Introduction: Opioid use disorder (OUD) is a serious and persistent problem in the United States with limited non-pharmacological treatment options, especially for the concomitant sleep disorders experienced by most individuals with addiction. While new, non-invasive interventions such as low-intensity focused ultrasound (LIFU) have shown promise in targeting the brain regions impacted throughout addiction and recovery, the devices used are not amenable to outpatient treatment in their current form factor and cannot be used at night during sleep. To bridge this gap and provide a much-needed treatment option for repeated, at-home use, we developed a wearable LIFU device out-of-clinic use.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHuman craniofacial shape is highly variable yet highly heritable with numerous genetic variants interacting through multiple layers of development. Here, we hypothesize that Mendelian phenotypes represent the extremes of a phenotypic spectrum and, using achondroplasia as an example, we introduce a syndrome-informed phenotyping approach to identify genomic loci associated with achondroplasia-like facial variation in the general population. We compare three-dimensional facial scans from 43 individuals with achondroplasia and 8246 controls to calculate achondroplasia-like facial scores.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFImportance: Drug shortages are a persistent public health issue that increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. Both the US and Canada follow similar regulatory standards and require reporting of drug-related supply chain issues that may result in shortages. However, it is unknown what proportion are associated with meaningful shortages (defined by a significant decrease in drug supply) and whether differences exist between Canada and the US.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe COVID-19 pandemic has had profound effects on the mental health of children and adolescents worldwide, exacerbating existing challenges and introducing new stressors. This paper explores the impact of risk and protective factors on the mental well-being of young individuals during the pandemic. Using data from the German nationwide, population-based, longitudinal COPSY study (n = 2,471, girls: 50.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEnergy transformation capacity is generally assumed to be a coherent individual trait driven by genetic and environmental factors. This predicts that some individuals should have high and others low mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation (OxPhos) capacity across organ systems. Here, we test this assumption using multi-tissue molecular and enzymatic activities in mice and humans.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFZ Evid Fortbild Qual Gesundhwes
September 2024
Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic and accompanying containment measures created major changes to everyone's daily life that had an impact on mental health and psychological burden.
Methods: In five surveys of the COPSY study more than 1,500 parents of 7- to 17-year-olds and their children between the ages of 11 and 17 were interviewed using established mental health assessment tools and a self-developed item on the experience of mental burden. Pre-pandemic comparative data were drawn from the representative BELLA study (BEfragung zum seeLischen Wohbefinden und VerhAlten).
Introduction: Rotating shiftwork schedules are known to disrupt sleep in a manner that can negatively impact safety. Consumer sleep technologies (CSTs) may be a useful tool for sleep tracking, but the standard feedback provided by CSTs may not be salient to shift-working populations. SleepTank is an app that uses the total sleep time data scored by a CST to compute a percentage that equates hours of sleep to the fuel in a car and warns the user to sleep when the "tank" is low.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground Context: Failure to fuse following anterior cervical discectomy and fusion (ACDF) may result in symptomatic pseudoarthrosis. Traditional diagnosis involves computerized tomography to detect bridging bone and/or flexion-extension radiographs to assess whether segmental motion is above specific thresholds; however, there are currently no well-validated diagnostic tests. We propose a biomechanically rational approach to achieve a reliable diagnostic test for pseudoarthrosis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn the CLL14 study, patients with previously untreated chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) and coexisting conditions were randomized to 12 cycles of venetoclax-obinutuzumab (Ven-Obi, n = 216) or chlorambucil-obinutuzumab (Clb-Obi, n = 216). Progression-free survival (PFS) was the primary end point. Key secondary end points included time-to-next-treatment (TTNT), rates of undetectable minimal residual disease (uMRD), overall survival (OS), and rates of adverse events.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The COVID-19-pandemic has had a profound impact on the lives of adolescents worldwide. This study examined the subjective perception of the COVID-19 pandemic measures and its association with mental health and well-being (i.e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFChild Adolesc Psychiatry Ment Health
July 2024
Background: Mental health and health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in children and adolescents deteriorated during the COVID-19 pandemic. The aim of this population-based longitudinal study was to explore whether distinct mental health trajectories in youths can be identified over the course of the pandemic.
Methods: Mental health problems (MHP), psychosomatic symptoms and HRQoL were assessed at five time points between May 2020 and October 2022 in 744 children and adolescents aged 7 to 20 years using established instruments.
Plastic pollution is a global environmental threat with potentially irreversible impacts on aquatic life, ecosystems, and human health. This study is a comprehensive assessment of the global apparel industry's contribution to plastic pollution. It includes plastic leakage of packaging and end-of-life apparel waste in addition to fiber emissions during apparel production and use.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEmployees from any type of aviation services industry were asked to give their opinions about the usefulness of consumer sleep technologies (CSTs) during operations and their willingness to share data from CSTs with their organizations for fatigue risk management purposes under a variety of circumstances. Respondents provided information about position in aviation and use of CST devices. Respondents ranked sleep issues and feedback metrics by perceived level of importance to operational performance.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnlabelled: GDF15 (growth differentiation factor 15) is a marker of cellular and mitochondrial energetic stress linked to physical-mental illness, aging, and mortality. Here, we describe the psychobiological regulation of plasma and saliva GDF15 in four human studies including 3,599 samples from 148 healthy individuals. We report two main observations establishing GDF15 as a novel tractable biomarker of psychosocial stress.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFImportance: Drug shortages are a chronic and worsening issue that compromises patient safety. Despite the destabilizing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on pharmaceutical production, it remains unclear whether issues affecting the drug supply chain were more likely to result in meaningful shortages during the pandemic.
Objective: To estimate the proportion of supply chain issue reports associated with drug shortages overall and with the COVID-19 pandemic.
Pharmacoepidemiol Drug Saf
April 2024
Background: Valsartan is commonly used for cardiac conditions. In 2018, the Food and Drug Administration recalled generic valsartan due to the detection of impurities. Our objective was to determine if heart failure patients receiving valsartan at the recall date had a greater likelihood of unfavorable outcomes than patients using comparable antihypertensives.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCraniosynostosis is a common yet complex birth defect, characterized by premature fusion of the cranial sutures that can be syndromic or nonsyndromic. With over 180 syndromic associations, reaching genetic diagnoses and understanding variations in underlying cellular mechanisms remains a challenge. Variants of FGFR2 are highly associated with craniosynostosis and warrant further investigation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted the mental health of children and families, i.e., due to measures like social distancing and remote schooling.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Valsartan was recalled by the US Food and Drug Administration in July 2018 for carcinogenic impurities, resulting in a drug shortage and management challenges for valsartan users. The influence of the valsartan recall on clinical outcomes is unknown. We compared the risk of adverse events between hypertensive patients using valsartan and a propensity score-matched group using nonrecalled angiotensin receptor blockers and angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: Accuracy and relevance to health outcomes are important to researchers and clinicians who use consumer sleep technologies, but economic demand motivates consumer sleep technology design. This report quantifies the value of scientific relevance to the general consumer in a dollar amount to convey the importance of device accuracy in terms that consumer sleep technology manufacturers can appreciate.
Methods: Survey data were collected from 368 participants on Amazon mTurk.
Rev Sci Instrum
November 2023
Currently, the world's only source of low-energy antiprotons is the AD/ELENA facility located at CERN. To date, all precision measurements on single antiprotons have been conducted at this facility and provide stringent tests of fundamental interactions and their symmetries. However, magnetic field fluctuations from the facility operation limit the precision of upcoming measurements.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Manag Care Spec Pharm
October 2023
Medication costs for antidiabetic drugs have risen significantly in the United States, causing concerns about the affordability of these essential treatments. To examine out-of-pocket spending for antidiabetic medication and evaluate what proportion of Americans reach catastrophic spending levels during the year. This retrospective cohort analysis of nationally representative data from the 2020 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) was analyzed for respondents that reported a diabetes diagnosis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe brain and behavior are under energetic constraints, limited by mitochondrial energy transformation capacity. However, the mitochondria-behavior relationship has not been systematically studied at a brain-wide scale. Here we examined the association between multiple features of mitochondrial respiratory chain capacity and stress-related behaviors in male mice with diverse behavioral phenotypes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe opioid crisis continues to affect many areas worldwide, raising questions regarding prescribing indications. There is no consensus on negotiating the need for pain relief and the potential for medically prescribed opioid-related harm/addiction. These issues present an enormous educational challenge to physicians in training, particularly those whose mandate is to understand and respond to varying forms of pain.
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