radiosensitivity and Mn antioxidant content: antigenic preservation and pathobiology.

The bacterium responsible for Lyme disease, , accumulates high levels of manganese without iron and possesses a polyploid genome, characteristics suggesting potential extreme resistance to radiation. Contrary to expectations, we report that wild-type B31 cells are radiosensitive, with a gamma-radiation survival limit for 10 wild-type cells of <1 kGy. Thus, we explored radiosensitivity through electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy by quantitating the fraction of Mn present as antioxidant Mn metabolite complexes (H-Mn).

Changes in Risk Tolerance for Ovarian Cancer Prevention Strategies during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Results of a Discrete Choice Experiment.

Background: Prior to COVID-19, little was known about how risks associated with such a pandemic would compete with and influence patient decision making regarding cancer risk reducing medical decision making. We investigated how the pandemic affected preferences for medical risk-reducing strategies among women at elevated risk of breast or ovarian cancer.

Methods: We conducted a discrete choice experiment.

Embedding the patient voice into research on spontaneous preterm birth-themes from a Preterm Birth Advisory Council.

Background: Spontaneous preterm birth (sPTB) has a deep immediate impact on patients but also alters their care and experience in subsequent pregnancies. There is an absence of the pregnant patient's voice in the research surrounding pregnancy at risk of sPTB.

Materials/methods: The Preterm Birth Advisory Council was established at the National Maternity Hospital (NMH) in January 2023, to introduce and embed the patient voice in research into sPTB prevention.

Understanding rare genetic variants within the terminal pathway of complement system in preeclampsia.

Preeclampsia is a common multifactorial disease of pregnancy. Dysregulation of complement activation is among emerging candidates responsible for disease pathogenesis. In a targeted exomic sequencing study of 609 women with preeclampsia and 2092 non-preeclamptic controls, we identified 14 variants within nine genes coding for components of the membrane attack complex (MAC, C5b-9) that are associated with preeclampsia.

Cystic fibrosis risk variants confer protection against inflammatory bowel disease.

Genetic mutations that yield defective cystic fibrosis transmembrane regulator () protein cause cystic fibrosis, a life-limiting autosomal recessive Mendelian disorder. A protective role of loss-of-function mutations in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) has been suggested, but its evidence has been inconclusive and contradictory. Here, leveraging the largest IBD exome sequencing dataset to date, comprising 38,558 cases and 66,945 controls in the discovery stage, and 35,797 cases and 179,942 controls in the replication stage, we established a protective role of CF-risk variants against IBD based on evidence from the association test of delF508 (p-value=8.