Optimizing a mobile just-in-time adaptive intervention (JITAI) for weight loss in young adults: Rationale and design of the AGILE factorial randomized trial.

Background: Young adults (YAs) are underrepresented in behavioral health and weight loss interventions and express interest in flexible, highly tailored programs. Mobile interventions are a lower-burden, scalable approach to providing behavioral support. Just-in-time-adaptive interventions (JITAI) promise to deliver the "right" support at the "right" time using real-time data from smartphones and sensors.

Fluctuations in mHealth engagement following receipt of goal-discrepant feedback messages.

Objective: Digital behavior change interventions can successfully promote change in behavioral outcomes, but often suffer from steep decreases in engagement over time, which hampers their effectiveness. Providing feedback on goal performance is an established technique to promote goal attainment; however, theory indicates that sending goal-discrepant feedback messages could cause some users to respond more negatively than others. This analysis assessed whether goal-discrepant messaging was negatively associated with participant engagement, and if this relationship was exacerbated by baseline depressive symptoms within the context of a three-month weight loss pilot mHealth intervention.

Solitude and serotonin: juvenile isolation alters the covariation between social behavior and cFos expression by serotonergic neurons.

Variation in the mutual responsiveness of social partners to each other can be reflected in behavioral suites that covary with neural activity in ways that track the salience or valence of interactions. Juvenile social isolation alters social behavior and neural activity during social interaction, but whether and how it alters the covariation between behavior and neural activity has not been as well explored. To address this issue, four classes of experimental subjects: isolated males, socially housed males, isolated females, and socially housed females, were paired with an opposite-sex social partner that had been socially housed.

Motivated information avoidance in an mHealth weight loss intervention: Associations between unmet behavioral goals and likelihood of viewing program messages.

Background: Program engagement is positively associated with improved outcomes in mobile health (mHealth) interventions, but little is known about which factors may increase or decrease the likelihood of participants viewing program messages. This study examined the association between daily behavioral goal achievement and likelihood of reading daily messages, and if this relationship is moderated by baseline depressive symptoms in an mHealth weight loss intervention.

Methods: Data come from a 12-week microrandomized pilot mHealth weight management trial that tested the effects of daily messages on behavioral goals among 52 young adults (78.

Suspected Pseudobulbar Affect in Neurodegenerative Disease.

Objective: To investigate the association between suspected pseudobulbar affect (PBA), clinical diagnosis, cognitive testing, and self-reported mood in older adults presenting for evaluation of dementia.

Participants: Patients presenting to an outpatient memory disorders clinic (N = 311).

Methods: We used traditional and novel network modeling approaches to examine associations between neuropsychological (NP) tests, patient and clinician rating scales, and the Center for Neurological Study-Lability Scale (CNS-LS) among patients with suspected AD (n = 133) and other neurocognitive diagnosis (n = 178).

Maternal dietary deficiencies in folic acid or choline reduce primary neuron viability after exposure to hypoxia through increased levels of apoptosis.

: Ischemic stroke is the leading cause of death and disability globally. By addressing modifiable risk factors, particularly nutrition, the prevalence of stroke and its dire consequences can be mitigated. One-carbon (1C) metabolism is a critical biosynthetic process that is involved in neural tube closure, DNA synthesis, plasticity, and cellular proliferation.

Personal goal setting eHealth component associated with improved weight loss at 6 months: A mixed methods secondary analysis.

Objective: Goal setting is a behavior change technique associated with improved change in outcomes. Digital (eHealth, mHealth) behavior change interventions often prescribe all goals with no opportunity for participants to create and track their own; thus, little is known about the types of goals participants create for themselves and their impacts on behavioral outcomes. This analysis describes the goals created by participants using an optional personal goal-setting component and evaluates the association between participant goal creation and weight loss in an eHealth adult weight loss intervention.

Cognition Mediates the Association Between Cerebrospinal Fluid Biomarkers of Amyloid and P-Tau and Neuropsychiatric Symptoms.

Background: Neuropsychiatric symptoms (NPS) can be an early manifestation of Alzheimer's disease (AD). However, the associations among NPS, cognition, and AD biomarkers across the disease spectrum are unclear.

Objective: We analyzed cross-sectional mediation pathways between cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biomarkers of AD (Aβ1-42, p-tau181), cognitive function, and NPS.

STING agonist 8803 reprograms the immune microenvironment and increases survival in preclinical models of glioblastoma.

STING agonists can reprogram the tumor microenvironment to induce immunological clearance within the central nervous system. Using multiplexed sequential immunofluorescence (SeqIF) and the Ivy Glioblastoma Atlas, STING expression was found in myeloid populations and in the perivascular space. The STING agonist 8803 increased median survival in multiple preclinical models of glioblastoma, including QPP8, an immune checkpoint blockade-resistant model, where 100% of mice were cured.

Gα-independent and -dependent Improvements With EPA Supplementation on the Early Type 1 Diabetes Phenotype of NOD Mice.

Prostaglandin E (PGE) is a key mediator of inflammation and is derived from the omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acid, arachidonic acid (AA). In the β-cell, the PGE receptor, Prostaglandin EP3 receptor (EP3), is coupled to the unique heterotrimeric G protein alpha subunit, Gɑ to reduce the production of cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP), a key signaling molecule that activates β-cell function, proliferation, and survival pathways. Nonobese diabetic (NOD) mice are a strong model of type 1 diabetes (T1D), and NOD mice lacking Gɑ are protected from hyperglycemia.

Cardiovascular Risk Estimation Is Suboptimal in People With HIV.

Background: Established cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk prediction functions may not accurately predict CVD risk in people with HIV. We assessed the performance of 3 CVD risk prediction functions in 2 HIV cohorts.

Methods And Results: CVD risk scores were calculated in the Mass General Brigham and Kaiser Permanente Northern California HIV cohorts, using the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association atherosclerotic CVD function, the FHS (Framingham Heart Study) hard coronary heart disease function and the Framingham Heart Study hard CVD function.

Clinician Barriers to Ordering Pulmonary Function Tests for Adults with Suspected Asthma.

Background: Primary care clinicians do not adhere to national and international guidelines recommending pulmonary function testing (PFTs) in patients with suspected asthma. Little is known about why that occurs. Our objective was to assess clinician focused barriers to ordering PFTs.

Attitudes Toward COVID-19 Vaccines Among Pregnant and Recently Pregnant Individuals.

Importance: Pregnant people and infants are at high risk of severe COVID-19 outcomes. Understanding changes in attitudes toward COVID-19 vaccines among pregnant and recently pregnant people is important for public health messaging.

Objective: To assess attitudinal trends regarding COVID-19 vaccines by (1) vaccination status and (2) race, ethnicity, and language among samples of pregnant and recently pregnant Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD) members from 2021 to 2023.

The prostaglandin E EP3 receptor has disparate effects on islet insulin secretion and content in β-cells in a high-fat diet-induced mouse model of obesity.

Signaling through prostaglandin E EP3 receptor (EP3) actively contributes to the β-cell dysfunction of type 2 diabetes (T2D). In T2D models, full-body EP3 knockout mice have a significantly worse metabolic phenotype than wild-type controls due to hyperphagia and severe insulin resistance resulting from loss of EP3 in extra-pancreatic tissues, masking any potential beneficial effects of EP3 loss in the β cell. We hypothesized β-cell-specific EP3 knockout (EP3 βKO) mice would be protected from high-fat diet (HFD)-induced glucose intolerance, phenocopying mice lacking the EP3 effector, Gα, which is much more limited in its tissue distribution.

Listening to your partner: serotonin increases male responsiveness to female vocal signals in mice.

The context surrounding vocal communication can have a strong influence on how vocal signals are perceived. The serotonergic system is well-positioned for modulating the perception of communication signals according to context, because serotonergic neurons are responsive to social context, influence social behavior, and innervate auditory regions. Animals like lab mice can be excellent models for exploring how serotonin affects the primary neural systems involved in vocal perception, including within central auditory regions like the inferior colliculus (IC).

Simultaneous administration of mRNA COVID-19 bivalent booster and influenza vaccines.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorized use of mRNA COVID-19 bivalent booster vaccines on August 31, 2022.

Small molecule branched-chain ketoacid dehydrogenase kinase (BDK) inhibitors with opposing effects on BDK protein levels.

Branched chain amino acid (BCAA) catabolic impairments have been implicated in several diseases. Branched chain ketoacid dehydrogenase (BCKDH) controls the rate limiting step in BCAA degradation, the activity of which is inhibited by BCKDH kinase (BDK)-mediated phosphorylation. Screening efforts to discover BDK inhibitors led to identification of thiophene PF-07208254, which improved cardiometabolic endpoints in mice.

Implementing a community specialist team to support the delivery of integrated diabetes care: experiences in Ireland during the COVID-19 pandemic.

While models of integrated care for people with chronic conditions have demonstrated promising results, there are still knowledge gaps about these models are implemented in different contexts and which strategies may best support implementation. We aimed to evaluate the implementation of a multidisciplinary diabetes Community Specialist Team (CST) to support delivery of integrated type 2 diabetes care during COVID-19 in two health networks. A mixed methods approach was used.