Genetic Ablation of STE20-Type Kinase MST4 Does Not Alleviate Diet-Induced MASLD Susceptibility in Mice.

Metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) and its advanced subtype, metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH), have emerged as the most common chronic liver disease worldwide, yet there is no targeted pharmacotherapy presently available. This study aimed to investigate the possible in vivo function of STE20-type protein kinase MST4, which was earlier implicated in the regulation of hepatocellular lipotoxic milieu in vitro, in the control of the diet-induced impairment of systemic glucose and insulin homeostasis as well as MASLD susceptibility. Whole-body and liver-specific knockout mice were generated by crossbreeding conditional mice with mice expressing Cre recombinase under the or promoters, respectively.

Outpatient Photodynamic Diagnosis-guided Laser Destruction of Bladder Tumors Is as Good as Conventional Inpatient Photodynamic Diagnosis-guided Transurethral Tumor Resection in Patients with Recurrent Intermediate-risk Low-grade Ta Bladder Tumors. A Prospective Randomized Noninferiority Clinical Trial.

Background: Transurethral resection of recurrent low-grade intermediate-risk Ta bladder tumor (BT) in general anesthesia (GA) is burdensome to patients and health care system. Laser technologies enable treatment in office-based settings, reducing morbidity and costs.

Objective: To compare 4-mo recurrence-free survival after outpatient department (OPD) diode laser coagulation of BT in local anesthesia and gold standard transurethral resection of BT (TUR-BT) in GA in intermediate-risk Ta low-grade BT, and to evaluate treatment-related morbidity.

Health Literacy Initiatives and Lessons Learned with NGOs: Wisconsin Health Literacy.

This report discusses necessary steps to help ensure successful community-based health literacy interventions using adult learning principles. Two workshop topics are covered: one on the flu and the other on the safe and effective use of opioids. Successful implementation includes conducting a needs assessment, developing project content, identifying target audiences, building strong community partners, implementing the workshops, and evaluating outcomes.

Do repeated transurethral procedures under general anesthesia influence mortality in patients with non-invasive urothelial bladder cancer? A Danish national cohort study.

To investigate the effect of repeated transurethral procedures under general anesthesia on overall mortality in patients with non-invasive bladder cancer. All Danish residents with non-invasive papillary urothelial carcinoma or primary urothelial carcinoma diagnosed between 1 January 2000 and 1 January 2011 were included and followed until death or 31 March 2017. All transurethral procedures under general anesthesia, intravesical instillation therapy, recurrences and progression to invasive disease or cystectomy were recorded during follow-up.

Haematuria and urinary tract cancers in patients with atrial fibrillation treated with oral anticoagulants.

Aims: Patients with atrial fibrillation (AF) treated with oral anticoagulants (OACs) have an increased risk of bleeding including haematuria. In the general population, gross haematuria is associated with urinary tract cancer. Consequently, we aimed to investigate the potential association between gross haematuria and urinary tract cancer in anticoagulated patients with AF.

Best Practices to Advance Health Literacy in a Wisconsin Adult Literacy Coalition.

Background: Wisconsin Literacy Incorporated is a statewide adult and family literacy coalition representing 75 community-based literacy organizations. This coalition focuses its work in four areas: (1) building capacity of its member agencies, (2) advocating for literacy, (3) preparing adults in worker readiness and career pathways, and (4) improving how health information is communicated through its division, Wisconsin Health Literacy (WHL).

Brief Description Of Activity: This article outlines how an adult basic education coalition successfully developed a statewide health literacy coalition that later transformed into a division of Wisconsin Literacy through a three-phase approach that included: (1) raising awareness and educating health care and literacy providers about health literacy, (2) implementing health literacy interventions through various grant funding, and (3) disseminating and sharing findings from such health literacy interventions to a broad audience.

National incidence and survival of patients with non-invasive papillary urothelial carcinoma: a Danish population study.

Objective: To estimate national relative survival of low and high grade non-invasive papillary urothelial carcinoma (Ta LG and Ta HG) and urothelial carcinoma in situ (CIS).

Materials And Methods: All Danish citizens (17,941 patients) with a primary urothelial bladder tumour diagnosis in the period 2000- 2010 were followed until 1 January 2016 and recorded in the Danish Bladder Cancer Cohort database. Survival was compared to the background population matched on age and gender and adjusted by civil status, income, education, and comorbidity.

A taxonomy of motives to cite.

In this study, we explicate citing behavior in the writing of scientific papers by presenting a taxonomy of motives to cite. The suggested taxonomy consists of four main categories, which are purely descriptive: Argumentation, Social Alignment, Mercantile Alignment, and Data. These categories are divided into a suggested set of subcategories.

Desirable possible selves and depression in adult women with eating disorders.

Purpose: Possible selves are conceptions of our selves in future states. Previous findings indicated that women with anorexia nervosa tended to have more negative possible selves than a control group, even when rating future situations normally regarded in our society as desirable. The present study investigated whether this was a general pattern in women with eating disorders, relating findings on possible selves to depression.

Spreading a medical home redesign: effects on emergency department use and hospital admissions.

Purpose: The patient-centered medical home (PCMH) is being rapidly deployed in many settings to strengthen US primary care, improve quality, and control costs; however, evidence supporting this transformation is still lacking. We describe the Group Health experience in attempting to replicate the effects on health care use seen in a PCMH prototype clinic via a systemwide spread using Lean as the change strategy.

Methods: We used an interrupted time series analysis with a patient-month unit of analysis over a 4-year period that included baseline, implementation, and stabilization periods for 412,943 patients.

The possible selves of adult women with anorexia nervosa.

Adopting the construct of possible selves, which are conceptions of our selves in future situations, the objective of this study was to investigate how anorexia patients differ from a non-clinical control group in their conceptions of the future on qualitative content, and the four quantitative dimensions positive and negative emotional valence, and beliefs about probability and controllability. The Possible Selves Statements Test was employed. Participants presented 14 possible selves by completing the question "I can see myself …" and rating each possible self on the 4 dimensions.

Development of personal narratives as a mediator of the impact of deficits in social cognition and social withdrawal on negative symptoms in schizophrenia.

Although negative symptoms are a barrier to recovery from schizophrenia, little is understood about the psychological processes that reinforce and sustain them. To explore this issue, this study used structural equation modeling to test whether the impact of social withdrawal and emotion recognition deficits upon negative symptoms is mediated by the richness or poverty of personal narratives. The participants were 99 adults with schizophrenia spectrum disorders.

The Group Health medical home at year two: cost savings, higher patient satisfaction, and less burnout for providers.

As the patient-centered medical home model emerges as a key vehicle to improve the quality of health care and to control costs, the experience of Seattle-based Group Health Cooperative with its medical home pilot takes on added importance. This paper examines the effects of the medical home prototype on patients' experiences, quality, burnout of clinicians, and total costs at twenty-one to twenty-four months after implementation. The results show improvements in patients' experiences, quality, and clinician burnout through two years.

Design of the Del-1 for therapeutic angiogenesis trial (DELTA-1), a phase II multicenter, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of VLTS-589 in subjects with intermittent claudication secondary to peripheral arterial disease.

The objective of this phase II investigation is to assess the safety and efficacy of a plasmid mediated approach to induce angiogenesis/arteriogenesis with the angiomatrix protein Del-1 (developmentally regulated endothelial locus 1), in subjects with intermittent claudication (IC) secondary to peripheral arterial disease (PAD). VLTS-589 is an investigational nonviral therapeutic comprising a plasmid-expressing Del-1 formulated with poloxamer 188 (facilitating agent). One hundred subjects with bilateral PAD and IC will be randomized after careful screening to bilateral intramuscular delivery of VLTS-589 or placebo.

Distinguishing and combining risks for sexual and violent recidivism.

A two-dimensional risk assessment system for sexual offenders was created that can classify them for risk of sexual recidivism, risk of nonsexual violent recidivism, and the composite risk of reconviction for sexual or nonsexual assaults. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analyses of separate follow-up samples were used for cross-validation. The system is easier to score than Static-99, and substantially easier to score than the VRAG or SORAG, while yielding comparable predictive accuracy in cross-validation samples with follow-ups from 2 years to 19 years.

Relaxin activates the MAP kinase pathway in human endometrial stromal cells.

The reproductive hormone, relaxin, is structurally similar to insulin and insulin-like growth factor (IGF). Although a number of cellular responses to relaxin have been described, intracellular signaling mechanisms that link relaxin receptor engagement to alterations in gene expression remain uncharacterized. In the present study, relaxin treatment of a well-characterized target, human endometrial stromal cells, resulted in rapid activation of p42/44 mitogen-activated protein (MAP) kinase, as well as of MAPK (or ERK) kinase (MEK).

The relationship between static and dynamic risk factors and reconviction in a sample of U.K. child abusers.

This study examined how well historical information and psychometric data predicted sexual recidivism in a sample of child abusers about to undergo group-based cognitive behavioral treatment in the community. Static, historical factors, as measured by the Static-99 (R. K.

Relaxin induces vascular endothelial growth factor expression and angiogenesis selectively at wound sites.

Relaxin is a reproductive hormone that has historically been characterized as being responsible for pubic ligament loosening and cervical ripening. Recently, relaxin has been associated with neovascularization of the endometrial lining of the uterus, potentially via specific induction of vascular endothelial growth factor. Previously conducted clinical studies using partially purified porcine relaxin have described relaxin's ability to stimulate the healing of ischemic wounds, suggesting that relaxin may also have angiogenic effects at sites of ischemic wound healing.

Recombinant human relaxin in the treatment of scleroderma. A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial.

Background: Relaxin is a pregnancy-related hormone that has tissue remodeling and antifibrotic effects. Systemic sclerosis (scleroderma) is characterized by fibrosis of the skin, vasculature, and internal organs.

Objective: To assess the efficacy, safety, and dose-response effect of recombinant human relaxin in patients with scleroderma.

Relaxin stimulates expression of vascular endothelial growth factor in normal human endometrial cells in vitro and is associated with menometrorrhagia in women.

Although the role of the reproductive hormone, relaxin, in rodents is well documented, its potential contribution to human reproduction is less well defined. In this study, we examine the effects of relaxin on human endometrial cells in vitro and describe the clinical effects of relaxin on menstrual flow in women. In cultured endometrial cells, relaxin specifically induces the expression of an angiogenic agent, vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF).

Safety and pharmacokinetics of recombinant human relaxin in systemic sclerosis.

Objective: To investigate the safety and pharmacokinetics of a 28 day continuous subcutaneous infusion of recombinant human relaxin in patients with systemic sclerosis with diffuse scleroderma.

Methods: Thirty patients with stable diffuse scleroderma of moderate severity received recombinant human relaxin at 6, 12, 50, 100, and 200 microg/kg/day or placebo in a double blind, sequential panel, dose escalation study.

Results: All patients completed 28 days of study treatment.

Genetics and developmental psychopathology: 2. The main effects of genes and environment on behavioral problems in the Virginia Twin Study of Adolescent Behavioral Development.

Little is known about the contribution of genetic and environmental factors to risk for juvenile psychopathology. The Virginia Twin Study of Adolescent Behavioral Development allows these contributions to be estimated. A population-based, unselected sample of 1412 Caucasian twin pairs aged 8-16 years was ascertained through Virginia schools.

Characterization of the inflammatory cytokines in the vagina during pregnancy and labor and with bacterial vaginosis.

Objectives: 1) To characterize the presence of interleukin-1 alpha (IL-1 alpha), interleukin-1 beta (IL-1 beta), interleukin-6 (IL-6), and tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha) in the vagina during pregnancy and in labor; 2) to compare the vaginal levels of these inflammatory cytokines between laboring and nonlaboring patients; and 3) to compare the vaginal levels of these cytokines between women with and without bacterial vaginosis (BV).

Methods: Vaginal fluid was obtained by lavage from pregnant women with intact membranes at various gestational ages and during labor at term. These samples were analyzed for specific cytokine levels using standard enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay techniques.

The role of relaxin in glycodelin secretion.

Glycodelin is a glycoprotein named for its unique carbohydrate structure. Glycodelin is produced by the secretory endometrium during the late luteal phase and returns to baseline during menses of the ensuing cycle, whereas in conceptive cycles it rapidly increases. Although progesterone and possibly estradiol are required for glycodelin production, they are not directly involved in the synthesis and release of this protein.