Publications by authors named "Frank Schmidt"

Article Synopsis
  • * There were five in-hospital deaths among ICU patients (3.5% fatality rate) compared to three in non-ICU patients (0.1%), indicating significantly higher risks for those admitted to ICUs.
  • * Significant factors leading to ICU admission included obesity, diabetes, pneumonia, ARDS, and other comorbidities, highlighting the importance of existing health conditions in pediatric COVID-19 cases.
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Adipocytes play an important role in the regulation of systemic energy homeostasis and are closely related to metabolic disorders, such as type-2 diabetes and inflammatory bowel diseases. Particularly, there is an increasing need for a human adipocyte model for studying metabolic diseases and obesity. However, utilizing human primary adipocyte culture and stem-cell-based models presents several practical limitations due to their time-consuming nature, requirement for relatively intensive labor, and high cost.

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Background: Pulmonary embolism (PE) is a potentially life-threatening condition. Admission and treatment in the intensive care unit (ICU) is an important element in critically ill PE patients.

Objectives: We aimed to identify risk factors for ICU admission and differences in patient profiles regarding risk factors and comorbidities between PE patients who had to be admitted to an ICU and those who were treated in a normal ward without ICU.

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Article Synopsis
  • This study integrates 18 advanced omics technologies using samples from 391 participants to analyze complex physiological processes and pathologies related to diabetes.* -
  • With over 6,000 molecular traits and various genetic and epigenetic factors, the research establishes a comprehensive molecular network showcasing significant correlations between different traits in biological fluids.* -
  • The findings not only shed light on diabetes subtypes but also provide an open-access web interface for users to explore the molecular data and generate new hypotheses.*
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Dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) is characterized by reduced left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) and left or biventricular dilatation. We evaluated sex-specific associations of circulating proteins and metabolites with structural and functional heart parameters in DCM. Plasma samples (297 men, 71 women) were analyzed for proteins using Olink assays (targeted analysis) or LC-MS/MS (untargeted analysis), and for metabolites using LC MS/MS (Biocrates AbsoluteIDQ p180 Kit).

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Background: Acute pancreatitis (AP) and venous thromboembolism (VTE) remain common and potentially lethal disease entities. AP might be an important trigger of systemic inflammtion and may activate the coagulation system with increased VTE risk.

Methods: The German nationwide inpatient sample was screened for patients admitted due to AP (ICD-code K85) 2005-2019.

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Acute ischemic stroke is the most common cause of neurologic dysfunction caused by focal brain ischemia and tissue injury. Diabetes is a major risk factor of stroke, exacerbating disease management and prognosis. Therefore, discovering new diagnostic markers and therapeutic targets is critical for stroke prevention and treatment.

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Patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) have an increased risk for cardiac events. This is partly attributed to a disbalance of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) indicated by a reduced vagal tone and a (relative) sympathetic hyperactivity. However, in most studies, heart rate variability (HRV) was only examined while resting.

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Article Synopsis
  • GWAS utilizing mass spectrometry-based proteomics (MS) are vital for drug discovery, addressing limitations of traditional affinity proteomics that restrict analysis to specific protein panels.
  • The study analyzed blood samples from 1,260 Americans and 325 individuals from Asia, identifying 252 pQTLs—90 of which were replicated, including 30 previously unreported variants.
  • Results showed that about one-third of affinity proteomics pQTLs may be influenced by epitope effects, demonstrating the need for diverse proteomics techniques to uncover previously inaccessible pQTLs.
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Article Synopsis
  • TRPM4 is a calcium-activated channel that influences immune cell functions, and mutations in this gene are linked to heart issues but not previously studied for immune problems.
  • This study investigates immune dysregulation in a patient with a TRPM4 mutation using various biological techniques, revealing that complete loss of TRPM4 causes heightened vulnerability to bacterial and fungal infections through impaired immune cell migration.
  • Findings confirm that TRPM4 is essential for the proper migration of immune cells, suggesting that its dysfunction may lead to increased infection risk.
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Background: Percutaneous valve therapies (PVT) are performed on a large number of patients. With increasing procedural volume, the need for follow-up has also increased. Follow-up in the heart valve clinic is endorsed by recent guidelines but utilization is unknown, making resource allocation in the clinic difficult.

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Article Synopsis
  • Proteogenomics research focuses on generating hypotheses about protein function and identifying potential drug targets, previously relying heavily on affinity-based proteomics, which has limitations such as non-specific binding and variant handling.* -
  • The study utilizes a mass spectrometry-based proteomics approach with the Proteograph™ Product Suite, enabling the analysis of over 18,000 unique peptides from nearly 3,000 proteins in more than 320 diverse blood samples.* -
  • Findings include the identification of 184 protein-altering variants in 137 genes that are strongly linked to their respective peptides, which enhances the understanding of protein specificity and offers support for potential drug targets in the bloodstream.*
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Objectives: A series of human field studies demonstrated that acute exposure to simulated nocturnal traffic noise is associated with cardiovascular complications and sleep disturbance, including endothelial dysfunction, increased blood pressure, and impaired sleep quality. A pooled analysis of these results remains to be established and is of tremendous interest to consolidate scientific knowledge.

Methods: We analyzed data from four randomized crossover studies (published between 2013 to 2021 and conducted at the University Medical Center Mainz, Germany).

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Purpose: Autonomic dysfunction and a chronic low-grade inflammation are supposed to play a role in the etiology of major depressive disorder (MDD). The vagus nerves (VN) form a major part of the parasympathetic nervous system and of the gut-brain axis. They are supposed to exert anti-inflammatory and epithelial barrier protective effects in the gut.

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Article Synopsis
  • Human plasma proteins are crucial as clinical biomarkers and potential drug targets, and studying their genetic variants can help us understand their abundance.
  • The study conducted a meta-analysis across nearly 23,000 individuals to identify genetic variants associated with 92 plasma proteins linked to cardiometabolic conditions, discovering 503 significant variants.
  • Notably, sex differences were observed in 23.5% of the identified variants, and further analysis suggested causal links between certain proteins and various health traits, providing insight into their roles in cardiometabolic diseases.
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Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) manifests many clinical symptoms, including an exacerbated immune response and cytokine storm. Autoantibodies in COVID-19 may have severe prodromal effects that are poorly understood. The interaction between these autoantibodies and self-antigens can result in systemic inflammation and organ dysfunction.

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Coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has sparked a global pandemic with severe complications and high morbidity rate. Neurological symptoms in COVID-19 patients, and neurological sequelae post COVID-19 recovery have been extensively reported. Yet, neurological molecular signature and signaling pathways that are affected in the central nervous system (CNS) of COVID-19 severe patients remain still unknown and need to be identified.

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A balance between the synthesis and degradation of proteins is referred to as protein turnover, which is crucial for cellular protein homeostasis. Proteome-wide analysis of protein turnover in adipocytes, which are well-known for their role in energy storage and their link to obesity and metabolism disorders, is yet to be conducted. Thus, with this objective in mind, our investigation utilized a comparative analysis of time-dependent SILAC labeling to assess protein turnover in 3T3-L1 adipocytes, spanning a period of 0 to 144 h.

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Background: Intensive care units (ICU) capacities are one of the most critical determinants in health-care management of the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, we aimed to analyze the ICU-admission and case-fatality rate as well as characteristics and outcomes of patient admitted to ICU in order to identify predictors and associated conditions for worsening and case-fatality in this critical ill patient-group.

Methods: We used the German nationwide inpatient sample to analyze all hospitalized patients with confirmed COVID-19 diagnosis in Germany between January and December 2020.

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Background: Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), a life-threatening condition during critical illness, is a common complication of COVID-19. It can originate from various disease etiologies, including severe infections, major injury, or inhalation of irritants. ARDS poses substantial clinical challenges due to a lack of etiology-specific therapies, multisystem involvement, and heterogeneous, poor patient outcomes.

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Background And Purpose: Idiopathic facial palsy (IFP) accounts for over 60% of peripheral facial palsy (FP) cases. The cause of IFP remains to be determined. Possible etiologies are nerve swelling due to inflammation and/or viral infection.

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Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a group of metabolic diseases marked by hyperglycemia, which increases the risk of systemic infections. DM patients are at greater risk of hospitalization and mortality from bacterial, viral, and fungal infections. Poor glycemic control can result in skin, blood, bone, urinary, gastrointestinal, and respiratory tract infections and recurrent infections.

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Cofactor flavin adenine dinucleotide (FAD), a compound with flavin moiety and a derivative of riboflavin (vitamin B), is shown to bind to Sox9 (a key transcription factor in early pancreatic development) and, subsequently, induce a large increase in markers of pancreatic development, including Ngn3 and PTF1a. Pyridoxal 5'-phosphate (PLP), the active form of vitamin B, also binds to Sox9 and results in a similar increase in pancreatic development markers. Sox9 is known to be specifically important for pancreatic progenitors.

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