Background The study aimed to understand the acceptability, satisfaction, uptake, utility and feasibility of a quality improvement (QI) intervention to improve care for coronary heart disease (CHD) patients in Australian primary care practices and identify barriers and enablers, including the impact of COVID-19. Methods Within the QUality improvement for Effectiveness of care for people Living with heart disease (QUEL) study, 26 Australian primary care practices, supported by five Primary Health Networks (PHN) participated in a 1-year QI intervention (November 2019 - November 2020). Data were collected from practices and PHNs staff via surveys and semi-structured interviews.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: The study aimed to examine the individual and joint effects of hypertension and diabetes on cardiovascular diseases and all-cause mortality among the middle-aged and older Chinese population.
Methods: A total of 9681 individuals without preexisting CVD from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) were included. Participants were classified into four different groups: hypertension alone, diabetes alone, both conditions, neither condition.
While cisplatin is an effective anti-tumor treatment, it induces ototoxicity through mechanisms involving DNA damage, oxidative stress, and programmed cell death. Rho-associated coiled-coil-containing protein kinase (ROCK) is essential for numerous cellular processes, including apoptosis regulation. Studies have suggested that ROCK inhibitors could prevent apoptosis and promote regeneration.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Atrial fibrillation (AF) is common in COVID-19 patients. The impact of AF on major-adverse-cardiovascular-events (MACE defined as all-cause mortality, myocardial infarction, ischemic stroke, cardiac failure or coronary revascularisation), recurrent AF admission and venous thromboembolism in hospitalised COVID-19 patients is unclear.
Methods: Patients admitted with COVID-19 (1-January-2020 to 30-September-2021) were identified from the New South Wales Admitted-Patient-Data-Collection database, stratified by AF status (no-AF vs prior-AF or new-AF during index COVID-19 admission) and followed-up until 31-Mar-2022.
In a field traditionally driven by intuition and subjective judgment, this study presents a data-driven approach to typography, the art of arranging text. Leveraging a comprehensive dataset of font-use cases across diverse mediums, we employed Non-negative Matrix Factorization to extract three fundamental morphological characteristics of fonts: Serif vs. Sans-Serif, Basic vs.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Australian breast cancer survivors are at increased risk of cardiovascular disease and mortality, partly due to behavioural risk factors, including unhealthy diet and physical inactivity. Guidelines recommend health promotion delivered by general practitioners (GPs), but resources (ie, time and funding) are limited. Text message interventions sent from general practice to survivors may offer a low-resource solution but have not been evaluated.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAim: Although various sphincter-preserving techniques exist for treating anal fistulas, none have demonstrated clear superiority. Therefore, the aim of this study was to introduce a novel sphincter-preserving technique for anal duct ligation and muscle closure (ALMC) and analyse its perioperative outcomes.
Method: The data for patients who underwent ALMC for fistula-in-ano at Seoul Song Do Hospital between 2009 and 2023 were retrospectively reviewed.
This study reports the process evaluation of a randomized controlled trial of the MyHeartMate app for patients with coronary heart disease (CHD). Data were collected on engagement in the intervention group from the app platform logs and self-reported usage and via interviews for perspectives of usefulness and acceptability. Participants' ( = 194) data logs showed 80.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHistone post-translational modifications play pivotal roles in eukaryotic gene expression. To date, most studies have focused on modifications in unstructured histone N-terminal tail domains and their binding proteins. However, transcriptional regulation by chromatin-effector proteins that directly recognize modifications in histone globular domains has yet to be clearly demonstrated, despite the richness of their multiple modifications.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAims: To assess the individual and joint effects of diabetes and depression on all-cause mortality and cardiovascular disease (CVD) in the middle-aged and elderly Chinese populations.
Methods: 9105 individuals without CVD from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) were included and followed up for 9 years. Participants were divided into four comparative groups: diabetes alone, depression alone, both conditions, and neither condition.
The genus is a prolific source of bioactive and structurally diverse secondary metabolites. We isolated a novel strain, sp. JNUCC 0626, from Hwasun Gotjawal on Jeju Island, Korea.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1016/j.jesf.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis study proposed an optimized histogel construction method for histological analysis by applying lung cancer patient-derived organoids (PDOs) to the developed histo-pillar strip. Previously, there is the cultured PDOs damage problem during the histogel construction due to forced detachment of the Matrigel spots from the 96-well plate bottom. To address this issue, we cultured PDO on the proposed Histo-pillar strips and then immersed them in 4% paraformaldehyde fixation solution to self-isolate PDO without damage.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Atrial fibrillation (AF) is associated with stroke. Major changes to AF management recommendations in 2016-2018 advised that: 1. Stroke risk be estimated using the CHADS-VA score; 2.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBiological assays involve the lysis of biological particles, enzyme reactions, and gene amplification, and require a certain amount of time for completion. Microfluidic chips are regarded as powerful devices for biological assays and diagnostics; however, they cannot achieve a high mixing efficiency, particularly in some time-consuming biological reactions. Herein, we introduce a microfluidic reverse-Tesla (reTesla) valve structure in which the fluid is affected by vortices and branch flow convergence, resulting in flow retardation and a high degree of mixing.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Coronary heart disease (CHD) is the leading cause of deaths and disability worldwide. Cardiac rehabilitation (CR) effectively reduces the risk of future cardiac events and is strongly recommended in international clinical guidelines. However, CR program quality is highly variable with divergent data systems, which, when combined, potentially contribute to persistently low completion rates.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHypoxia is a representative tumor characteristic associated with malignant progression in clinical patients. Engineered in vitro models have led to significant advances in cancer research, allowing for the investigation of cells in physiological environments and the study of disease mechanisms and processes with enhanced relevance. In this study, we propose a U-shape pillar strip for a 3D cell-lumped organoid model (3D-COM) to study the effects of hypoxia on lung cancer in a high-throughput manner.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Multidisciplinary collaborative care has been widely recommended as an effective strategy for managing diabetes; however, the cardiovascular risk factors of patients with diabetes are often inadequately managed in primary care settings. This study aimed to assess the effect of multidisciplinary collaboration on cardiovascular risk factors among patients with diabetes in primary care settings.
Methods: Five databases (i.
Cisplatin is an effective chemotherapy agent against various solid malignancies; however, it is associated with irreversible bilateral sensorineural hearing loss, emphasizing the need for drug development to prevent this complication, with the current options being very limited. Rho-associated coiled-coil-containing protein kinase (ROCK) is a serine-threonine protein kinase involved in various cellular processes, including apoptosis regulation. In this study, we used a transgenic zebrafish model (Brn3C: EGFP) in which hair cells within neuromasts are observed in green under fluorescent microscopy without the need for staining.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: This study evaluates primary care practices' engagement with various features of a quality improvement (QI) intervention for patients with coronary heart disease (CHD) in four Australian states.
Methods: Twenty-seven practices participated in the QI intervention from November 2019 -November 2020. A combination of surveys, semi-structured interviews and other materials within the QUality improvement in primary care to prevent hospitalisations and improve Effectiveness and efficiency of care for people Living with heart disease (QUEL) study were used in the process evaluation.