Detection of fungal sequences in human brain: rDNA locus amplification and deep sequencing.

The aetiology of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and Parkinson's disease (PD) are unknown and tend to manifest at a late stage in life; even though these neurodegenerative diseases are caused by different affected proteins, they are both characterized by neuroinflammation. Links between bacterial and viral infection and AD/PD has been suggested in several studies, however, few have attempted to establish a link between fungal infection and AD/PD. In this study we adopted a nanopore-based sequencing approach to characterise the presence or absence of fungal genera in both human brain tissue and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF).

Preadmission VACS Index as a Predictor of Hospital Acute Kidney Injury in People with HIV.

Background: The Veterans Aging Cohort Study (VACS) Index is a summary measure of routinely obtained clinical variables that predicts numerous health outcomes. Since there are currently no tools to predict acute kidney injury (AKI) in persons with HIV (PWH), we investigated the association of preadmission VACS Index with hospital AKI in PWH.

Methods: We conducted an observational study of PWH hospitalized in a New York City health system between 2010-2019.

Decoding cancer etiology with cellular reprogramming.

Cancer research remains clinically unmet in many areas due to limited access to patient samples and the lack of reliable model systems that truly reflect human cancer biology. The emergence of patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells and engineered human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) has helped overcome these challenges, offering a versatile alternative platform for advancing cancer research. These hPSCs are already proving to be valuable models for studying specific cancer driver mutations, offering insights into cancer origins, pathogenesis, tumor heterogeneity, clonal evolution, and facilitating drug discovery and testing.