Publications by authors named "Davies V"

Background: Osteoarthritis causes chronic pain, impaired joint function, decreased mobility and negatively impacts quality of life (QOL). Anti-nerve growth factor antibodies bedinvetmab for dogs and frunevetmab for cats are licensed for the alleviation of osteoarthritis pain but their QOL impact is unreported. Our aim was to determine if these therapeutics improve QOL using a validated health-related QOL measure that generates scores in four domains of QOL-energetic and enthusiastic (E/E), happy and content (H/C), active and comfortable (A/C) and calm and relaxed (C/R)-in the dog and three in the cat-vitality, comfort and emotional wellbeing (EWB).

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Dysphagia (swallowing difficulties) is particularly common in older people and is associated with various health conditions. Dysphagia affects an individual's ability to eat and drink, and can have a significant effect on their clinical outcomes and quality of life. This article explores ways in which nurses can support people with dysphagia to minimise the effects of the condition and enhance their quality of life.

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Motivation: Liquid Chromatography Tandem Mass Spectrometry experiments aim to produce high-quality fragmentation spectra, which can be used to annotate metabolites. However, current Data-Dependent Acquisition approaches may fail to collect spectra of sufficient quality and quantity for experimental outcomes, and extend poorly across multiple samples by failing to share information across samples or by requiring manual expert input.

Results: We present TopNEXt, a real-time scan prioritization framework that improves data acquisition in multi-sample Liquid Chromatography Tandem Mass Spectrometry metabolomics experiments.

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Until now, most studies investigating the relationship between event segmentation and memory have used videos filmed from a third-person perspective, although people experience their lives from a first-person perspective. The present study aimed to determine whether visual perspective impacts events segmentation and further recall. Fifty-seven participants were recruited and assigned to either first- (1PP) or third-person perspective (3PP) condition, before segmenting videos of daily life activities.

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Surface antigens of pathogens are commonly targeted by vaccine-elicited antibodies but antigenic variability, notably in RNA viruses such as influenza, HIV and SARS-CoV-2, pose challenges for control by vaccination. For example, influenza A(H3N2) entered the human population in 1968 causing a pandemic and has since been monitored, along with other seasonal influenza viruses, for the emergence of antigenic drift variants through intensive global surveillance and laboratory characterisation. Statistical models of the relationship between genetic differences among viruses and their antigenic similarity provide useful information to inform vaccine development, though accurate identification of causative mutations is complicated by highly correlated genetic signals that arise due to the evolutionary process.

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Data-Dependent and Data-Independent Acquisition modes (DDA and DIA, respectively) are both widely used to acquire MS2 spectra in untargeted liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) metabolomics analyses. Despite their wide use, little work has been attempted to systematically compare their MS/MS spectral annotation performance in untargeted settings due to the lack of ground truth and the costs involved in running a large number of acquisitions. Here, we present a systematic comparison of these two acquisition methods in untargeted metabolomics by extending our Virtual Metabolomics Mass Spectrometer (ViMMS) framework with a DIA module.

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Background: Liaison psychiatry provision for children and young people in England is poorly evaluated.

Aims: We sought to evaluate paediatric liaison psychiatry provision and develop recommendations to improve practice.

Method: The liaison psychiatry surveys of England (LPSE) cross-sectional surveys engage all liaison psychiatry services in England.

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Given the presence of brown adipose tissue in adult humans, an important issue is whether human brown adipose tissue is recruitable. Cold exposure is the canonical recruitment treatment; however, in experimental animals (mice), recruitment of brown adipose tissue is normally induced by placing the mice in constant cold, a procedure not feasible in humans. For possible translational applications, we have therefore investigated whether shorter daily excursions from thermoneutrality would suffice to qualitatively and quantitatively induce recruitment in mice.

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Objective: Advanced clinical practitioners are a growing part of the National Health Service workforce in the United Kingdom (UK). The concept stems from the progression of skills, knowledge, and experience of healthcare professionals (including nursing, physiotherapists, paramedics, and pharmacists) to a higher level of practice. The addition of advanced critical care practitioners (ACCPs) to the multidisciplinary team of the UK adult critical care is recent; they form part of the fabric of the advanced clinical practitioner workforce.

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Background: Rituximab is widely used to treat autoimmunity but clinical response varies. Efficacy is determined by the efficiency of B-cell depletion, which may depend on various Fc gamma receptor (FcγR)-dependent mechanisms. Study of FcγR is challenging due to the complexity of the FCGR genetic locus.

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Disinvestment is the removal or reduction of previously provided practices or services, and has typically been undertaken where a practice or service has been clearly shown to be ineffective, inefficient and/or harmful. However, practices and services that have uncertain evidence of effectiveness, efficiency and safety can also be considered as candidates for disinvestment. Disinvestment from these practices and services is risky as they may yet prove to be beneficial if further evidence becomes available.

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Validity is not an inherent property of a measurement scale and so evidence for validity relating to its use for particular purposes, with defined populations and in specified contexts must be accumulated. We have published the development of a web-based, generic health-related quality of life instrument (VetMetrica™) to measure the affective impact of chronic disease in cats and provided evidence for its validity in a mixed population of cats, some of which, according to veterinary judgement, were healthy and others of which were suffering from chronic conditions likely to affect their quality of life, often with multiple co-morbidities present. The first aim of the current study was to demonstrate the construct validity of the VetMetrica™ generic instrument when used with cats suffering from osteoarthritis, by testing the hypothesis that the health-related quality of life profile of cats with different severities of osteoarthritis would differ and by demonstrating convergent validity between the health-related quality of life profile scores and independently quantified vet-assessed pain and quality of life impact scores.

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Background: The spectrum of neurological and psychiatric complications associated with paediatric SARS-CoV-2 infection is poorly understood. We aimed to analyse the range and prevalence of these complications in hospitalised children and adolescents.

Methods: We did a prospective national cohort study in the UK using an online network of secure rapid-response notification portals established by the CoroNerve study group.

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Tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) is widely used to identify unknown ions in untargeted metabolomics. Data-dependent acquisition (DDA) chooses which ions to fragment based upon intensities observed in MS1 survey scans and typically only fragments a small subset of the ions present. Despite this inefficiency, relatively little work has addressed the development of new DDA methods, partly due to the high overhead associated with running the many extracts necessary to optimize approaches in busy MS facilities.

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Using methodology previously described for the dog health-related quality of life (HRQL) tool (VetMetrica™), the aim was to optimize the scores profile of a comparable feline online HRQL instrument for monitoring HRQL in cats, to assist in its interpretation. Measuring HRQL helps quantify the impact of disease and its treatment on well-being, aids clinical decision making and provides information in clinical trials. In Study 1, using data collected from previous studies, scores generated for three domains of HRQL (Vitality, Comfort, Emotional Well-being) in healthy cats were normalized using standard statistical techniques of logit transformation and -scores, such that the average healthy cat has a score of 50 in all three HRQL domains.

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The distressing reality that mental healthcare for children and young people in acute trust settings in the UK is woefully underprovided is not news. But with acute trust debts being written off, hospital trusts and commissioners of services have a timely opportunity to address this age- and condition-based discrimination.Delivering a just service for under-18s depends on attitude, resources and adequate knowledge of the tasks involved.

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Preventive measures in human healthcare are recognized as a means of providing early detection of disease, however, the veterinary profession has not been as effective in communicating the benefits of preventive measures to pet owners. Readily available pet healthcare information on the internet, owners not understanding that regular health evaluations can ensure the well-being of their pets and owners confusing the signs of chronic disease with normal aging have contributed to declining numbers of veterinary visits. The use of web-based generic health-related quality of life (HRQL) measures to evaluate health status (wellness) remotely could facilitate veterinary preventive medicine.

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Introduction: Online resources are an important source of information about mental health issues and services for children and young people. Our service's website had an out-of-date appearance and was aimed at professionals. More importantly, comments in our routinely collected patient experience data indicated that service users did not know what to expect when coming to our service.

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Prediction and causal explanation are fundamentally distinct tasks of data analysis. In health applications, this difference can be understood in terms of the difference between prognosis (prediction) and prevention/treatment (causal explanation). Nevertheless, these two concepts are often conflated in practice.

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The author reflects on the Norwegian inpatient service descriptions contained in Wilkinson's article, considering the challenges laid out in his piece from the perspective of a child and adolescent psychiatrist working in a hospital crisis setting, as well as within the context of child and adolescent mental healthcare staffing across the UK.

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A middle-aged patient presented with toxic inhalational injury, and was resuscitated prehospitally and treated in the emergency department for smoke inhalation, carbon monoxide (CO) exposure and cyanide poisoning with the use of antidotes. Due to the CO effects on spectrophotometry, an anaemia initially identified on blood gas analysis was thought to be artefactual, but was later confirmed by laboratory testing to be accurate. In addition, cyanide can confound haemoglobin testing due to its use in the analytical process and non-cyanide analysis is required when there is suspected exposure.

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