Diagnostic Test Characteristics of Ultrasound-Based Hydronephrosis for Chronic Kidney Disease in Children and Adolescents With Myelomeningocele: Results From the UMPIRE and NSBPR Cohort Studies.

Purpose: Renal ultrasounds are performed in patients with myelomeningocele to screen for markers of kidney health, including hydronephrosis. We evaluated the diagnostic accuracy of hydronephrosis to screen for low kidney function defined by estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR).

Materials And Methods: We performed a retrospective cross-sectional study using data from 2 cohorts of children and youth with myelomeningocele.

Epitope-focused immunogens targeting the hepatitis C virus glycoproteins induce broadly neutralizing antibodies.

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection causes ~290,000 annual human deaths despite the highly effective antiviral treatment available. Several viral immune evasion mechanisms have hampered the development of an effective vaccine against HCV, among them the remarkable conformational flexibility within neutralization epitopes in the HCV antigens. Here, we report the design of epitope-focused immunogens displaying two distinct HCV cross-neutralization epitopes.

Physical medicine and rehabilitation clerkships in medical school: A valuable and integrated addition to the advanced clerkships.

The medical specialty of physical medicine and rehabilitation (PM&R) focuses on quality of life, function, ability, and interdisciplinary care. PM&R clerkships are uniquely qualified to teach medical students about rehabilitation and the spectrum of postacute care, medical knowledge, and medical decision making related to health care affecting people with disabilities, health care disparities affecting people with disabilities, and the communication and teamwork strategies to provide a patient-centered approach to optimize function and outcomes. PM&R clerkships can be used to fulfill stakeholder and governing body requirements, such as medical knowledge, rehabilitation, critical judgment, health disparities, ethics, communication, teamwork, and patient-centered medical care, in order to maintain accreditation and provide a high-quality education This review provides both a rationale for a medical student clerkship in PM&R and an effective example of such an experience that has been implemented during medical school training.

In vitro proteolysis mirrors intact muscle maturation in beef carcasses.

An in vitro assay was developed to study protease activity during the maturation of beef postmortem. Myofibrils were purified from the semitendinosus and used as a sentinel for assessing the activity of endogenous proteases in longissimus thoracis et lumborum (LTL) and the extensor carpi radialis (ER) over time postmortem in beef carcasses. Samples were collected from each muscle at 0, 1, 2, 7, and 14 d of aging and snap frozen.

Spinal motor evoked responses elicited by transcutaneous spinal cord stimulation in chronic stroke: Correlation between spinal cord excitability, demographic characteristics, and functional outcomes.

Transcutaneous spinal cord stimulation (tSCS) is becoming a promising neuromodulation technique to promote motor recovery in various neurological conditions, including stroke. As this intervention moves forward into clinical practice, it is important to understand how the elicited neurophysiological measures are related to the functional and neuromuscular deficits of the population of interest in order to personalize tSCS interventions and assess its effectiveness. Specifically, neurophysiological measurements of spinal cord excitability can be achieved by recording with EMG spinal motor evoked responses (sMERs) in muscles after applying single pulses of tSCS to the spinal cord.