Pipe Distribution as a Harm Reduction Service for People Who Use Methamphetamine.

Background: Methamphetamine use is disproportionately high in rural settings, with rates increasing during the COVID-19 pandemic. While syringe service programs reduce disease transmission among people who inject drugs, limited research exists around the value of smoking equipment, specifically pipes, in minimizing harms associated with rural methamphetamine use.

Methods: We conducted semi-structured interviews with people who use methamphetamine in rural southern Illinois.

Rural houselessness among people who use drugs in the United States: Results from the National Rural Opioid Initiative.

Background: Over the last two decades, houselessness and drug-related epidemics both have expanded from urban to rural regions across the United States (US). However, our understanding of the relationship between rural houselessness, drug use, and drug-related harms has not kept pace. The current study addresses this gap by describing houselessness among a large cohort of people who use drugs (PWUD) from rural communities across 10 states.

Social influence on drug use and sexual behaviors among rural LGBTQ+ individuals.

Traveling to meet sexual partners and substance use are associated with increased risk of infectious disease. It is important to understand what factors may increase substances use or increased infection transmission risk (IITR) sexual behaviors among rural LGBTQ+ individuals. This study investigates substance use and sexual behaviors associated with increased infection transmission risk among rural LGBTQ+ individuals, and how these are associated with relationship type (friends or romantic partners) and travel distance.

Behavioral and Health Outcome Differences by Heroin or Methamphetamine Preference Among People in Rural US Communities Who Use Both Substances.

Background: The United States' (US) opioid overdose epidemic has evolved into a combined stimulant/opioid epidemic, a pattern driven in part by mitigating opioid overdose risk, variable substance availability, and personal preferences. This study aimed to investigate the association between self-reported substance preference (heroin or methamphetamine) and behavioral/health outcomes among individuals who used both heroin and methamphetamine in the rural US.

Methods: The Rural Opioid Initiative is a consortium of 8 research cohorts from 10 states and 65 rural counties that recruited individuals reporting past 30-day injection of any substance or opioid substance use by any route from 1/2018 to 3/2020.

Geoacoustic inversion using Bayesian optimization with a Gaussian process surrogate model.

Geoacoustic inversion can be a computationally expensive task in high-dimensional parameter spaces, typically requiring thousands of forward model evaluations to estimate the geoacoustic environment. We demonstrate Bayesian optimization (BO), an efficient global optimization method capable of estimating geoacoustic parameters in seven-dimensional space within 100 evaluations instead of thousands. BO iteratively searches parameter space for the global optimum of an objective function, defined in this study as the Bartlett power.

Sexual Violence and Revictimization in Rural LGBTQ+ Communities.

Previous research has shown there is a high prevalence of sexual violence (SV) and revictimization among the LGBTQ+ community. Little is known about the prevalence of SV and revictimization among rural LGBTQ+ individuals. This study investigates patterns of revictimization and the prevalence of SV among sexual and gender minority individuals.

Quantification of anatomical aortic valve area by multi-detector computed tomography: A pilot 3D-morphological modeling of the stenotic aortic valve.

Background: Aortic-valve-stenosis (AS) is a frequent degenerative valvular-disease and carries dismal outcome under-medical-treatment. Transvalvular pressure gradient reflects severity of the valve-disease but is highly dependent on flow-conditions and on other valvular/aortic characteristics. Alternatively, aortic-valve-area (AVA) represents a measure of aortic-valve lesion severity conceptually essential and practically widely-recognized but exhibits multiple-limitations.

Surveillance outcomes of respiratory pathogen infections during the 2021-2022 season among U.S. Military Health System beneficiaries, October 3, 2021-October 1, 2022.

The Department of Defense Global Respiratory Pathogen Surveillance Program conducts continuous surveillance for influenza, severe acute respiratory syndrome 2 (SARS-CoV-2), and other respiratory pathogens at 104 sentinel sites across the globe. These sites submitted 65,475 respiratory specimens for clinical diagnostic testing during the 2021-2022 surveillance season. The predominant influenza strain was influenza A(H3N2) (n=777), of which 99.

Barriers to Healthcare and Social Service Utilization Among Rural Older Adults Who Use Drugs.

The objective of this study was to understand barriers to healthcare and social service utilization among older adults residing in rural areas who use drugs. A cross-sectional survey of persons who use opioids or inject drugs in rural counties with high overdose rates across ten states was conducted. For this analysis, participants were restricted to only the 375 individuals aged 50 and older.

Early, precise, and safe clinical evaluation of the pharmacodynamic effects of novel agents in the intact human tumor microenvironment.

Drug development is systemically inefficient. Research and development costs for novel therapeutics average hundreds of millions to billions of dollars, with the overall likelihood of approval estimated to be as low as 6.7% for oncology drugs.

Healthcare Experiences and Health Outcomes Among Rural LGBTQ+ Individuals.

Purpose: To describe healthcare experiences and health outcomes among rural LGBTQ + individuals.

Design: 2022 cross-sectional survey.

Setting: Southern Illinois.

Long-Term Calcium Monitoring Post Parathyroidectomy for Primary Hyperparathyroidism.

Background:  Cure rates following parathyroidectomy for primary hyperparathyroidism are excellent, with well-documented low short-term recurrence rates of hypercalcaemia. Rates of long-term recurrence have been investigated to a lesser extent, but recent studies have reported higher than anticipated rates. This study sought to evaluate recurrence rates at more than four years post seemingly corrective surgery and depending on the findings, propose whether recommendations of annual calcium monitoring post-parathyroidectomy are appropriate based on the limited data available at the time of formulating guidelines.

The effects of scaling and root planing plus home oral hygiene maintenance in Stage I/II periodontitis population: A 24-week randomized clinical trial.

Objectives: To compare the effects of powered and manual toothbrushing following scaling and root planing on bleeding on probing and other clinical indicators of periodontitis.

Materials And Methods: This was a randomized, examiner-blind, parallel-design, 24-week clinical study. Eligible subjects were 18-75 years of age with Stage I or II periodontitis.

A chromosome-scale assembly for 'd'Anjou' pear.

Cultivated pear consists of several Pyrus species with Pyrus communis (European pear) representing a large fraction of worldwide production. As a relatively recently domesticated crop and perennial tree, pear can benefit from genome-assisted breeding. Additionally, comparative genomics within Rosaceae promises greater understanding of evolution within this economically important family.

Houselessness and syringe service program utilization among people who inject drugs in eight rural areas across the USA: a cross-sectional analysis.

Background: Research conducted in urban areas has highlighted the impact of housing instability on people who inject drugs (PWID), revealing that it exacerbates vulnerability to drug-related harms and impedes syringe service program (SSP) use. However, few studies have explored the effects of houselessness on SSP use among rural PWID. This study examines the relationship between houselessness and SSP utilization among PWID in eight rural areas across 10 states.

Bayesian optimization with Gaussian process surrogate model for source localization.

Source localization with a geoacoustic model requires optimizing the model over a parameter space of range and depth with the objective of matching a predicted sound field to a field measured on an array. We propose a sample-efficient sequential Bayesian optimization strategy that models the objective function as a Gaussian process (GP) surrogate model conditioned on observed data. Using the mean and covariance functions of the GP, a heuristic acquisition function proposes a candidate in parameter space to sample, balancing exploitation (sampling around the best observed objective function value) and exploration (sampling in regions of high variance in the GP).

Variation in HIV Transmission Behaviors Among People Who Use Drugs in Rural US Communities.

Importance: People who use drugs (PWUD) continue to be at risk of HIV infection, but the frequency and distribution of transmission-associated behaviors within various rural communities is poorly understood.

Objective: To examine the association of characteristics of rural PWUD with HIV transmission behaviors.

Design, Setting, And Participants: In this cross-sectional study, surveys of PWUD in rural communities in 10 states (Illinois, Kentucky, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wisconsin) were collected January 2018 through March 2020 and analyzed August through December 2022.

Methamphetamine use and utilization of medications for opioid use disorder among rural people who use drugs.

Background: Methamphetamine use is common among persons with opioid use disorder. This study evaluated associations between methamphetamine use and treatment with agonist medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD, specifically buprenorphine, and/or methadone) in U.S.

Correlates of Recent HIV Testing Among People Who Inject Drugs in Rural Areas: A Multi-site Cross-Sectional Study, 2018-2020.

The Rural Opioid Initiative surveyed 2693 people who inject drugs (PWID) in eight rural U.S. areas in 2018-2020 about self-reported HIV testing in the past 6 months.

Rationalising the use of specimen pots following colorectal polypectomy: a small step towards greener endoscopy.

Aims: In this study, we aim to determine whether combining multiple small colorectal polyps within a single specimen pot can reduce carbon footprint, without an associated deleterious clinical impact.

Methods: This was a retrospective observational study of colorectal polyps resected during 2019, within the Imperial College Healthcare Trust. The numbers of pots for polypectomy specimens were calculated and corresponding histology results were extracted.