Publications by authors named "L M Stevenson"
Feasibility of a Low-Intensity Intervention to Influence Antibiotic Prescribing Rates Use in Outpatient Settings: A Cluster Randomized Controlled Clinical Trial.
Open Forum Infect Dis
January 2025
Background: Primary care providers (PCPs) may modify their antibiotic prescription practices if aware of their potentially damaging impact.
Methods: We conducted a cluster randomized controlled trial at 12 Veterans Affairs community-based outpatient clinics. PCPs at clinics randomized to the intervention group received quarterly antibiotic use reports with feedback about antibiotics prescribed for acute respiratory infections and adverse event letters alerting about infection or antibiotic-resistant gram-negative bacteria among their patients.
The incidence of oesophageal adenocarcinoma (OAC) has risen six-fold in western countries over the last forty years but survival rates have only marginally improved. Hyperactivation of the PI3K-AKT-mTOR pathway is a common occurrence in OAC, driving cell survival, proliferation and resistance to chemotherapeutic agents. Inhibition of AKT has been explored as a treatment strategy with limited success and current inhibitors have failed to progress through clinical trials.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFArticle Synopsis
- Mercury is a toxic substance that accumulates in fish, particularly in its organic form, methylmercury (MeHg), which poses risks to human health through contaminated fish consumption.
- Understanding how mercury accumulates in aquatic species requires analyzing several biokinetic parameters, including uptake rate, assimilation efficiency, and efflux rate, which were studied across 38 fish and 34 aquatic invertebrate species, yielding 502 total data points.
- The study found that the form of mercury and various environmental factors like water type and organism weight significantly influenced these parameters, highlighting differences between fish and invertebrates, and challenging previous assumptions about the impact of environmental conditions on mercury accumulation in aquatic ecosystems.
Article Synopsis
- TTN encodes the protein titin and is commonly associated with rare variants in patients diagnosed with atrial fibrillation (AF) during genetic testing.
- The study compared characteristics and outcomes of patients with AF having pathogenic TTN variants to those without such variants, revealing that TTN(+) patients experience more persistent AF and require more cardioversions.
- Findings indicate that nearly 50% of TTN(+) AF patients develop serious heart issues, emphasizing the importance of specialized evaluation and management for these individuals.
Article Synopsis
- - The DEBIOC trial explored the safety and efficacy of neoadjuvant treatment using oxaliplatin and capecitabine (Xelox) with or without AZD8931 in patients with oesophageal adenocarcinoma, showing moderate safety but limited effectiveness.
- - Researchers analyzed genetic data from 25 pre-treatment and 18 post-treatment biopsy samples to examine how these treatments influenced biological pathways related to cancer through advanced software tools.
- - Their findings identified three molecular subgroups linked to immune response, with treatment affecting immune signaling and tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes, while the addition of AZD8931 promoted a less favorable immunosuppressive environment and common cancer resistance mechanisms.