Internal Medicine Student Chief Elective.

Background: With increasing patient care responsibilities, administrative work and education demands, physicians may find it challenging to provide high-quality and engaging clinical education to third-year medical students on clerkships. Fourth-year students in the role of near-peer teachers can help fill this role, but they often also have competing responsibilities.

Approach: A 4-week Internal Medicine Student Chief (Student Chief) elective was created, designed such that fourth-year students would apply for dedicated time to serve as student leaders, coaches and educators for the third-year students on the Internal Medicine clerkship.

Direct and indirect effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on mortality: an individual-level population-scale analysis using linked electronic health records, Wales, United Kingdom, 2016 to 2022.

BackgroundThe COVID-19 pandemic resulted in increased mortality directly and indirectly associated with COVID-19.AimTo assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on all-cause and disease-specific mortality and explore potential health inequalities associated with area-level deprivation in Wales.MethodsTwo population-based cohort studies were derived from multi-sourced, linked demographic, administrative and electronic health record data from 2016 to 2019 (n = 3,113,319) and 2020 to 2022 (n = 3,571,471).

Effects of gene dosage on cognitive ability: A function-based association study across brain and non-brain processes.

Copy-number variants (CNVs) that increase the risk for neurodevelopmental disorders also affect cognitive ability. However, such CNVs remain challenging to study due to their scarcity, limiting our understanding of gene-dosage-sensitive biological processes linked to cognitive ability. We performed a genome-wide association study (GWAS) in 258,292 individuals, which identified-for the first time-a duplication at 2q12.

Analysis of time-to-positivity data in tuberculosis treatment studies: Identifying a new limit of quantification.

Background: The BACTEC Mycobacteria Growth Indicator Tube (MGIT) machine is the standard globally for detecting viable mycobacteria in patients' sputum. Samples are observed for no longer than 42 days, at which point the sample is declared "negative" for tuberculosis (TB). This time to detection of bacterial growth, referred to as time-to-positivity (TTP), is increasingly of interest not solely as a diagnostic tool, but as a continuous biomarker wherein change in TTP can be used for comparing the bactericidal activity of different TB treatments.