Overcrowding in Emergency Department: Causes, Consequences, and Solutions-A Narrative Review.

Overcrowding in Emergency Departments (EDs) is a phenomenon that is now widespread globally and causes a significant negative impact that goes on to affect the entire hospital. This contributes to a number of consequences that can affect both the number of resources available and the quality of care. Overcrowding is due to a number of factors that in most cases lead to an increase in the number of people within the ED, an increase in mortality and morbidity, and a decrease in the ability to provide critical services in a timely manner to patients suffering from medical emergencies.

Comparative Effectiveness of Combined IgM-Enriched Immunoglobulin and Extracorporeal Blood Purification Plus Standard Care Versus Standard Care for Sepsis and Septic Shock after Cardiac Surgery.

Background: The combination of surgery, bacterial spread-out, and artificial cardiopulmonary bypass surfaces results in a release of key inflammatory mediators leading to an overshooting systemic hyper-inflammatory condition frequently associated with compromised hemodynamics and organ dysfunction. A promising approach could be extracorporeal blood purification therapies in combination with IgM enriched immunoglobulin. This approach might perform a balanced control of both hyper and hypo-inflammatory phases as an immune-modulating intervention.

Perspective: National Football League Teams Need Chief Diversity Officers.

The National Football League (NFL) and its teams, some of the world's most profitable sporting properties, face challenges with diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). With a history of discriminatory work environments, including a recent high-profile lawsuit, the NFL and its teams have a poor reputation on these issues. This perspective piece investigated NFL teams' utilization of organization employees dedicated to DEI.

Epidemiology and Prevention of Healthcare-Associated Infections in Geriatric Patients: A Narrative Review.

Demographic studies show that life expectancy is increasing in developed countries; increased longevity has also increased the share of the older population with often concomitant chronic conditions. An ageing population and increased comorbidities lead to more complex pharmacological therapies (polypharmacy). The particular picture provided by chronic conditions and polypharmacy can lead to longer hospital stays and a greater need for healthcare.

A Bayesian data fusion based approach for learning genome-wide transcriptional regulatory networks.

Background: Reverse engineering of transcriptional regulatory networks (TRN) from genomics data has always represented a computational challenge in System Biology. The major issue is modeling the complex crosstalk among transcription factors (TFs) and their target genes, with a method able to handle both the high number of interacting variables and the noise in the available heterogeneous experimental sources of information.

Results: In this work, we propose a data fusion approach that exploits the integration of complementary omics-data as prior knowledge within a Bayesian framework, in order to learn and model large-scale transcriptional networks.

Chitosan-Stabilized Noble Metal Nanoparticles: Study of their Shape Evolution and Post-Functionalization Properties.

Noble metal anisotropic nanostructures have achieved a growing interest in both academic and industrial domains mostly because of their shape-dependent plasmonic properties in the near-infrared region. In this paper, gold and gold-silver anisotropic nanostructures were synthesized in very high shape-yields through a wet, seed-mediated approach based on the use of nearly spherical silver nanoparticles as seeds and chitosan as stabilizing agent. Two chitosans of different origin and molecular properties were selected for the synthetic pathway, leading to the formation of variously sized and shaped end products.

Protease target prediction via matrix factorization.

Motivation: Protein cleavage is an important cellular event, involved in a myriad of processes, from apoptosis to immune response. Bioinformatics provides in silico tools, such as machine learning-based models, to guide the discovery of targets for the proteases responsible for protein cleavage. State-of-the-art models have a scope limited to specific protease families (such as Caspases), and do not explicitly include biological or medical knowledge (such as the hierarchical protein domain similarity or gene-gene interactions).

Patient similarity by joint matrix trifactorization to identify subgroups in acute myeloid leukemia.

Objective: Computing patients' similarity is of great interest in precision oncology since it supports clustering and subgroup identification, eventually leading to tailored therapies. The availability of large amounts of biomedical data, characterized by large feature sets and sparse content, motivates the development of new methods to compute patient similarities able to fuse heterogeneous data sources with the available knowledge.

Materials And Methods: In this work, we developed a data integration approach based on matrix trifactorization to compute patient similarities by integrating several sources of data and knowledge.

Race/ethnicity, education, and age are associated with engagement in ecological momentary assessment text messaging among substance-using MSM in San Francisco.

Background: Ecological momentary assessments (EMA) are data collection approaches that characterize behaviors in real-time. However, EMA is underutilized in alcohol and substance use research among men who have sex with men (MSM). The aim of this analysis is to explore the correlates of engagement in EMA text messages among substance-using MSM in San Francisco.

Correction: A Network-Based Data Integration Approach to Support Drug Repurposing and Multi-Target Therapies in Triple Negative Breast Cancer.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.

A Network-Based Data Integration Approach to Support Drug Repurposing and Multi-Target Therapies in Triple Negative Breast Cancer.

The integration of data and knowledge from heterogeneous sources can be a key success factor in drug design, drug repurposing and multi-target therapies. In this context, biological networks provide a useful instrument to highlight the relationships and to model the phenomena underlying therapeutic action in cancer. In our work, we applied network-based modeling within a novel bioinformatics pipeline to identify promising multi-target drugs.

Concordance of Text Message Ecological Momentary Assessment and Retrospective Survey Data Among Substance-Using Men Who Have Sex With Men: A Secondary Analysis of a Randomized Controlled Trial.

Background: Alcohol and illicit drug use is more prevalent among men who have sex with men (MSM) compared to the general population and has been linked to HIV transmission in this population. Research assessing individual patterns of substance use often utilizes questionnaires or interviews that rely on retrospective self-reported information, which can be subject to recall bias. Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) is a set of methods developed to mitigate recall bias by collecting data about subjects' mental states and behaviors on a near real-time basis.

Functionalized Au/Ag nanocages as a novel fluorescence and SERS dual probe for sensing.

We obtained chitosan-protected Au/Ag nanocages (NCs), i.e., hollow and porous metallic nanoparticles, by galvanic replacement reaction.

Clinical and laboratory features of children and adolescents with congenital hypothyroidism due to dyshormonogenesis in southern Brazil.

Objective: To characterize the phenotype of patients with congenital hypothyroidism (CH) due to dyshormonogenesis, and to hypothesize on the degree of genetic defect.

Subjects And Methods: Patients with dyshormonogenesis were subdivided into G1 (radioactive iodine uptake, RAIU > 15%; n = 62) and G2 (RAIU < 15%; n = 32). Thyroglobulin (TG) was measured in all patients; perchlorate discharge test (PDT) was performed in G1; and saliva-to-plasma radioiodine ratio (I- S/P) in G2.

Spectroscopical properties of organic/metal nanohybrids.

The aim of our work was to prepare stable nanohybrids of controlled size and shape consisting of a noble metal core decorated with polydiacetylenes (PDAs). Due to the combination of the outstanding linear and nonlinear optical properties of the polydiacetylenic chains with the electromagnetic field-enhancing capability of metal nanostructures, these novel composites can find potential application in different fields. In particular, the different colours exhibited by PDAs in relation to the chemical nature of the monomer and the polymerization procedure, as well as in response to environmental perturbations, make them excellent materials for the fabrication of sensing devices.

Photopolymerization of diacetylene-capped gold nanoparticles.

Gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) coated with the diacetylene henicosa-10,12-diyn-1-yl (DS9) disulfide were successfully prepared by direct synthesis in toluene solutions. The average size of the nanohybrid metal core was finely adjusted by manipulation of the preparative conditions in the diameter range from 1.6 to 7.

[Bone mineral density of children and adolescents with congenital hypothyroidism].

Unlabelled: A cross sectional study was made on 60 patients (9.9 +/- 1.8 yr-old) with congenital hypothyroidism (CH) (group A): 40 girls (23 prepubertal) and 20 boys (18 prepubertal).

Perioperative thoracic epidural analgesia in aortic surgery: role of levobupivacaine.

Aim: Perioperative pain management in patients undergoing surgery is an essential target in order to improve intraoperative outcome and reduce postoperative complications occurrence. The combination of a local anesthetic with an opiate for epidural administration can ensure both analgesic effect (opiate) and neuroendocrine protection (local anesthetic). Levobupivacaine, S(-)-enantiomer form of bupivacaine, produces a sensitive-motor blockade similar to the racemate, with less cardiotoxicity; also ropivacaine is not cardiotoxic, but it has less anesthetic efficacy than levobupivacaine; both anesthetics could be administered through the epidural catheter in order to ensure adequate analgesia without any hemodynamic effects.

Treatment with interferon of chronic hepatitis B associated with antibody to hepatitis B e antigen.

Persistence of HBV replication (serum HBV-DNA and intrahepatic HBcAg) and markers of HBV-induced (IgM anti-HBc positive) liver disease in anti-HBe-positive patients characterize a peculiar form of chronic hepatitis B. This form of hepatitis B prevails in the Mediterranean Basin, Middle and Far East and is associated with the infection of an HBV variant that lacks the capacity to produce HBeAg. We analysed the results of interferon treatment of 90 patients with chronic anti-HBe-positive hepatitis included in four randomized controlled trials.

Diagnostic advances in viral hepatitis: the discovery of hepatitis C virus and genetic heterogeneity of hepatitis B virus.

The discovery of hepatitis C virus (HCV) and its serological markers represents a new milestone in the history of viral hepatitis and allows a specific diagnosis of viral hepatitis in more than 90 percent of cases. In addition, testing for anti-HCV plays a crucial role in prevention of post-transfusion non-A, non-B hepatitis. The multifaceted spectrum of liver disease associated with hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection, spanning from a healthy carrier state to severe forms of chronic hepatitis, was traditionally attributed to variability of host's antiviral immune response.

Delta and non-A, non-B hepatitis viruses.

A review is given on the current knowledge of the hepatitis delta virus (HDV), the only hepatotropic non-A and non-B (NANB) virus characterized, although the infection it causes requires infection with hepatitis B virus (HBV). Studies in chimpanzees have provided the most data now available on the putative NANB agents. Histologic and electron microscopic changes occurring in HDV and NANB hepatitis have been shown to be comparable, and some biologic, epidemiologic and clinical features are similar.

Chronic HDV (hepatitis delta virus) hepatitis. Intrahepatic expression of delta antigen, histologic activity and outcome of liver disease.

The expression of intrahepatic delta antigen (HDAg) was studied in relation to the morphologic features of HDV hepatitis and the outcome of liver disease. The study was performed in 101 patients followed up for an average of 12 years; one or more liver biopsies were available from each patient, giving a total of 167 specimens. The histologic features were assessed using numerical scores.

Multicenter study with ketanserin in essential hypertension: an Argentine experiment.

One thousand eleven patients with essential hypertension (H) were evaluated upon compliance with the following inclusion criteria: (a) mild to moderate uncomplicated H, with supine diastolic blood pressure (Su DBP) greater than 90 mm Hg at the end of the placebo period, with or without antihypertensive treatment; (b) greater than 20 years old. The dosage of ketanserin (K) was 20 mg b.i.