Publications by authors named "David Armstrong"

Background: Many patients diagnosed with gastro-oesophageal reflux disease (GERD) have persistent symptoms despite proton pump inhibitor (PPI) therapy.

Aims: The aim of this consensus is to provide evidence-based statements to guide clinicians caring for patients with refractory reflux-like symptoms (rRLS) or refractory GERD.

Methods: This consensus was developed by the International Working Group for the Classification of Oesophagitis.

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Finding effective ways to monitor laying hen welfare is challenging as UK flock sizes can reach 16,000 birds. Eggs provide potential for welfare monitoring, as they are a daily output with previous evidence of links to stress. We explored the associations between stressors and eggs using two complementary studies.

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Diabetic foot ulcers (DFUs) represent a serious complication of diabetes with high incidence, requiring intensive treatment, prolonged hospitalization, and high costs. It poses a severe threat to the patient's life, resulting in substantial burdens on patient and healthcare system. However, the therapy of DFUs remains challenging.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study examines the outcomes for Medicaid beneficiaries with diabetic foot ulcers (DFUs) who switched to commercial insurance from 2010 to 2019.
  • A total of 8856 patients were included, and the data analysis involved methods like propensity matching to compare outcomes between those with commercial insurance and those who remained on Medicaid.
  • Results showed that transitioning to commercial insurance correlated with a 27% lower risk of major amputation, highlighting potential benefits of insurance type for patients with DFUs.
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Effective health workforce analysis requires robust data and information. Quality data facilitate monitoring workforce trends, identifying shortages, forecasting employment needs, and planning educational programs. A wide range of federal agencies collect various forms of data, including administrative data, surveys, and censuses, which can be used for health workforce analysis.

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Importance: The number of both US citizen and noncitizen international medical graduates (IMGs) practicing in the United States has grown substantially over the last two decades, but little is known about how these groups differ in clinical specialty and practice location.

Objective: To evaluate the effects of citizenship status on IMG specialty choice (primary care vs nonprimary care) and practice location (rural and health professional shortage areas [HPSAs]).

Design: To analyze the retrospective, cross sectional data between 2010 and 2019, we estimated a series of multivariate logistic regressions with year fixed effects after assessing trends in new physician specialty choice and practice location.

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  • Several guidelines endorse TLC-NOSF dressings for chronic wounds, but they are often seen as second-line treatments, risking patient care and increasing costs.
  • A systematic review analyzed existing studies from various databases, focusing on wound healing rates, quality of life, and costs when TLC-NOSF dressings were used as initial therapy.
  • The review included 17 studies published between 2017 and 2024, comparing TLC-NOSF as both first-line and second-line treatments, revealing important insights into their effectiveness and implications for patient outcomes.
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We present a novel system that leverages curators in the loop to develop a dataset and model for detecting structure features and functional annotations at residue-level from standard publication text. Our approach involves the integration of data from multiple resources, including PDBe, EuropePMC, PubMedCentral, and PubMed, combined with annotation guidelines from UniProt, and LitSuggest and HuggingFace models as tools in the annotation process. A team of seven annotators manually curated ten articles for named entities, which we utilized to train a starting PubmedBert model from HuggingFace.

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Purpose: The recent SENZA-PDN study showed that high-frequency (10kHz) spinal cord stimulation (SCS) provided significant, durable pain relief for individuals with painful diabetic neuropathy (PDN), along with secondary benefits, including improved sleep quality and HRQoL. Given that metabolic factors and chronic neuropathic pain are related, we evaluated potential secondary effects of 10kHz SCS on hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) and weight in SENZA-PDN participants with type 2 diabetes (T2D).

Patients And Methods: This analysis included 144 participants with T2D and lower limb pain due to PDN who received 10kHz SCS during the SENZA-PDN study.

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Diabetic foot complications that lead to lower extremity amputations pose a significant challenge to the entire global health system. In this multicentre clinical trial, 26 patients with chronic Wagner one diabetic foot ulcers (DFUs) were treated with a unique human keratin matrix graft applied either weekly or bi-weekly, in addition to standard of care. The hypothesis was that bi-weekly application would be similar to weekly application.

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Diabetic foot ulcers (DFUs) represent a severe complication of diabetes mellitus. Ramulus Mori (Sangzhi) alkaloids (SZ-A), an approved oral medication for type 2 diabetes, have not been explored for their potential to enhance the processes involved in diabetic wound healing. This study aims to investigate SZ-A's role in diabetic wound healing mechanisms.

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Article Synopsis
  • - Diabetes affects 537 million people globally, and 34% are at risk of developing foot ulcers, prompting the need for standard outcomes in treatment studies.
  • - A Core Outcome Set (COS) was created through a structured process involving systematic reviews, patient interviews, and a two-round Delphi survey with input from patients and experts.
  • - The COS includes 8 critical outcomes, such as wound healing and quality of life, which will help improve the consistency of research assessing diabetes-related foot ulcer treatments.
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Biosensors have led to breakthroughs in the treatment of chronic wounds. Since the discovery of the oxygen electrode by Clarke, biosensors have evolved into the design of smart bandages that dispense drugs to treat wounds in response to physiological factors, such as pH or glucose concentration, which indicate pathogenic tendencies. Aptamer-based biosensors have helped identify and characterize pathogenic bacteria in wounds that often form antibiotic-resistant biofilms.

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Background: Canada has one of the highest incidences of colorectal cancer (CRC) worldwide. CRC screening improves CRC outcomes and is cost-effective. This study compares Canadian CRC screening programs using essential elements of an organized screening program outlined by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC).

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Aims: Incorrectly fitting footwear (IFF) poses a risk of trauma to at-risk feet with diabetes. The aim of this systematic review was to summarise and assess the evidence that IFF is a statistically significant cause of ulceration.

Methods: We searched PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science and Google Scholar for English-language peer-reviewed studies reporting the number or percentage of people with diabetes-related foot ulceration (DFU) attributed to wearing IFF and included a physical examination of the footwear worn.

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Sterility and reduction of the bioburden are crucial for healing in chronic wounds such as diabetic foot ulcers. Although there are methods for measuring bioburdens, such as semiquantitative analysis of swab/biopsy samples, microbiological sampling, and molecular diagnostics, these tools are less accessible owing to costs or not being as quick as other methods. These methods are also dependent on clinical assessment by the clinician, and high bacterial burden may appear asymptomatic.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study evaluates the use of a simple plaque score method in carotid ultrasound for identifying patients at risk of major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE) in a community cardiology clinic.
  • Among 8,472 patients, those with higher plaque scores (≥2) showed a greater incidence of MACE over 10 years, indicating that this score can help re-stratify patients' risk levels.
  • The findings suggest that implementing the plaque score could enhance routine cardiovascular risk assessments and improve patient management in clinical settings.
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The utilization of platelet-rich plasma (PRP) has exhibited potential as a therapeutic approach for the management of diabetic foot ulcers (DFUs). However, it is currently not well understood how the diabetic environment may influence PRP-derived exosomes (PRP-Exos) and their potential impact on neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs). This study aims to investigate the effects of the diabetic environment on PRP-Exos, their communication with neutrophils, and the subsequent influence on NETs and wound healing.

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Objective: Prior studies have described risk factors associated with amputation in patients with concomitant diabetes and peripheral arterial disease (DM/PAD). However, the association between the severity and extent of tissue loss type and amputation risk remains less well-described. We aimed to quantify the role of different tissue loss types in amputation risk among patients with DM/PAD, in the context of demographic, preventive, and socioeconomic factors.

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We provide a mixed-methods, comparative analysis of the development of the urban-rural electoral cleavage in Canada, Great Britain, and the United States from the early 20th century to the present. Using aggregate election results, electoral district boundary files, and electoral district population measures, we construct a new comparable dataset of district election results and urbanity for the lower house of the legislature in each country. We use this dataset to measure the importance of the urban-rural divide for election outcomes across countries and time.

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