Publications by authors named "Leon J"

Merkel cell carcinoma (MCC) is an uncommon aggressive neoplasm, usually arising in sun-exposed skin of the head and neck. By immunohistochemistry, KRT20 and MCPyV positivity are found in about 90% and 80% of MCCs, respectively. Noteworthy, viral status in lip/oral cavity MCCs is poorly known.

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Multi-environmental trials (MET) with temporal and spatial variance are crucial for understanding genotype-environment-management (GxExM) interactions in crops. Here, we present a MET dataset for winter wheat in Germany. The dataset encompasses MET spanning six years (2015-2020), six locations and nine crop management scenarios (consisting of combinations for three treatments, unbalanced in each location and year) comparing 228 cultivars released between 1963 and 2016, amounting to a total of 526,751 data points covering 24 traits.

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Background: We aimed to identify the central lifestyle, the most impactful among lifestyle factor clusters; the central health outcome, the most impactful among health outcome clusters; and the bridge lifestyle, the most strongly connected to health outcome clusters, across 29 countries to optimise resource allocation for local holistic health improvements.

Methods: From July 2020 to August 2021, we surveyed 16 461 adults across 29 countries who self-reported changes in 18 lifestyle factors and 13 health outcomes due to the pandemic. Three networks were generated by network analysis for each country: lifestyle, health outcome, and bridge networks.

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The Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) is associated with a wide range of diseases, malignant and non-malignant. EBV was, in fact, the first virus described with cell transformation capacity, discovered by Epstein in 1964 in lymphoma samples from African children. Since then, EBV has been associated with several human tumors including nasopharyngeal carcinoma, gastric carcinoma, T-cell lymphoma, Hodgkin lymphoma, diffuse large B cell lymphoma, and Burkitt lymphoma among others.

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Objective: Benzodiazepines, particularly lorazepam, are good options for acute catatonia treatment. Published catatonia literature on benzodiazepine maintenance treatment and benzodiazepine tolerance is limited.

Methods: This is a chart review covering 30 years of clinical experience in the state of Kentucky, (United States of America), where there was no easy access to electroconvulsive therapy.

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Introduction/objective: Multidimensional geriatric assessment is an important diagnostic method in geriatrics. The objective of this article was to establish the relationship between nutritional, functional, cognitive status and oral health of institutionalized older adults.

Methodology: A cross-sectional observational study was carried out, where 93 institutionalized older adults participated, including oral assessment and Barthel, Minimental, Mininutritional and Yesavage scales.

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Small extracellular vesicles (sEVs) are promising nanocarriers for drug delivery to treat a wide range of diseases due to their natural origin and innate homing properties. However, suboptimal therapeutic effects, attributed to ineffective targeting, limited lysosomal escape, and insufficient delivery, remain challenges in effectively delivering therapeutic cargo. Despite advances in sEV-based drug delivery systems, conventional approaches need improvement to address low drug-loading efficiency and to develop surface functionalization techniques for precise targeting of cells of interest, all while preserving the membrane integrity of sEVs.

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Road traffic is one of the main sources of particulate matter in the urban environment, emitting particulate organic and elemental carbon compounds and metal-rich particles through combustion and brakes and tires wear. In Western Africa, the carbon and metal composition of airborne particles is also influenced by additional sources linked to biomass combustion and recent industrialization. Here, we investigated the impact of combustion-related and non-combustion-related emissions on the distribution of carbonaceous fractions and iron-rich particles in two urban environments in France and Senegal.

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Based on historic observations that children with reading disabilities were disproportionately both male and non-right-handed, and that early life insults of the left hemisphere were more frequent in boys and non-right-handed children, it was proposed that early focal neuronal injury disrupts typical patterns of motor hand and language dominance and in the process produces developmental dyslexia. To date, these theories remain controversial. We revisited these earliest theories in a contemporary manner, investigating demographics associated with reading disability, and in a subgroup with and without reading disability, compared structural imaging as well as patterns of activity during tasks of verb generation and non-word repetition using magnetoencephalography source imaging.

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Article Synopsis
  • Clozapine use is primarily associated with the risk of neutropenia, but there is limited research on adverse drug reactions (ADRs) and fatal outcomes in patients under 18 years old.
  • A study analyzed 2,825 reports of clozapine usage in this age group, revealing 42 fatal outcomes, with the most common ADR being decreased white blood cell count, while suicide was a significant cause of non-duplicated fatalities.
  • To better prevent fatal outcomes in young patients, child and adolescent psychiatrists should broaden their focus beyond severe neutropenia to include other serious ADRs like pneumonia, while still being cautious of the risk of overdose in those at risk for suicide.
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Androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) is a mainstay treatment for metastatic prostate cancer, improving progression-free survival. ADT suppresses the production of testosterone and reduces circulating levels of the hormone. Luteinizing hormone-releasing hormone (LH-RH) agonists are the most commonly used ADT modality.

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Background: Oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma (OP-SCC) represents a public health problem and human papillomavirus (HPV) is one of the risk factors. Neutrophil extracellular traps (NET) are meshes of DNA strands and granule proteins. NET has been identified in diverse cancers, whether associated with viruses or not.

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Purpose: Clozapine is an antipsychotic which was approved in 1989 for treatment-resistant schizophrenia in the United States (US). There were few randomized trials before its approval and potentially lethal clozapine adverse drug reactions (ADRs), such as agranulocytosis and myocarditis were identified by pharmacovigilance. VigiBase, the WHO global database, is a cornerstone of international pharmacovigilance efforts for ADR identification during post-marketing surveillance.

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Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) is one of the leading causes of young-onset dementia before age 65, typically manifesting as abnormal behavior (in behavioral variant FTD) or language impairment (in primary progressive aphasia). Although FTD affects all populations across the globe, knowledge regarding the pathophysiology and genetics derives primarily from studies conducted in North America and Western Europe. Globally, biomedical research for FTD is hindered by variable access to diagnosis, discussed in this group's earlier article, and by reduced access to expertise, funding, and infrastructure.

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Impaired cognition is a key trait of the diseases of aging and is an important quality of life factor for older adults and their families. Over the past decade, there has been an increasing appreciation for the role of the microbiome in cognition, as well as emerging evidence that probiotics, such as those in yogurt and other dairy products, can have a positive impact on cognitive function. However, it is unclear to what extent the consumption of yogurt is associated with improved cognitive function in older adults.

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Article Synopsis
  • Hypobaric hypoxia (HH) affects oxygen supply and increases energy demands during exercise, which can influence body composition and metabolic responses.
  • A study involving 20 trained men showed that 8 weeks of resistance training in HH led to changes in subcutaneous adipose tissue (SAT) thickness and serum levels of metabolic cytokines, including reductions in IL-6 and irisin.
  • The training in HH also boosted IL-15 levels, which correlated with significant reductions in SAT, indicating that exercising under HH may enhance body composition by altering cytokine profiles.
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We present the discovery and characterization of a new multi-planetary system around the Sun-like star K2-360 (EPIC 201595106). K2-360 was first identified in K2 photometry as the host of an ultra-short-period (USP) planet candidate with a period of 0.88 d.

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Bread wheat is an important crop for the human diet, but the increasing soil salinization is reducing the yield. The Ca signaling events at the early stages of the osmotic phase of salt stress are crucial for the acclimation response of the plants through the performance of calcium-sensing proteins, which activate or repress transcription factors (TFs) that affect the expression of downstream genes. Physiological, genetic mapping, and transcriptomics studies performed with the contrasting genotypes Syn86 (synthetic, salt-susceptible) and Zentos (elite cultivar, salt-tolerant) were integrated to gain a comprehensive understanding of the salt stress response.

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Cross-linguistic studies with healthy individuals are vital, as they can reveal typologically common and different patterns while providing tailored benchmarks for patient studies. Nevertheless, cross-linguistic differences in narrative speech production, particularly among speakers of languages belonging to distinct language families, have been inadequately investigated. Using a picture description task, we analyze cross-linguistic variations in connected speech production across three linguistically diverse groups of cognitively normal participants-English, Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese), and Italian speakers.

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In this article, we argue that using puppetry as a tool for arts-based research can enhance existing health and disability communication scholarship. We position interdisciplinary puppetry research alongside concepts and theories of interest to communication scholars, including entertainment education, embodiment and performance, communicated narrative sense-making, and dialogue. Then, we share an illustrative case study from our research with the nonprofit organization, MicheLee Puppets.

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Article Synopsis
  • Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a progressive and incurable neurodegenerative condition that is becoming more common globally, prompting the need for research beyond current treatments targeting amyloid and tau proteins.
  • The apolipoprotein E (ApoE) protein is central to lipid metabolism in the brain, with the ApoE4 allele significantly increasing the risk and lowering the age of onset for AD, while ApoE2 is protective and ApoE3 is neutral.
  • Recent studies highlight ApoE’s complex role in AD development, focusing on its interactions in various brain cell types which could guide the creation of new therapies aimed at targeting ApoE.
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Objective: Age-related vocal atrophy (ARVA) negatively impacts voice and quality of life (QOL). This study aims to determine utility-based QOL in ARVA patients, correlate findings with traditional patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs), and generate utility-based inferences.

Methods: Forty ARVA patients were prospectively recruited from a tertiary care center.

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