Publications by authors named "Jennifer Byrne"

Article Synopsis
  • Research culture in health and biomedical sciences is heavily shaped by academic pressures like the need to publish, impacting the quality of evidence produced.
  • This rapid scoping review aims to identify various factors affecting research culture by analyzing empirical studies from PubMed and Web of Science published between 2012 and April 2024.
  • The findings highlight the importance of inclusivity, transparency, rigor, and objectivity in research practices, suggesting that ongoing discussions about these principles are essential for improving research environments.
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Research paper mills are covert organizations that provide low-quality or fabricated manuscripts to paying clients. As members of the United2Act Research Working Group, we propose 5 key research questions on paper mills that require resourcing and support.

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Purpose: To evaluate the survival benefit of chemotherapy intensification in older patients with AML who have not achieved a measurable residual disease (MRD)-negative remission.

Methods: Five hundred twenty-three patients with AML (median age, 67 years; range, 51-79) without a flow cytometric MRD-negative remission response after a first course of daunorubicin and AraC (DA; including 165 not in remission) were randomly assigned between up to two further courses of DA or intensified chemotherapy-either fludarabine, cytarabine, granulocyte colony-stimulating factor and idarubicin (FLAG-Ida) or DA with cladribine (DAC).

Results: Overall survival (OS) was not improved in the intensification arms (DAC DA: hazard ratio [HR], 0.

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Autologous hematopoietic cell transplants (auto-HCTs) remain the standard of care for transplant-eligible MM patients. The general practice has been to undergo upfront apheresis following induction to collect sufficient number of CD34+ cells to facilitate two auto-HCTs. However, 5-30% of MM patients do not initially mobilise a sufficient number of hematopoietic stem cells and are classified as poor mobilizers (PM).

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Research is conducted in workplaces that can present safety hazards. Where researchers work in laboratories, safety hazards can arise through the need to operate complex equipment that can become unsafe if faulty or broken. The research literature also represents a workplace for millions of scientists and scholars, where publications can be considered as key research equipment.

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Paper mills are fraudulent organizations that make money by writing fake manuscripts and offering authorship slots for sale to academic customers. Mill activity differs in scale to individual academic misconduct: many thousands of fake paper mill manuscripts have been successfully published in peer-reviewed journals. Despite this, paper mill activity is still relatively unrecognized outside the publishing industry.

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Article Synopsis
  • - Asciminib is a targeted treatment for BCR::ABL1 that minimizes side effects from disrupting other kinases, with a study of 49 patients showing it is generally well tolerated over a median follow-up of 14 months.
  • - Most patients (59%) continued treatment, with only 12% stopping due to intolerance; however, treatment cessation was primarily due to intolerance rather than drug resistance (65% vs. 35%).
  • - Out of 44 patients evaluated, 66% achieved a complete cytogenetic response, with lower success rates seen in patients with specific genetic variants; further analysis indicated that the drug can influence the growth of certain resistant cancer cell populations.
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Schools have become increasingly important as health promotion settings, seeking to improve pupils' health and wellbeing through adopting a whole-school approach. A strong evidence-base highlights that focusing on the social, emotional and psychological aspects of pupils' wellbeing enables them to flourish, enjoy life and be better equipped to overcome challenges. However, it is acknowledged that further evidence is required regarding: (1) what happens in primary schools, (2) the impact of the English education system, (3) complexity and context, and (4) capturing children's voices.

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Pain and symptom management at the end of life (EoL) can pose unique challenges, particularly when symptoms are refractory to conventional methods. Dexmedetomidine, originally approved for sedation in ventilated patients, has been demonstrated to be beneficial in pain management and palliative care settings by functioning as an alpha-2 agonist. A retrospective review of inpatient palliative care unit (IPU) records from January 2020 to December 2023 was conducted.

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Reproducible laboratory research relies on correctly identified reagents. We have previously described gene research papers with wrongly identified nucleotide sequence(s), including papers studying miR-145. Manually verifying reagent identities in 36 recent miR-145 papers found that 56% and 17% of papers described misidentified nucleotide sequences and cell lines, respectively.

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Article Synopsis
  • - In patients with myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), higher revised International Prognostic Scoring System (IPSS-R) scores are linked to poorer transplant outcomes, leading to the idea that lowering these scores before transplant could be helpful, but there's currently no evidence to back this up.
  • - A study analyzing 1,482 MDS patients found that changes in IPSS-R scores before transplantation did not significantly impact outcomes for untreated patients, while beneficial results were seen in those improved by chemotherapy.
  • - Overall, prior treatments including hypomethylating agents showed no clear advantage in improving transplant outcomes, suggesting that the effectiveness of pre-transplant therapies in altering IPSS-R scores is limited and raising questions about their role in managing
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Academic biobanks commonly report sustainability challenges, which may be exacerbated by a lack of information on biobank value. To better understand the costs and supported outputs that contribute to biobank value, we developed a systematic, generalizable methodology to determine biobank inputs and publications arising from biobank-supported research. We then tested this in a small cohort ( = 12) of academic cancer biobanks in New South Wales, Australia.

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Article Synopsis
  • Managing chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) during pregnancy is rare; a study of 87 cases from a registry showed favorable outcomes for most women diagnosed in the chronic phase between 2001-2022.
  • Normal childbirth rates were high at 76%, with only 12% of infants being low birth weight, and a low rate of complications was noted regardless of treatment (imatinib or interferon-α).
  • About 95% of patients achieved complete hematologic response by labor time, with no disease progression during pregnancy, indicating that specific treatments can be safe for both the mother and baby in later trimesters.
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The importance of stimulating greater sharing of data for use and reuse in health research is widely recognized. To this end, the findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR) principles for data have been developed and widely accepted in the research community. Research biospecimens are a resource that leads to much of this health research data but are also a form of data.

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Background: A previous controlled trial of autologous haematopoietic stem-cell transplantation (HSCT) in patients with refractory Crohn's disease did not meet its primary endpoint and reported high toxicity. We aimed to assess the safety and efficacy of HSCT with an immune-ablative regimen of reduced intensity versus standard of care in this patient population.

Methods: This open-label, multicentre, randomised controlled trial was conducted in nine National Health Service hospital trusts across the UK.

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Human gene research studies that describe wrongly identified nucleotide sequence reagents have been mostly identified in journals of low to moderate impact factor, where unreliable findings could be considered to have limited influence on future research. This study examined whether papers describing wrongly identified nucleotide sequences are also published in high-impact-factor cancer research journals. We manually verified nucleotide sequence identities in original Molecular Cancer articles published in 2014, 2016, 2018, and 2020, including nucleotide sequence reagents that were claimed to target circRNAs.

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Patients with advanced cancer nearing end of life often present with complex multifactorial pain. Although epidural analgesia is routinely used in inpatient hospital settings for targeted pain control, there is scant description in the literature of the use of low-dose epidural analgesia for relief of cancer-related pain at end of life. In this study, we present a case of difficult to control cancer-related rectal and pelvic pain in a patient who responded well in her last days of life to a low-dose bupivacaine epidural.

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Article Synopsis
  • Polycythemia vera (PV) is a blood disorder linked to JAK/STAT activation, and ruxolitinib has been shown to effectively manage high-risk patients by controlling blood counts and alleviating symptoms.
  • The MAJIC-PV trial compared ruxolitinib to best available therapy (BAT) in patients who were resistant or intolerant to hydroxycarbamide, with the main goal of achieving a complete response (CR) within a year.
  • Results showed that ruxolitinib led to a significantly higher CR rate (43% vs. 26% for BAT), better duration of response and symptom improvement, and a stronger correlation between molecular response and patient outcomes like event-free survival (
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Although biobanks can support research across geographic and governance boundaries, biomedical researchers consistently describe preferences for either collaborating with local biobanks or establishing their own biobanks. This article summarizes the potential research impacts of local biobank use and suggests how descriptions of biospecimen provenance can be improved in research publications.

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