The Impact of Air Pollution on Cardiovascular Health Outcomes in African Populations: A Scoping Review.

Background: Air pollution is a significant environmental risk factor for cardiovascular diseases (CVDs), but its impact on African populations is under-researched due to limited air quality data and health studies.

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to synthesize available research on the effects of air pollution on CVDs outcomes in African populations, identify knowledge gaps, and suggest areas for research and policy intervention.

Methods: A systematic search of PubMed was conducted using terms capturing criteria ambient air pollutants (for example particulate matter, nitrogen dioxide, ozone, and sulfur dioxide) and CVDs and countries in Africa.

Determinants of Prolonged Hospitalization in Children and Adolescents: A Retrospective Observational Study.

Introduction: Ensuring an appropriate length of stay (LOS) is a primary goal for hospitals, as prolonged LOS poses clinical risks and organizational challenges. Children and adolescents are particularly susceptible to prolonged LOS due to frequent hospitalizations and unique vulnerabilities, including developmental disabilities that may necessitate additional care and monitoring. This study aims to describe the LOS of children and adolescent patients and identify the sociodemographic, organizational, clinical, and nursing care factors contributing to prolonged LOS in this population.

Enlightening Hidden Nursing Care in Nurse-Led Clinics and See & Treat: An Observational Multicenter Protocol Study in Italy.

The limited and inconsistent adoption and regulation of nurse-led clinics (NLCs) and "See & Treat" (S&T) services in Italy needs to be explored considering their value towards patients' outcomes acknowledged in the literature. This study aims to explore the phenomenon of hidden nursing activities (HNAs) in these settings, hypothesizing that features and activities performed in these settings are heterogeneous across the country and widely underreported or attributed to other professionals than nurses. HNAs are hypothesized to be associated with a poor work environment climate and nurses' low job satisfaction.

Can an increase in nursing care complexity raise the risk of intra-hospital and intensive care unit transfers in children? A retrospective observational study.

Introduction: Intra-hospital patient transfers (IPTs) and transfers to intensive care units (ICUs) are high-risk events in pediatric care. Nursing care complexity, reflected by nursing diagnoses (NDs) and nursing actions (NAs), may influence the frequency of these transfers. This study explores the association between nursing care complexity and IPTs, including ICU transfers, in hospitalized children.

Identifying the Bundle/Care Development Process in Clinical Risk Management: A Systematic Review.

Background: A bundle is a set of three to five evidence-based interventions designed to improve the quality and outcomes of care processes. Numerous international studies have evaluated the effectiveness of Bundles/Care Bundles (BCB) in reducing morbidity and mortality. The Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) has defined the concept of a bundle but has not outlined the development process.

Clearing the Air to Address Pollution's Cardiovascular Health Crisis.

Air pollution is a critical global health issue that significantly impacts cardiovascular health. The air pollutant PM (particulate matter with a diameter of 2.5 micrometres or less) has been positioned as a leading environmental risk factor for morbidity and mortality, especially from cardiovascular diseases (CVDs).

Exploring the Association between Complexity of Care, Medical Complexity, and Length of Stay in the Paediatric Setting Using a Nursing Minimum Data Set: A Study Protocol.

Background/objectives: The complexity of care requires systematic documentation to fully understand its relationship with medical complexity and its impact on patient outcomes. The Nursing Minimum Data Set (NMDS) plays a crucial role by capturing essential nursing data, enabling a detailed analysis of care and its impact on outcomes, such as length of stay (LOS). However, despite its potential, the use of NMDS in paediatric care remains limited.

Castanet: a pipeline for rapid analysis of targeted multi-pathogen genomic data.

Motivation: Target enrichment strategies generate genomic data from multiple pathogens in a single process, greatly improving sensitivity over metagenomic sequencing and enabling cost-effective, high-throughput surveillance and clinical applications. However, uptake by research and clinical laboratories is constrained by an absence of computational tools that are specifically designed for the analysis of multi-pathogen enrichment sequence data. Here we present an analysis pipeline, Castanet, for use with multi-pathogen enrichment sequencing data.

Targeted metagenomics reveals association between severity and pathogen co-detection in infants with respiratory syncytial virus.

Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is the leading cause of hospitalisation for respiratory infection in young children. RSV disease severity is known to be age-dependent and highest in young infants, but other correlates of severity, particularly the presence of additional respiratory pathogens, are less well understood. In this study, nasopharyngeal swabs were collected from two cohorts of RSV-positive infants <12 months in Spain, the UK, and the Netherlands during 2017-20.

Flexible and cost-effective genomic surveillance of P. falciparum malaria with targeted nanopore sequencing.

Genomic surveillance of Plasmodium falciparum malaria can provide policy-relevant information about antimalarial drug resistance, diagnostic test failure, and the evolution of vaccine targets. Yet the large and low complexity genome of P. falciparum complicates the development of genomic methods, while resource constraints in malaria endemic regions can limit their deployment.

Comparison of gene targets and sampling regimes for SARS-CoV-2 quantification for wastewater epidemiology in UK prisons.

Prisons are high-risk settings for infectious disease transmission, due to their enclosed and semi-enclosed environments. The proximity between prisoners and staff, and the diversity of prisons reduces the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions, such as social distancing. Therefore, alternative health monitoring methods, such as wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE), are needed to track pathogens, including SARS-CoV-2.

The Heart of the World.

Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are the leading cause of mortality globally. Of the 20.5 million CVD-related deaths in 2021, approximately 80% occurred in low- and middle-income countries.

Phylogenetic Analysis of Hepatitis C Virus Infections in a Large Belgian Cohort Using Next-Generation Sequencing of Full-Length Genomes.

The hepatitis C virus (HCV) epidemic in Western countries is primarily perpetuated by the sub-populations of men who have sex with men (MSM) and people who inject drugs (PWID). Understanding the dynamics of transmission in these communities is crucial for removing the remaining hurdles towards HCV elimination. We sequenced 269 annotated HCV plasma samples using probe enrichment and next-generation sequencing, obtaining 224 open reading frames of HCV (OR497849-OR498072).

Demographics of sources of HIV-1 transmission in Zambia: a molecular epidemiology analysis in the HPTN 071 PopART study.

Background: In the last decade, universally available antiretroviral therapy (ART) has led to greatly improved health and survival of people living with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa, but new infections continue to appear. The design of effective prevention strategies requires the demographic characterisation of individuals acting as sources of infection, which is the aim of this study.

Methods: Between 2014 and 2018, the HPTN 071 PopART study was conducted to quantify the public health benefits of ART.

The transport activity of the multidrug ABC transporter BmrA does not require a wide separation of the nucleotide-binding domains.

ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporters are ubiquitous membrane proteins responsible for the translocation of a wide diversity of substrates across biological membranes. Some of them confer multidrug or antimicrobial resistance to cancer cells and pathogenic microorganisms, respectively. Despite a wealth of structural data gained in the last two decades, the molecular mechanism of these multidrug efflux pumps remains elusive, including the extent of separation between the two nucleotide-binding domains (NBDs) during the transport cycle.

Wastewater monitoring for detection of public health markers during the COVID-19 pandemic: Near-source monitoring of schools in England over an academic year.

Background: Schools are high-risk settings for infectious disease transmission. Wastewater monitoring for infectious diseases has been used to identify and mitigate outbreaks in many near-source settings during the COVID-19 pandemic, including universities and hospitals but less is known about the technology when applied for school health protection. This study aimed to implement a wastewater surveillance system to detect SARS-CoV-2 and other public health markers from wastewater in schools in England.

Standardized Nursing Diagnoses in a Surgical Hospital Setting: A Retrospective Study Based on Electronic Health Data.

Introduction: In electronic health records (EHRs), standardized nursing terminologies (SNTs), such as nursing diagnoses (NDs), are needed to demonstrate the impact of nursing care on patient outcomes. Unfortunately, the use of NDs is not common in clinical practice, especially in surgical settings, and is rarely included in EHRs.

Objectives: The aim of the study was to describe the prevalence and trend of NDs in a hospital surgical setting by also analyzing the relationship between NDs and hospital outcomes.

The knowledge and attitudes regarding pressure ulcer prevention among healthcare support workers in the UK: A cross-sectional study.

Background: Pressure ulcers cause significant, detrimental effects on personal wellbeing. They represent a serious health and social care burden. Nurses and those working in support roles are primarily accountable for preventing pressure ulcers.

Post COVID-19 vaccination headache: A clinical and epidemiological evaluation.

Introduction: This study aimed to assess the prevalence and clinical characteristics of headaches, in particular secondary headaches.

Materials And Methods: This observational study was performed at the ASST Spedali Civili of Brescia, Italy. Visits to the Emergency Department (ED) and subsequent hospitalizations regarding a new or worsening headache in the 16 days following the administration of the COVID-19 vaccine between January 2021 and January 2022 were recorded and compared with those of January 2019-January 2020.

The mutational spectrum of SARS-CoV-2 genomic and antigenomic RNA.

The raw material for viral evolution is provided by intra-host mutations occurring during replication, transcription or post-transcription. Replication and transcription of proceed through the synthesis of negative-sense 'antigenomes' acting as templates for positive-sense genomic and subgenomic RNA. Hence, mutations in the genomes of SARS-CoV-2 and other coronaviruses can occur during (and after) the synthesis of either negative-sense or positive-sense RNA, with potentially distinct patterns and consequences.

Solid-State NMR Reveals Asymmetric ATP Hydrolysis in the Multidrug ABC Transporter BmrA.

The detailed mechanism of ATP hydrolysis in ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporters is still not fully understood. Here, we employed P solid-state NMR to probe the conformational changes and dynamics during the catalytic cycle by locking the multidrug ABC transporter BmrA in prehydrolytic, transition, and posthydrolytic states, using a combination of mutants and ATP analogues. The P spectra reveal that ATP binds strongly in the prehydrolytic state to both ATP-binding sites as inferred from the analysis of the nonhydrolytic E504A mutant.