Publications by authors named "Bliss J"

Despite MCT oil's potential antimicrobial benefits for gastrointestinal health, its effects on disrupting cariogenic pathogens on oral mucosal surfaces remain underexplored. This study evaluated the impact of MCT oil on the adhesion and invasion of and using planktonic and mucosal models. First, a planktonic model was used to assess the impact of various concentrations of MCT on the growth of and .

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Pretreatment prognostication, on-treatment monitoring, and early detection of physiological symptoms are considerable challenges in cancer. We describe the feasibility of high-resolution wearable data (steps per day, walking speed) to longitudinally profile physiological trajectories extracted from Apple Health data in three patients with lung cancer from diagnosis through cancer treatment after obtaining informed consent. We used descriptive statistics to describe our approach of building longitudinal physiological profiles.

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Background: Dual anti-human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) blockade has improved the outcomes of patients with early and metastatic HER2-positive breast cancer. Here we present the final 10-year analysis of the ALTTO trial.

Patients And Methods: The ALTTO trial (NCT00490139) is a prospective randomized, phase III, open-label, multicenter study that investigated the role of adjuvant chemotherapy and trastuzumab alone, in combination or sequentially with lapatinib.

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  • Clinical trials, essential for healthcare, also significantly contribute to climate change; researchers have developed a method to calculate their carbon footprint and applied it to 10 UK and international trials.
  • Data on trial activities was collected from 10 trial units, evaluated for emission sources, and feedback was gathered on the carbon footprint calculation process.
  • The carbon footprints of the trials varied widely, highlighting key areas for emissions reduction, with suggestions to incorporate carbon footprint considerations during the trial design phase.
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Background: Early-life antibiotic exposure is disproportionately high compared to the burden of culture-proven early-onset sepsis (CP-EOS). We assessed the contribution of culture-negative cases to the overall antibiotic exposure in the first postnatal week.

Methods: We conducted a retrospective analysis across eleven countries in Europe, North America, and Australia.

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JCO The APHINITY trial (ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT01358877) previously demonstrated that pertuzumab added to adjuvant trastuzumab and chemotherapy improved invasive disease-free survival (iDFS) for patients with early human epidermal growth factor receptor 2-positive (HER2+) breast cancer (BC). Here, we report the preplanned third interim analysis of overall survival (OS) and a descriptive updated iDFS analysis with 8.

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  • Intrinsic breast cancer molecular subtyping (IBCMS) is important for predicting outcomes and guiding treatment in breast cancer patients.
  • This study evaluated various IBCMS methods and gene-expression platforms in two clinical trials (PALOMA-2 and PALLET) and found differing levels of agreement in molecular subtype assignments.
  • The results emphasize the need for standardized approaches in IBCMS to avoid potential misguidance in treatment decisions.
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Background: In a competitive landscape with many ongoing adjuvant randomised controlled trials (RCTs), the prevalence of trials that failed to recruit their targeted sample size and were inadequately powered is unclear. The aims of the study are (i) to determine the percentage of trials with accrual and statistical power failure and (ii) to evaluate their potential impact on the drug development process.

Materials And Methods: A systematic review was carried out to identify adjuvant phase III oncology RCTs reported between 2013 and 2023 across all solid tumours.

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Background: Circadian rhythms regulate cellular physiology and could influence the efficacy of endocrine therapy (ET) in breast cancer (BC). We prospectively tested this hypothesis within the UNIRAD adjuvant phase III trial (NCT01805271).

Methods: 1278 patients with high-risk hormonal receptor positive (HR+)/HER2 negative (HER2-) primary BC were randomly assigned to adjuvant ET with placebo or everolimus.

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Background: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the prognostic value of the multigene EndoPredict test in prospectively collected data of patients screened for the randomized, double-blind, phase III UNIRAD trial, which evaluated the addition of everolimus to adjuvant endocrine therapy in high-risk, hormone receptor-positive, human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2)-negative early breast cancer.

Patients And Methods: Patients were classified into low or high risk according to the EPclin score, consisting of a 12-gene molecular score combined with tumor size and nodal status. Association of the EPclin score with disease-free survival (DFS) and distant metastasis-free survival (DMFS) was evaluated using Kaplan-Meier estimates.

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Objective: Hemodynamic collapse in multi-trauma patients with severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) poses both a diagnostic and therapeutic challenge for prehospital clinicians. Brain injury associated shock (BIAS), likely resulting from catecholamine storm, can cause both ventricular dysfunction and vasoplegia but may present clinically in a manner similar to hemorrhagic shock. Despite different treatment strategies, few studies exist describing this phenomenon in the early post-injury phase.

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Importance: Biologic features may affect pathologic complete response (pCR) and event-free survival (EFS) after neoadjuvant chemotherapy plus ERBB2/HER2 blockade in ERBB2/HER2-positive early breast cancer (EBC).

Objective: To define the quantitative association between pCR and EFS by intrinsic subtype and by other gene expression signatures in a pooled analysis of 3 phase 3 trials: CALGB 40601, NeoALTTO, and NSABP B-41.

Design, Setting, And Participants: In this retrospective pooled analysis, 1289 patients with EBC received chemotherapy plus either trastuzumab, lapatinib, or the combination, with a combined median follow-up of 5.

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Background: Better use of healthcare systems data, collected as part of interactions between patients and the healthcare system, could transform planning and conduct of randomised controlled trials. Multiple challenges to widespread use include whether healthcare systems data captures sufficiently well the data traditionally captured on case report forms. "Data Utility Comparison Studies" (DUCkS) assess the utility of healthcare systems data for RCTs by comparison to data collected by the trial.

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Objective: Desaturation during prehospital rapid sequence intubation (RSI) is common and is associated with patient morbidity. Past studies have identified oxygen saturations at induction, the grade of laryngoscopy, and multiple attempts to intubate as being associated with desaturation. This study aimed to investigate whether there are other factors, identifiable before RSI, associated with desaturation.

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Pharmacokinetic models rarely undergo external validation in vulnerable populations such as critically ill infants, thereby limiting the accuracy, efficacy, and safety of model-informed dosing in real-world settings. Here, we describe an opportunistic approach using dried blood spots (DBS) to evaluate a population pharmacokinetic model of metronidazole in critically ill preterm infants of gestational age (GA) ≤31 weeks from the Metronidazole Pharmacokinetics in Premature Infants (PTN_METRO, NCT01222585) study. First, we used linear correlation to compare 42 paired DBS and plasma metronidazole concentrations from 21 preterm infants [mean (SD): post natal age 28.

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  • Mucosal (MM) and acral melanomas (AM) are rare types of melanoma that often have KIT mutations, which could be treated with targeted small-molecule inhibitors, though none are currently approved for melanoma.
  • A Phase II clinical trial (NICAM) assessed the safety and effectiveness of nilotinib in patients with KIT-mutant MM and AM; 18% of screened patients had KIT mutations, with some showing promising results.
  • The trial found that nilotinib demonstrated activity in treating these mutations, suggesting the need for further research on its use in managing KIT-mutated melanoma.
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Background: Healthy Together Victoria (HTV) was a Victorian Government initiative that sought to reduce the prevalence of overweight and obesity through targeting chronic disease risk factors including physical activity, poor diet quality, smoking, and harmful alcohol use. The intervention involved a boosted workforce of > 170 local-level staff in 12 communities; employed to deliver system activation around health and wellbeing for individuals, families and communities. A cluster randomised trial (CRT) of a systems thinking approach to obesity prevention was embedded within HTV.

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  • * In the cTRAK-TN trial with 141 patients, personalized multimutation sequencing (47.9%) was more effective at first detecting minimal residual disease (MRD) than digital PCR, which showed 0% detection at the same time.
  • * Patients whose MRD was detected earlier had shorter lead times to relapse, highlighting the clinical significance of using personalized sequencing for early detection and potential better outcomes.
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The level of resistance to radiation and the developmental and molecular responses can vary between species, and even between developmental stages of one species. For flies (order: Diptera), prior studies concluded that the fungus gnat Bradysia (Sciara) coprophila (sub-order: Nematocera) is more resistant to irradiation-induced mutations that cause visible phenotypes than the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster (sub-order: Brachycera). Therefore, we characterized the effects of and level of resistance to ionizing radiation on B.

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