Substance Use and Outcomes of Left-Sided Valve Replacement in Patients With Infective Endocarditis.

Background: Rising rates of substance use (SU) have resulted in an increasing need for left-sided valve surgery for SU-associated infective endocarditis (SU-IE). We compared outcomes, readmissions, and costs between IE patients with and without SU-IE in a national cohort.

Methods: Using the Nationwide Readmissions Database (2016-2018), we identified 10,098 patients with infective endocarditis (IE) who underwent isolated aortic or mitral valve replacement.

Youth Generalized Anxiety and Brain Activation States During Socioemotional Processing.

Importance: The brain enters distinct activation states to support differential cognitive and emotional processes, but little is known about how brain activation states differ in youths with clinical anxiety.

Objective: To characterize brain activation states during socioemotional processing (movie stimuli) and assess associations between state characteristics and movie features and anxiety symptoms.

Design, Setting, And Participants: The Healthy Brain Network is an ongoing cross-sectional study of individuals aged 5 to 21 years experiencing difficulties in school, of whom approximately 45% met criteria for a lifetime anxiety disorder diagnosis.

Anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) modulates quadriceps motor cortex inhibition and facilitation during rehabilitation following anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction: a triple-blind, randomised controlled proof of concept trial.

Objectives: Following anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction (ACLR), maladaptive changes occur in the motor cortex representation of the quadriceps, evidenced by increases in intracortical inhibition and facilitation. The primary objective of this proof-of-concept study was to determine if anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) can alter quadriceps intracortical inhibition and facilitation in an early-ACLR population after 6 weeks of application during exercise.

Methods: We performed a randomised, triple-blind controlled trial for proof of concept comparing anodal-tDCS to sham-tDCS following ACLR.

Prenatal social disadvantage is associated with alterations in functional networks at birth.

Childhood exposure to social disadvantage is a major risk factor for psychiatric disorders and poor developmental, educational, and occupational outcomes, presumably because adverse exposures alter the neurodevelopmental processes that contribute to risk trajectories. Yet, given the limited social mobility in the United States and other countries, childhood social disadvantage is frequently preceded by maternal social disadvantage during pregnancy, potentially altering fetal brain development during a period of high neuroplasticity through hormonal, microbiome, epigenetic, and immune factors that cross the placenta and fetal blood-brain barrier. The current study examines prenatal social disadvantage to determine whether these exposures in utero are associated with alterations in functional brain networks as early as birth.