaches for segmenting four thoracic organs at risk (OAR)-the esophagus, trachea, heart, and aorta-in CT images in the context of radiotherapy planning.

Materials And Methods: We compare a multi-organ segmentation approach and the fusion of multiple single-organ models, each dedicated to one OAR. All were trained using nnU-Net with the default parameters and the full-resolution configuration.

Parent input: shaping inclusive education for students with disabilities.

Over the past 20 years, significant developments have occurred in Jordan to create more inclusive school settings. This is in part due to new national policies such as 2017 Public Law no. 20, Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and partly a result of international organizations' support and funding.

Corrigendum: Preoperative Anxiolysis and Treatment Expectation (PATE Trial): open-label placebo treatment to reduce preoperative anxiety in female patients undergoing gynecological laparoscopic surgery - study protocol for a bicentric, prospective, randomized-controlled trial.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fpsyt.2024.

"Powerful placebo": A teaching and learning concept addressing placebo and nocebo effects in competency-based communication training.

Aim: Placebo and nocebo effects are based on expectations that are formed by how doctors communicate and can influence the efficacy of medical treatment. Given the implications for doctor-patient communication and the learning objectives listed in NKLM 2.0, we herein present a novel teaching and learning concept to impart competency-based knowledge about placebo and nocebo effects.

Women's Health Care Delivery and Coordination After Transitioning From One Electronic Health Record to Another: Perspectives From Staff in the Veterans Health Administration.

Objectives: The Veterans Health Administration (VA) is transitioning its 1,300 health care facilities from one electronic health record (EHR) to another. The transition aims to improve care delivery and interoperability; however, specific effects on women veterans, who comprise only 7.5% of the patient population, may be obscured without focused evaluation.

Deciphering Pre-existing and Induced 3D Genome Architecture Changes involved in Constricted Melanoma Migration.

Metastatic cancer cells traverse constricted spaces that exert forces on their nucleus and the genomic contents within. Cancerous tumors are highly heterogeneous and not all cells within them can achieve such a feat. Here, we investigated what initial genome architecture characteristics favor the constricted migratory ability of cancer cells and which arise only after passage through multiple constrictions.

Metabolite-based inter-kingdom communication controls intestinal tissue recovery following chemotherapeutic injury.

Cytotoxic chemotherapies have devastating side effects, particularly within the gastrointestinal tract. Gastrointestinal toxicity includes the death and damage of the epithelium and an imbalance in the intestinal microbiota, otherwise known as dysbiosis. Whether dysbiosis is a direct contributor to tissue toxicity is a key area of focus.

Data-driven characterization of cooling needs in a portfolio of co-located commercial buildings.

The increasing cooling needs in commercial buildings, exacerbated by climate change, warrant immediate attention. These buildings, characterized by their long lifespans and slow stock turnover, change consumption over time. This study develops simple, interpretable data-driven models using weather- and occupancy-related features to analyze the cooling in different types of co-located buildings.

Preoperative Anxiolysis and Treatment Expectation (PATE Trial): open-label placebo treatment to reduce preoperative anxiety in female patients undergoing gynecological laparoscopic surgery - study protocol for a bicentric, prospective, randomized-controlled trial.

One of the most common concerns of patients undergoing surgery is preoperative anxiety, with a prevalence of up to 48%. The effects of preoperative anxiety continue beyond the preoperative period and are associated with more severe postoperative pain and poorer treatment outcomes. Treatment options for preoperative anxiety are often limited as sedatives cause side effects and their efficacy remains controversial.

Diagnostic performance of ADC and ADCratio in MRI-based prostate cancer assessment: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

Objectives: To identify factors influencing the diagnostic performance of the quantitative imaging biomarkers ADC and ADCratio in prostate cancer (PCa) detection.

Materials And Methods: A systematic literature search was conducted in Embase, Medline and Web of Science, for studies evaluating ADC values and ADCratio for PCa diagnosis, using the same patient cohorts and using histopathological references as ground truth. Pooled sensitivities, specificities, summary ROC curves and AUCs were calculated from constructed contingency data tables.

The association between COVID-19 related income loss and diet quality: The mediating role of distress.

The COVID-19 lockdowns saw many individuals lose income, experience distress and increase intake of foods that would typically be considered less 'healthy' (more processed and less fresh produce). Establishing whether there are direct and indirect links between these variables would be of benefit in preparing for similar future events but also has implications for the current global financial climate, where many are experiencing relative decreases in income. Adults in two locations (UK and Australia) (N = 917) completed online questionnaires to explore the impact of the first COVID-19 lockdown on their change in income, emotional wellbeing (depression, anxiety, stress, loneliness), resilience and diet quality.

"You want people to listen to you": Patient experiences of women's healthcare within the Veterans Health Administration.

Objective: To identify constructs that are critical in shaping Veterans' experiences with Veterans Health Administration (VA) women's healthcare, including any which have been underexplored or are not included in current VA surveys of patient experience.

Data Sources And Study Setting: From June 2022 to January 2023, we conducted 28 semi-structured interviews with a diverse, national sample of Veterans who use VA women's healthcare.

Study Design: Using VA data, we divided Veteran VA-users identified as female into four groups stratified by age (dichotomized at age 45) and race/ethnicity (non-Hispanic White vs.

Photosensitizer-Amplified Antimicrobial Materials for Broad-Spectrum Ablation of Resistant Pathogens in Ocular Infections.

The emergence of multidrug resistant (MDR) pathogens and the scarcity of new potent antibiotics and antifungals are one of the biggest threats to human health. Antimicrobial photodynamic therapy (aPDT) combines light and photosensitizers to kill drug-resistant pathogens; however, there are limited materials that can effectively ablate different classes of infective pathogens. In the present work, a new class of benzodiazole-paired materials is designed as highly potent PDT agents with broad-spectrum antimicrobial activity upon illumination with nontoxic light.

Enzyme-Activatable Near-Infrared Hemicyanines as Modular Scaffolds for in vivo Photodynamic Therapy.

Photodynamic therapy is an anti-cancer treatment that requires illumination of photosensitizers to induce local cell death. Current near-infrared organic photosensitizers are built from large and non-modular structures that cannot be tuned to improve safety and minimize off-target toxicity. This work describes a novel chemical platform to generate enzyme-activatable near-infrared photosensitizers.

Charting the Chemical Reaction Space around a Multicomponent Combination: Controlled Access to a Diverse Set of Biologically Relevant Scaffolds.

Charting the chemical reaction space around the combination of carbonyls, amines, and isocyanoacetates allows the description of new multicomponent processes leading to a variety of unsaturated imidazolone scaffolds. The resulting compounds display the chromophore of the green fluorescent protein and the core of the natural product coelenterazine. Despite the competitive nature of the pathways involved, general protocols provide selective access to the desired chemotypes.

How effective is simple mechanical wound debridement in reducing bacterial colonisation? Results of a prospective clinical study.

Background And Aims: Bacteria in wounds can lead to stagnation of wound healing as well as to local or even systemic wound infections up to potentially lethal sepsis. Consequently, the bacterial load should be reduced as part of wound treatment. Therefore, the efficacy of simple mechanical wound debridement should be investigated in terms of reducing bacterial colonisation.

Music Therapy as a Topic in Medical Education: Course Concept and Student Evaluation of an Elective Course for Medical Students.

Objectives: Music therapy has been proven as a safe and well-established intervention in healthcare to relieve symptoms and improve quality of life. While music therapy is already established in several settings to supplement medical care, there is a lack of integration in the field of medical education.

Methods: We report on the implementation and evaluation of a teaching concept for a five-day-intensive-course on music therapy.

Cell Line and Media Composition Influence the Production of Giant Plasma Membrane Vesicles.

Giant plasma membrane vesicles (GPMVs) have been utilized as a model to study phase separation in the plasma membrane. Additionally, GPMVs have been employed as vehicle for delivering molecular cargo, including small molecule drugs and nanoparticles. Nearly all examples of GPMV production use a defined salt buffer that is a stark contrast to typical cell culture medium.

Multi-sequence MRI radiomics of colorectal liver metastases: Which features are reproducible across readers?

Purpose: To assess the inter-reader reproducibility of radiomics features on multiple MRI sequences after segmentations of colorectal liver metastases (CRLM).

Method: 30 CRLM (in 23 patients) were manually delineated by three readers on MRI before the start of chemotherapy on the contrast enhanced T1-weighted images (CE-T1W) in the portal venous phase, T2-weighted images (T2W) and b800 diffusion weighted images (DWI). DWI delineations were copied to the ADC-maps.

Generation of superposed orbital angular momentum beams using a free-electron laser oscillator.

With wavelength tunability, free-electron lasers (FELs) are well-suited for generating orbital angular momentum (OAM) beams in a wide photon energy range. We report here the first experimental demonstration of OAM beam generation using an oscillator FEL with the tens of picosecond pulse duration. Lasing around 458 nm, we have produced the four lowest orders of superposed Laguerre-Gaussian beams using a very long FEL resonator of 53.

Inserting "OFF-to-ON" BODIPY Tags into Cytokines: A Fluorogenic Interleukin IL-33 for Real-Time Imaging of Immune Cells.

The essential functions that cytokine/immune cell interactions play in tissue homeostasis and during disease have prompted the molecular design of targeted fluorophores to monitor their activity in real time. Whereas activatable probes for imaging immune-related enzymes are common, many immunological functions are mediated by binding events between cytokines and their cognate receptors that are hard to monitor by live-cell imaging. A prime example is interleukin-33 (IL-33), a key cytokine in innate and adaptive immunity, whose interaction with the ST2 cell-surface receptor results in downstream signaling and activation of NF-κB and AP-1 pathways.