Carbon Fiber Reinforced Hybrid Polyaryl-Ether-Ether-Ketone (PEEK) Spinal Fixation System: Technical Features and Preliminary Clinical Trial.

Objective: To present the clinical result of spinal fixation system made entirely of Carbon-Fiber-Reinforced (CFR)-Hybrid Polyaryl-Ether-Ether-Ketone (PEEK).

Summary Of Background Data: Fusion surgery has been used to treat chronic low back pain caused by degenerative disk disease (DDD). The traditional pedicle screw system made of titanium, though biocompatible, can lead to complications, such as stress shielding and implant failure.

Retrospective cohort study of fluctuations in emergency department visits for nonspecific back and neck pain during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Objective: We examined fluctuations in emergency department (ED) visits for nonspecific back and neck pain during the COVID-19 pandemic and explored potential contributing factors.

Methods: This retrospective cohort study included patients who presented to the ED with nonspecific back and neck pain between January 2019 and December 2021. Demographic data, visit frequencies, and clinical outcomes were analyzed to assess the impact of the pandemic on visit patterns.

Reducing Dysphagia Following Anterior Cervical Spine Surgery: Insights From a Meta-Analysis.

A systematic search was conducted across PubMed, Embase, and Cochrane Library databases to identify relevant studies. The analysis focused on the influence of surgical duration, the number of cervical levels treated, and implant types. A total of 21 studies were included, and heterogeneity among studies was evaluated using the I² statistic.

Dual-Fluoroscopy vs. Single-Fluoroscopy in Balloon Kyphoplasty: A Study of Efficiency and Safety.

Vertebral compression fractures (VCFs) are the most prevalent type of osteoporotic fractures, often causing significant pain, morbidity, and mortality. Vertebral augmentation procedures like balloon kyphoplasty (BK) are effective in treating VCFs. These procedures are typically performed using a single fluoroscopy machine (SF) for anteroposterior (AP) and lateral views.

The Effect of Prosthetic Factors on the Long-Term Survival of Dental Implants: A Narrative Review.

The success of implants depends on the biological and mechanical factors of the implant, as well as on the chosen prosthesis, which has different characteristics that can affect the survival of the implant and its marginal bone levels. Therefore, when choosing the type of prosthesis, it is necessary to understand and consider each of these variables and tailor them to the relevant clinical situation. In this narrative review, we will assess the types of prostheses, their different characteristics, timing, and their impact on implant survival and marginal bone levels, as accepted in today's literature.

How self-states help: Observing the embodiment of self-states through nonverbal behavior.

The concept of self-states is a recurring theme in various psychotherapeutic and counseling methodologies. However, the predominantly unconscious nature of these self-states presents two challenges. Firstly, it renders the process of working with them susceptible to biases and therapeutic suggestions.

NKT cells in the antitumor response: the β version?

NKT cells recognize glycolipids presented by CD1d-expressing antigen-presenting cells (APCs) and include type I NKT cells with antitumor function and type II NKT cells, which have been reported to suppress the antitumor response. Some type II NKT cells recognize sulfatide, a glycosphingolipid with a sulfate modification of the sugar. Type I NKT cells recognize different glycosphingolipids.

Biocompatibility, Surface Morphology, and Bacterial Load of Dental Implant Abutments following Decontamination Protocols: An In-Vitro Study.

The long-term success of dental implant rehabilitation depends significantly on proper peri-implant soft tissue integration. Therefore, decontamination of abutments prior to their connection to the implant is beneficial to enhance soft tissue attachment and to aid in maintaining marginal bone around the implant. Consequently, different implant abutment decontamination protocols were evaluated regarding biocompatibility, surface morphology, and bacterial load.

A historical review of pain disparities research: Advancing toward health equity and empowerment.

Background And Purpose: This theory-guided review draws on 30 years of published data to examine and interrogate the current and future state of pain disparities research.

Methods: Using the Hierarchy of Health Disparity Research framework, we synthesize and present an overview of "three generations" of pain disparities scholarship, while proposing directions for adopting a "fourth generation" that redefines, explains, and theorizes future pain disparities research in a diverse society.

Discussion: Prior research has focused on describing the scope of disparities, and throughout the historical context of human existence, racialized groups have been subjected to inadequate pain care.

Leveraging community health workers in extending pediatric telebehavioral health care in rural communities: Evaluation design and methods.

Objective: The pandemic exacerbated and intensified pediatric behavioral health and access needs in rural and underserved areas due to long-standing workforce shortages, lack of resources, and multigenerational poverty and trauma. Kansas is a predominantly rural and frontier state with 94% of counties designated as mental health professional shortage areas.

Innovation: The Telehealth ROCKS (THR) program is among the first of its kind to increase the behavioral health workforce capacity by integrating trained school-based community health workers (CHWs) directly into rural communities.

The influence of early visual deprivation on audio-spatial working memory.

Objective: This study investigates how spatial working memory skills, and the processing and retrieval of distal auditory spatial information are influenced by visual experience.

Method: We developed an experimental paradigm using an acoustic simulation. The performance of congenitally blind and sighted participants ( = 9 per group) was compared when recalling sequences of spatialised auditory items in the same or reverse order of presentation.

The Intersection of Pain Outcomes and Social Isolation Among African Americans.

There is increasing evidence suggesting the influence social isolation has on health outcomes and mental well-being. Chronic medical conditions, such as pain, have been shown to impact social relationships and isolation among majority populations, but there is little evidence documenting this relationship among African Americans. To address this lack of scholarly work, the current study aimed to examine subjective and objective social isolation, pain interference with daily life, and problems with pain in a sample of African American adults 18 + years of age.

Palliative Care Practice During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Descriptive Qualitative Study of Palliative Care Clinicians.

Context: COVID-19 created unprecedented demand for palliative care at a time when in-person communication was highly restricted, straining efforts to care for patients and families.

Objectives: To qualitatively explore the challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic from the perspective of palliative care clinicians. Specifically we sought to: 1) Describe the strategies adopted by palliative care clinicians to cope with new challenges including patient and clinician isolation, prognostication of an emergent disease, and rapidly rising numbers of severely ill patients; 2) Identify additions or adjustments to in-person and system-related palliative care training, methods, and tools made during pandemics.

Transcriptome and chromatin landscape of iNKT cells are shaped by subset differentiation and antigen exposure.

Invariant natural killer T cells (iNKT cells) differentiate into thymic and peripheral NKT1, NKT2 and NKT17 subsets. Here we use RNA-seq and ATAC-seq analyses and show iNKT subsets are similar, regardless of tissue location. Lung iNKT cell subsets possess the most distinct location-specific features, shared with other innate lymphocytes in the lung, possibly consistent with increased activation.

Perceptual implications of different Ambisonics-based methods for binaural reverberation.

Reverberation is essential for the realistic auralisation of enclosed spaces. However, it can be computationally expensive to render with high fidelity and, in practice, simplified models are typically used to lower costs while preserving perceived quality. Ambisonics-based methods may be employed to this purpose as they allow us to render a reverberant sound field more efficiently by limiting its spatial resolution.

Publisher Correction: Innate-like functions of natural killer T cell subsets result from highly divergent gene programs.

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

Altered thymic differentiation and modulation of arthritis by invariant NKT cells expressing mutant ZAP70.

Various subsets of invariant natural killer T (iNKT) cells with different cytokine productions develop in the mouse thymus, but the factors driving their differentiation remain unclear. Here we show that hypomorphic alleles of Zap70 or chemical inhibition of Zap70 catalysis leads to an increase of IFN-γ-producing iNKT cells (NKT1 cells), suggesting that NKT1 cells may require a lower TCR signal threshold. Zap70 mutant mice develop IL-17-dependent arthritis.

A Sensitive and Integrated Approach to Profile Messenger RNA from Samples with Low Cell Numbers.

Transcriptomic profiling by RNA sequencing (RNA-Seq) represents the preferred approach to measure genome-wide gene expression for understanding cellular function, tissue development, disease pathogenesis, as well as to identify potential biomarkers and therapeutic targets. For samples with small cell numbers, multiple methods have been described to increase the efficiency of library preparation and to reduce hands-on time and costs. This chapter reviews our approach, which combines flow cytometry and the most recent high-resolution techniques to perform RNA-Seq for samples with low cell numbers as well as for single-cell samples.

Correction to: A Sensitive and Integrated Approach to Profile Messenger RNA from Samples with Low Cell Numbers.

The Chapter was inadvertently published without Acknowledgement. We have now added the acknowledgement in the chapter. Please find the same below.

Innate-like functions of natural killer T cell subsets result from highly divergent gene programs.

Natural killer T cells (NKT cells) have stimulatory or inhibitory effects on the immune response that can be attributed in part to the existence of functional subsets of NKT cells. These subsets have been characterized only on the basis of the differential expression of a few transcription factors and cell-surface molecules. Here we have analyzed purified populations of thymic NKT cell subsets at both the transcriptomic level and epigenomic level and by single-cell RNA sequencing.

Integrated Data Repository Toolkit (IDRT). A Suite of Programs to Facilitate Health Analytics on Heterogeneous Medical Data.

Background: In recent years, research data warehouses moved increasingly into the focus of interest of medical research. Nevertheless, there are only a few center-independent infrastructure solutions available. They aim to provide a consolidated view on medical data from various sources such as clinical trials, electronic health records, epidemiological registries or longitudinal cohorts.

Secure Secondary Use of Clinical Data with Cloud-based NLP Services. Towards a Highly Scalable Research Infrastructure.

Objectives: The secondary use of clinical data provides large opportunities for clinical and translational research as well as quality assurance projects. For such purposes, it is necessary to provide a flexible and scalable infrastructure that is compliant with privacy requirements. The major goals of the cloud4health project are to define such an architecture, to implement a technical prototype that fulfills these requirements and to evaluate it with three use cases.

Jarid2 is induced by TCR signalling and controls iNKT cell maturation.

Jarid2 is a reported component of three lysine methyltransferase complexes, polycomb repressive complex 2 (PRC2) that methylates histone 3 lysine 27 (H3K27), and GLP-G9a and SETDB1 complexes that methylate H3K9. Here we show that Jarid2 is upregulated upon TCR stimulation and during positive selection in the thymus. Mice lacking Jarid2 in T cells display an increase in the frequency of IL-4-producing promyelocytic leukemia zinc finger (PLZF)(hi) immature invariant natural killer T (iNKT) cells and innate-like CD8(+) cells; Itk-deficient mice, which have a similar increase of innate-like CD8(+) cells, show blunted upregulation of Jarid2 during positive selection.

Transcriptional control of the development and function of Vα14i NKT cells.

The majority of T lymphocytes, sometimes referred to as as mainstream or conventional T cells, are characterized by a diverse T cell antigen receptor (TCR) repertoire. They require antigen priming in order to become memory cells capable of mounting a rapid effector response. It has become established, however, that there are several distinct T cell lineages that exhibit a memory phenotype in the absence of antigen priming, even as they differentiate in the thymus.