Publications by authors named "CROSS H"

Spatial transcriptomics promises to transform our understanding of tissue biology by molecularly profiling individual cells . A fundamental question they allow us to ask is how nearby cells orchestrate their gene expression. To investigate this, we introduce cross-expression, a novel framework for discovering gene pairs that coordinate their expression across neighboring cells.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • N-of-1 trials are single-patient studies that focus on individual responses to treatments, particularly useful for patients with rare forms of epilepsy where larger clinical trials are hard to conduct.
  • A systematic review analyzed such trials to evaluate their design, outcomes, and biases, revealing strong individual treatment customization but also some reporting limitations.
  • The findings highlight the potential of N-of-1 trials to provide valuable insights for treating epilepsy, suggesting a need for improved reporting and methodology in future studies.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • The study investigates the link between Onchocerca volvulus (causing onchocerciasis) and epilepsy in Mahenge, Tanzania, focusing on the prevalence of both conditions after 25 years of ivermectin treatment.
  • A cross-sectional survey of 56,604 individuals was conducted, revealing onchocerciasis prevalence among children at 11.8%, higher in medium-altitude villages, and epilepsy incidence at 21.1 cases per 1,000 persons, also more prevalent in medium altitudes.
  • Female gender, middle altitudes, and positive OV16 antibodies were associated with a higher likelihood of having epilepsy, highlighting ongoing public health challenges despite long-term ivermectin use.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Purpose: Hearing loss is highly prevalent in long-term care home (LTCH) residents with dementia ("residents") and exacerbates confusion and communication difficulties. Residents rely on caregivers, including family, for hearing-related care. This study aims to understand the drivers of family caregivers' provision of hearing support to LTCH residents using the Behaviour Change Wheel.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Soil microbiomes are complex and varied communities of microbes, and large-scale metagenomic analysis is generating significant challenges in understanding their unique genetic makeups.
  • Advances in technology allow for the collection of extensive sequence data, but many soil samples still lack detailed characterization due to the sheer number of different taxa present.
  • Establishing publicly available databases of soil Meta-Genome Assembled Genomes (MAGs) could greatly enhance our understanding of soil microbiomes, facilitating research without the need for advanced computational skills or resources.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

CDKL5 deficiency disorder (CDD) is a rare developmental and epileptic encephalopathy. Ganaxolone, a neuroactive steroid, reduces the frequency of major motor seizures in children with CDD. This analysis explored the effect of ganaxolone on non-seizure outcomes.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Purpose: To identify and evaluate the evidence for the benefits of cochlear implants for people with cognitive impairment or dementia in terms of speech recognition, quality of life, behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia, cognition, function in daily life, mental well-being, and caregiver burden.

Methods: Ten electronic databases were searched systematically from inception to December 2023 for studies reporting on outcomes for cochlear implants that included adults identified with cognitive impairment, mild cognitive impairment, or dementia.

Results: Thirteen studies were included in this review with a combined total of 222 cochlear implant patients with cognitive impairment, mild cognitive impairment.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Adult humans generally experience a 0.5-1%/year loss in whole-body skeletal muscle mass and a reduction of muscle strength by 1.5-5%/year beginning at the age of 50 years.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

When an ostomy care nurse is not available, bedside nurses must assume responsibility for providing necessary care and educating patients who undergo a urinary diversion. However, staff nurses often lack the necessary knowledge and experience to provide the best care, rehabilitation, and patient education. This article details pre- and postoperative interventions for nurses who encounter patients undergoing urostomy surgery in order to help eliminate gaps in care, increase nurses' and patients' competence and confidence, and optimize patient outcomes and quality of life.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • - Hearing loss is common in people with dementia, but they use hearing aids less frequently than those without cognitive issues.
  • - This study surveyed 11 pairs of individuals with mild to moderate dementia and their caregivers to understand what influences hearing aid use, using a structured interview approach.
  • - Key factors influencing hearing aid usage were identified within specific domains, indicating that tailored and varied interventions could improve hearing aid adoption for those with dementia.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Global change is reshaping Earth's biodiversity, but the changing distributions of nonpathogenic fungi remain largely undocumented, as do mechanisms enabling invasions. The ectomycorrhizal Amanita phalloides is native to Europe and invasive in North America. Using population genetics and genomics, we sought to describe the life history traits of this successfully invading symbiotic fungus.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • - Clinical research networks, like the Antibacterial Resistance Leadership Group (ARLG), conduct essential studies on antibiotic resistance, including diagnostic research and treatment strategies, that might not be explored by other organizations.
  • - The value of these networks goes beyond just their findings; they foster collaboration to create new research methodologies and tools that improve how studies are designed and conducted.
  • - The ARLG specifically focuses on innovating methods in diagnostic and clinical trials to address antibiotic-resistant infections, which can significantly enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of future research in this field.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

In this overview, we describe important contributions from the Antibacterial Resistance Leadership Group (ARLG) to patient care, clinical trials design, and mentorship while outlining future priorities. The ARLG research agenda is focused on 3 key areas: gram-positive infections, gram-negative infections, and diagnostics. The ARLG has developed an innovative approach to clinical trials design, the desirability of outcome ranking (DOOR), which uses an ordinal measure of global outcome to assess both benefits and harms.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Developing and implementing the scientific agenda of the Antibacterial Resistance Leadership Group (ARLG) by soliciting input and proposals, transforming concepts into clinical trials, conducting those trials, and translating trial data analyses into actionable information for infectious disease clinical practice is the collective role of the Scientific Leadership Center, Clinical Operations Center, Statistical and Data Management Center, and Laboratory Center of the ARLG. These activities include shepherding concept proposal applications through peer review; identifying, qualifying, training, and overseeing clinical trials sites; recommending, developing, performing, and evaluating laboratory assays in support of clinical trials; and designing and performing data collection and statistical analyses. This article describes key components involved in realizing the ARLG scientific agenda through the activities of the ARLG centers.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Sex differences pose a challenge and an opportunity in biomedical research. Understanding how sex chromosomes and hormones affect disease-causing mechanisms will shed light on the mechanisms underlying predominantly idiopathic sex-biased neurodevelopmental disorders such as ADHD, schizophrenia, and autism. Gene expression is a crucial conduit for the influence of sex on developmental processes; therefore, this study focused on sex differences in gene expression and the regulation of gene expression.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Purpose: Hearing loss and dementia are common in long-term care home (LTCH) residents, causing communication difficulties and worsened behavioural symptoms. Hearing support provided to residents with dementia requires improvement. This study is the first to use the Behaviour Change Wheel (BCW) to identify barriers and propose interventions to improve the provision of hearing support by LTCH staff.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

An epigenetic memory of the temperature sum experienced during embryogenesis is part of the climatic adaptation strategy of the long-lived gymnosperm Norway spruce. This memory has a lasting effect on the timing of bud phenology and frost tolerance in the resulting epitype trees. The epigenetic memory is well characterized phenotypically and at the transcriptome level, but to what extent DNA methylation changes are involved have not previously been determined.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Antenatal preparation is commonly offered to women in pregnancy in the United Kingdom, but the content is highly variable, with some programmes orientated towards 'normal birth', whilst others may incorporate information about complications and procedures (broader focus). However, the impact of this variability on birth experience has not been explored. We examined the relationship between the content of antenatal preparation received and birth experience, taking into account obstetric complications and procedures.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

When patients who undergo ostomy surgery do not have access to an ostomy care nurse, staff nurses must assume responsibility for providing ostomy care and educational support. However, many staff nurses may lack the necessary knowledge and skills to provide this type of care. This article details the basics of pre- and postoperative care and patient education for nurses who encounter patients with two of the most common types of ostomy surgery of the bowel: colostomy and ileostomy.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Persistent inequalities in relation to health outcomes continue to exist among patients identifying as lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB), and very little is known about outcomes specific to bisexual populations. This study's aim was to compare the health of individuals identifying as LGB with heterosexual counterparts within primary care in England. Cross-sectional survey data from the year 10 (2015/2016) English General Practice Patient Survey (GPPS) dataset, which consisted of 836,312 responses (38.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: Many long-term care home (LTCH) residents have dementia and hearing loss, causing communication difficulties and agitation. Residents rely on staff for hearing support, but provision is often inconsistent. This study used the Behaviour Change Wheel's Capability, Opportunity and Motivation model to understand why LTCH staff do or do not, provide hearing support to residents with dementia who they believe could benefit from it.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • N-of-1 strategies help doctors find out if a treatment works really well for one specific person, especially when they have a rare disease.
  • There’s a debate on whether these strategies should follow rules for research or rules for medical care since they mix both.
  • The text explains how to set up these strategies safely to choose the best treatments for people with rare diseases.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Ductal carcinoma in-situ (DCIS) accounts for 20-25% of all new breast cancer diagnoses. DCIS has an uncertain risk of progression to invasive breast cancer and a lack of predictive biomarkers may result in relatively high levels (~ 75%) of overtreatment. To identify unique prognostic biomarkers of invasive progression, crystallographic and chemical features of DCIS microcalcifications have been explored.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Environmental and toxicity concerns dictate replacement of di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP) plasticizer used to impart flexibility and thermal stability to polyvinyl chloride (PVC). Potential alternatives to DEHP in PVC include diheptyl succinate (DHS), diethyl adipate (DEA), 1,4-butanediol dibenzoate (1,4-BDB), and dibutyl sebacate (DBS). To examine whether that these bio-based plasticizers can compete with DEHP, we need to compare their tensile, mechanical, and diffusional properties.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

This study reports on 10 frontline healthcare workers, employed during the COVID-19 pandemic and experiencing symptoms of burnout and PTSD, treated with group ketamine-assisted psychotherapy (KAP) in a private outpatient clinic setting. Participants attended 6 sessions once weekly. These included 1 preparation session, 3 ketamine sessions (2 sublingual, 1 intramuscular), 2 integration sessions.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF