ATRX silences Cartpt expression in osteoblastic cells during skeletal development.

ATP-dependent chromatin remodeling protein ATRX is an essential regulator involved in maintenance of DNA structure and chromatin state and regulation of gene expression during development. ATRX was originally identified as the monogenic cause of X-linked α-thalassemia mental retardation (ATR-X) syndrome. Affected individuals display a variety of developmental abnormalities and skeletal deformities.

Urinary Catheter Utility in Laparoscopic Appendectomy: Risk Benefit Analysis of Post-Operative Urinary Tract Complications.

Catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTIs) account for 1 million nosocomial infections annually and 75% of all hospital-acquired UTIs. A risk factor for CAUTI is prolonged urinary catheterization (UC); therefore, transitory UC during laparoscopic appendectomy (LA), a common practice justified to avoid iatrogenic bladder injury, is believed to be safe. However, data on the incidence of post-operative UC-related complications, including CAUTI, following LA or their avoidance are limited.

Aortic Dissections in the Elderly: Older Age in Patients With Acute Aortic Syndromes Is Associated With Delayed Time to Surgery.

Objective: In the setting of acute aortic syndromes, timely access to definitive surgical repair is of paramount importance. Older patients, primarily septuagenarians and octogenarians, undergoing emergent ascending arch repair experience higher rates of mortality compared to younger patients. Despite this risk, studies show that surgical management is still superior to medical management for this patient population.

Nasopharyngeal cancer mortality in disaggregated Asian and non-Asian Americans.

Background: Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) mortality varies based on multiple risk factors. While NPC mortality is higher in Asia, little is known about Asian subgroups in the United States (US).

Methods: Using the 2005-2020 National Vital Statistics System, we examined NPC mortality by age, race (non-Hispanic black, Hispanic white (HW), non-Hispanic white (NHW), Chinese, Filipino, Asian Indian, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese), sex, and nativity (Untied States or foreign-born).

LncRNA MALAT1 Regulates Hyperglycemia Induced EMT in Keratinocyte via miR-205.

Epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) is critical to cutaneous wound healing. When skin is injured, EMT activates and mobilizes keratinocytes toward the wound bed, therefore enabling re-epithelialization. This process becomes dysregulated in patients with diabetes mellitus (DM).

Paracrine-mediated rejuvenation of aged mesenchymal stem cells is associated with downregulation of the autophagy-lysosomal pathway.

Age-related differences in stem-cell potency contribute to variable outcomes in clinical stem cell trials. To help understand the effect of age on stem cell potency, bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) were isolated from young (6 weeks) and old (18-24 months) mice. HUVEC tubule formation (TF) induced by the old and young MSCs and ELISA of conditioned media were compared to one another, and to old MSCs after 7 d in indirect co-culture with young MSCs.

Correction: Strategies for the Successful Implementation of a Novel iPhone Loaner System (iShare) in mHealth Interventions: Prospective Study.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.2196/16391.].

Scan path during change-detection visual search.

When observing a particular image or object, one's perception depends upon prior expectations, memory, and cognitive abilities. It is hypothesized that cognitive processing in the form of top-down or bottom-up processing could be determined via analysis of the eye fixation scan path. To assess the variations in scan paths, 7 subjects underwent 5 change-detection trials.

Digital Health Interventions for Cardiac Rehabilitation: Systematic Literature Review.

Background: Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of death worldwide. Despite strong evidence supporting the benefits of cardiac rehabilitation (CR), over 80% of eligible patients do not participate in CR. Digital health technologies (ie, the delivery of care using the internet, wearable devices, and mobile apps) have the potential to address the challenges associated with traditional facility-based CR programs, but little is known about the comprehensiveness of these interventions to serve as digital approaches to CR.

Mobile health application platform 'Corrie' personalises and empowers the heart attack recovery patient experience in the hospital and at home for an underserved heart attack survivor.

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide with an estimated 17.5 million deaths annually, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). CVD prevention efforts have the potential to prevent the majority of these deaths by supporting guideline-directed medical therapy (GDMT) and lifestyle modification.

Strategies for the Successful Implementation of a Novel iPhone Loaner System (iShare) in mHealth Interventions: Prospective Study.

Background: As smartphone ownership continues to rise, health care systems and technology companies are driven to develop mobile health (mHealth) interventions as both diagnostic and therapeutic tools. An important consideration during mHealth intervention development is how to achieve health equity despite demographic differences in smartphone ownership. One solution is through the recirculation of loaner smartphones; however, best practices for implementing such programs to optimize security, privacy, scalability, and convenience for participants are not well defined.

Progress in Understanding, Diagnosing, and Managing Cardiac Complications of Systemic Sclerosis.

Purpose Of The Review: Systemic sclerosis (scleroderma) is a complex autoimmune disease that commonly involves the cardiovascular system. Even if often subclinical, cardiac involvement is considered a poor prognostic factor as it is a leading cause of death in scleroderma patients. We review the cardiac manifestations of scleroderma, the diagnostic methods useful in detection, and current advances in therapeutic management.

Biomechanics of the golf swing using OpenSim.

A study was conducted to investigate the underlying mechanisms involved in the dynamics of body motions during the golf swing. A series of model simulation programs were developed in OpenSim to control the characteristics of the biomechanical model of the body. The resultant model parameters were put in an Excel file, which allowed these parameters to be modified.

Sustained release of endothelial progenitor cell-derived extracellular vesicles from shear-thinning hydrogels improves angiogenesis and promotes function after myocardial infarction.

Aims: Previous studies have demonstrated improved cardiac function following myocardial infarction (MI) after administration of endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) into ischaemic myocardium. A growing body of literature supports paracrine effectors, including extracellular vesicles (EVs), as the main mediators of the therapeutic benefits of EPCs. The direct use of paracrine factors is an attractive strategy that harnesses the effects of cell therapy without concerns of cell engraftment or viability.

Drowsy driver mobile application: Development of a novel scleral-area detection method.

A reliable and practical app for mobile devices was developed to detect driver drowsiness. It consisted of two main components: a Haar cascade classifier, provided by a computer vision framework called OpenCV, for face/eye detection; and a dedicated JAVA software code for image processing that was applied over a masked region circumscribing the eye. A binary threshold was performed over the masked region to provide a quantitative measure of the number of white pixels in the sclera, which represented the state of eye opening.

Normal human cell proteins that interact with the adenovirus type 5 E1B 55kDa protein.

Several of the functions of the human adenovirus type 5 E1B 55kDa protein are fulfilled via the virus-specific E3 ubiquitin ligase it forms with the viral E4 Orf6 protein and several cellular proteins. Important substrates of this enzyme have not been identified, and other functions, including repression of transcription of interferon-sensitive genes, do not require the ligase. We therefore used immunoaffinity purification and liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry of lysates of normal human cells infected in parallel with HAdV-C5 and E1B 55kDa protein-null mutant viruses to identify specifically E1B 55kDa-associated proteins.

HBV polymerase overexpression due to large core gene deletion enhances hepatoma cell growth by binding inhibition of microRNA-100.

Different types of hepatitis B virus (HBV) core gene deletion mutants were identified in chronic hepatitis B patients. However, their clinical roles in different stages of natural chronic HBV infection remained unclear. To address this issue, HBV core genes were sequenced in three gender- and age-matched patient groups diagnosed as chronic hepatitis, cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), respectively.

Eye growth and myopia development: Unifying theory and Matlab model.

The aim of this article is to present an updated unifying theory of the mechanisms underlying eye growth and myopia development. A series of model simulation programs were developed to illustrate the mechanism of eye growth regulation and myopia development. Two fundamental processes are presumed to govern the relationship between physiological optics and eye growth: genetically pre-programmed signaling and blur feedback.

HeartMate II Left Ventricular Assist Device Geometry on Chest Radiograph Does Not Correlate with Risk of Pump Thrombosis.

Pump thrombosis (PT) is a common and potentially life-threatening complication among HeartMate II (HMII; Thoratec, Pleasanton, CA) patients. There have been efforts to correlate HMII geometry with higher risk of PT. The aim of this study was to test the validity of using HMII inflow cannula angle (ICA) and pump pocket depth (PPD) to predict PT.

Minimally invasive mitral valve surgery is associated with equivalent cost and shorter hospital stay when compared with traditional sternotomy.

Objective: Mitral valve surgery is increasingly performed through minimally invasive approaches. There are limited data regarding the cost of minimally invasive mitral valve surgery. Moreover, there are no data on the specific costs associated with mitral valve surgery.

In Vivo Anastomosis and Perfusion of a Three-Dimensionally-Printed Construct Containing Microchannel Networks.

The field of tissue engineering has advanced the development of increasingly biocompatible materials to mimic the extracellular matrix of vascularized tissue. However, a majority of studies instead rely on a multiday inosculation between engineered vessels and host vasculature rather than the direct connection of engineered microvascular networks with host vasculature. We have previously demonstrated that the rapid casting of three-dimensionally-printed (3D) sacrificial carbohydrate glass is an expeditious and a reliable method of creating scaffolds with 3D microvessel networks.

Injectable shear-thinning hydrogels used to deliver endothelial progenitor cells, enhance cell engraftment, and improve ischemic myocardium.

Objectives: The clinical translation of cell-based therapies for ischemic heart disease has been limited because of low cell retention (<1%) within, and poor targeting to, ischemic myocardium. To address these issues, we developed an injectable hyaluronic acid (HA) shear-thinning hydrogel (STG) and endothelial progenitor cell (EPC) construct (STG-EPC). The STG assembles as a result of interactions of adamantine- and β-cyclodextrin-modified HA.

A Tissue-Engineered Chondrocyte Cell Sheet Induces Extracellular Matrix Modification to Enhance Ventricular Biomechanics and Attenuate Myocardial Stiffness in Ischemic Cardiomyopathy.

There exists a substantial body of work describing cardiac support devices to mechanically support the left ventricle (LV); however, these devices lack biological effects. To remedy this, we implemented a cell sheet engineering approach utilizing chondrocytes, which in their natural environment produce a relatively elastic extracellular matrix (ECM) for a cushioning effect. Therefore, we hypothesized that a chondrocyte cell sheet applied to infarcted and borderzone myocardium will biologically enhance the ventricular ECM and increase elasticity to augment cardiac function in a model of ischemic cardiomyopathy (ICM).

Prior Sternotomy and Ventricular Assist Device Implantation Do Not Adversely Impact Survival or Allograft Function After Heart Transplantation.

Background: Orthotopic heart transplantation (OHT) remains the gold standard for end-stage heart failure. However, donor availability is severely limited. With a median wait time of 6.