Publications by authors named "Fam J"

Aim: Physician visual assessment (PVA) in invasive coronary angiography (ICA) is clinically used to determine stenosis severity and guide coronary intervention. However, PVA provides limited information regarding the haemodynamic significance of stenosis. This prospective study aimed to develop a model combining visual diameter stenosis (DS) and quantitative coronary angiography (QCA)-derived parameters to diagnose ischaemic lesions using invasive fractional flow reserve (FFR) with pharmacologically induced maximal hyperaemia as the gold standard.

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Background: This study aimed to investigate factors associated with burnout among healthcare workers (HCWs) in a tertiary hospital in Singapore.

Methods: All HCWs from the Singapore General Hospital were invited to participate in a survey using a secure online platform. Participant demographic data were collected.

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Ketamine has rapid-onset antidepressant activity in patients with treatment-resistant major depression (TRD). The safety and tolerability of racemic ketamine may be improved if given orally, as an extended-release tablet (R-107), compared with other routes of administration. In this phase 2 multicenter clinical trial, male and female adult patients with TRD and Montgomery-Asberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS) scores ≥20 received open-label R-107 tablets 120 mg per day for 5 days and were assessed on day 8 (enrichment phase).

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Objective: To investigate societal perceptions of ketamine's use in depression therapy by analysing Twitter posts from January 1, 2010 to April 1, 2023.

Methods: Using Twitter as the social media platform of choice, and employing search terms based on (depression OR depressed OR depressive) AND (ketamine OR esketamine OR Spravato), we collected English-language tweets from January 1, 2010, to April 1, 2023. Using unsupervised machine learning and natural language processing (NLP) techniques, including Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) and BERTopic, the study identified prevalent topics surrounding public chatter around the use of ketamine in depression treatment.

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Rescorla (2000, 2001) interpreted his compound test results to show that both common and individual error terms regulate associative change such that the element of a conditioned compound with the greater prediction error undergoes greater associative change than the one with the smaller prediction error. However, it has recently been suggested that uncertainty, not prediction error, is the primary determinant of associative change in people (Spicer et al., 2020, 2022).

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Purpose: Prior evidence suggests racial disparities in the utilization of visual field testing (VFT) for the diagnosis and monitoring of glaucoma. In this study, we considered the effect of baseline glaucoma severity and socioeconomic disadvantage along with other potential confounders such as test reliability, ancillary tests, and glaucoma surgeries on racial disparity in the frequency of VFT.

Methods: The records of all subjects with a diagnosis of glaucoma who received VFT at an academic, tertiary care facility from January 2018 to December 2021 were accessed.

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Background & Aims: Sleep quality is a pivotal part of health and there is growing evidence on the association between gut microbiota composition and sleep quality. 5-Hydroxytryptophan (5-HTP) is known as a precursor of the sleep regulating neurotransmitter and hormone. However, efficacy of 5-HTP supplementation for improving sleep quality in older adults is unclear.

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Purpose To develop a new coronary CT angiography (CCTA)-based index, α×LL/MLD, that considers lesion entrance angle (α) in addition to lesion length (LL) and minimal lumen diameter (MLD) and to evaluate its efficacy in predicting hemodynamically significant coronary stenosis compared with invasive coronary angiography (ICA)-derived fractional flow reserve (FFR). Materials and Methods This prospective study enrolled participants (September 2016-March 2020) from two centers who underwent CCTA followed by ICA (ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT03054324).

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Oxytocin (OT) influences a range of social behaviors by enhancing the salience of social cues and regulating the expression of specific social behaviors (e.g., maternal care versus defensive aggression).

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Activity in the basolateral amygdala complex (BLA) is needed to encode fears acquired through contact with both innate sources of danger (i.e., things that are painful) and learned sources of danger (e.

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This position statement is issued by the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric. Surgery in response to inquiries made to the Society by patients, physicians, Society members, hospitals, health insurance payors, the media, and others regarding the access and outcomes of metabolic and bariatric surgery for beneficiaries of Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. This position statement is based on current clinical knowledge, expert opinion, and published peer-reviewed scientific evidence available at this time.

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Patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) have traditionally been excluded from randomized trials. We aimed to compare percutaneous coronary intervention versus conservative management, and early intervention (EI; within 24 hours of admission) versus delayed intervention (DI; after 24 to 72 hours of admission) in patients with non-ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (NSTEMI) and concomitant CKD. An electronic literature search was performed to search for studies comparing invasive management to conservative management or EI versus DI in patients with NSTEMI with CKD.

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Obesity is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in patients with Prader-Willi Syndrome (PWS). Our objective was to compare changes in body mass index (BMI) after metabolic and bariatric surgery (MBS) for the treatment of obesity (BMI ≥35 kg/m) in PWS. A systematic review of MBS in PWS was performed using PubMed, Embase, and Cochrane Central, identifying 254 citations.

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Understanding the roles of evening complex (EC) genes in the circadian clock of plants can inform how diurnal transcriptional loops in the clock gene network function to regulate key physiological and developmental events, including flowering transition. Gene regulatory interactions among soybean's circadian clock and flowering genes were inferred using time-series RNA-seq data and the network inference algorithmic package CausNet. In this study, we seek to clarify the inferred regulatory interactions of the EC gene A gene expression analysis using soybean protoplasts as a transient model indicated regulatory roles of in expression of selected flowering genes.

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Article Synopsis
  • - The text discusses the lack of a universal definition for treatment-resistant depression (TRD) in Southeast Asia, demonstrating the need for a standardized approach to its management across the region.
  • - A panel of 13 psychiatrists developed a new term, "pharmacotherapy-resistant depression" (PRD), defining it as the failure of two adequate drug treatments during a major depressive episode, and outlined a stepwise treatment plan including medication adjustments and non-pharmacological options.
  • - The consensus recommendations can be adapted to different Southeast Asian contexts, but the importance of clinical judgment and individual patient circumstances in treatment decisions remains emphasized.
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Sensory preconditioned and second-order conditioned responding are each well-documented. The former occurs in subjects (typically rats) exposed to pairings of two relatively neutral stimuli, S2 and S1, and then to pairings of S1 and a motivationally significant event [an unconditioned stimulus (US)]; the latter occurs when the order of these experiences is reversed with rats being exposed to S1-US pairings and then to S2-S1 pairings. In both cases, rats respond when tested with S2 in a manner appropriate to the affective nature of the US, e.

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How do animals process experiences that provide contradictory information? The present study addressed this question using second-order fear conditioning in rats. In second-order conditioning, rats are conditioned to fear a stimulus, S1, through its pairings with foot-shock (stage 1); and some days later, a second stimulus, S2, through its pairings with the already-conditioned S1 (stage 2). However, as foot-shock is never presented during conditioning to S2, we hypothesized that S2 simultaneously encodes 2 contradictory associations: one that drives fear to S2 (S2-danger) and another that reflects the absence of the expected unconditioned stimulus and partially masks that fear (e.

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Objectives: On a background of the rapidly expanding clinical use of ketamine and esketamine for treatment of depression and other conditions, we examined safety monitoring, seeking to identify knowledge gaps relevant to clinical practice.

Methods: An international group of psychiatrists discussed the issue of safety of ketamine and esketamine and came to a consensus on key safety gaps.

Results: There is no standard safety monitoring for off-label generic ketamine.

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Introduction: Cardiovascular morbidity and mortality in end-stage renal failure (ESRF) patients are high. We examined the incidence and predictors of death and acute myocardial infarction (AMI) in ESRF patients on different modalities of dialysis.

Method: Data were obtained from a population-based database (National Registry Disease Offices) in Singapore.

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Background And Objectives: We compared real-world clinical outcomes of patients receiving intravascular lithotripsy (IVL) versus rotational atherectomy (RA) for heavily calcified coronary lesions.

Methods: Fifty-three patients who received IVL from January 2017 to July 2020 were retrospectively compared to 271 patients who received RA from January 2017 to December 2018. Primary endpoints were in-hospital and 30-day major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE).

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Background: Physician visual assessment (PVA) in invasive coronary angiography (ICA) is the current clinical method to determine stenosis severity and guide percutaneous coronary intervention. This study sought to evaluate the effect of sex differences in assessing coronary stenosis severity between PVA and quantitative coronary angiography (QCA).

Methods: 209 patients with coronary artery disease (288 coronary lesions) underwent ICA and fractional flow reserve (FFR).

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Article Synopsis
  • This study evaluated a new method for non-invasive fractional flow reserve (FFR) calculation to diagnose coronary artery disease (CAD) using CT scans.
  • Researchers compared this new method with traditional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and invasive measurement techniques on a group of 108 patients.
  • Results showed that the new method offers comparable accuracy in diagnosing ischemic lesions while being significantly faster in computation time.*
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Background: With an aging population, developing non-pharmacological interventions (NPIs) to delay dementia has become critical. Apart from cognitive decline, dementia is associated with multiple pathophysiology, including increased oxidative stress, dysregulated gene expressions, cytokine, neurotrophin, and stress markers, telomere shortening, and deteriorations in brain connectivity. Although mindfulness practices have been proposed to ameliorate these biological changes, no empirical studies were conducted.

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Obesity is associated with changes to taste perception and brain reward circuitry. It is important to understand how these effects alter the preference for palatable foods and drinks, given that these are widely consumed, and leading risk factors for obesity. This study examined the effects of diet-induced obesity on sweet taste preference by analysing the microstructure of licking for sugar solutions and assessing pERK expression in the nucleus accumbens shell and insula.

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