Objective: Gastric adenocarcinoma (GAC) is the 17th most common cancer in the UK with a 5-year survival rate of 22%. GastroPanel (Biohit Oyj; Helsinki, Finland) is an ELISA kit that measures pepsinogen I (PGI); pepsinogen II (PGII); gastrin-17 (G-17); and Helicobacter pylori IgG antibodies (Hp IgG). PGI and the PGI/PGII ratio correlate inversely with the severity of chronic atrophic gastritis (AG).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis position paper by the international IMMERSE consortium reviews the evidence of a digital mental health solution based on Experience Sampling Methodology (ESM) for advancing person-centered mental health care and outlines a research agenda for implementing innovative digital mental health tools into routine clinical practice. ESM is a structured diary technique recording real-time self-report data about the current mental state using a mobile application. We will review how ESM may contribute to (1) service user engagement and empowerment, (2) self-management and recovery, (3) goal direction in clinical assessment and management of care, and (4) shared decision-making.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Recent years have seen a growing interest in the use of digital tools for delivering person-centred mental health care. Experience Sampling Methodology (ESM), a structured diary technique for capturing moment-to-moment variation in experience and behaviour in service users' daily life, reflects a particularly promising avenue for implementing a person-centred approach. While there is evidence on the effectiveness of ESM-based monitoring, uptake in routine mental health care remains limited.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: This study aims to evaluate the efficacy and safety of JAK inhibitors (JAKi) in a monocentric cohort of adult patients with juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA).
Methods: Patients attending a rheumatology transition clinic were retrospectively included in case of: i) JIA diagnosis according to current classification criteria (1); ii) age ≥18 years and iii) treatment with JAKi for at least 3 months.
Results: Seventeen adult patients with JIA were treated with JAKi (as first JAKi, 9 patients (52.
Along the hopes and fears around the recent rise of Digital Health Technologies (DHT), EU and Member State (MS) policymakers have sought to find ways to translate these innovations into tangible trustworthy and reliable tools for health and care practices. While these translation-efforts have been developed across different healthcare contexts with their own histories, practices, and values, their increasing entanglement has over the years raised several implementation issues between EU and MS policy initiatives. While policymakers have struggled to understand the reasons behind this, this article proposes to 'move focus' towards a socio-technical understanding of DHT by investigating how these alignment attempts come about in practice.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: To investigate clinical features associated with lack of response to MTX in juvenile idiopathic arthritis associated uveitis (JIA-U).
Methods: Clinical records of JIA-U patients were retrospectively reviewed. Differences among variables were assessed by Mann-Whitney and χ 2 or Fisher's exact tests as appropriate.
Research about science and publics in the COVID-19 pandemic often focuses on public trust and on identifying and correcting public attitudes. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 209 residents in six countries-Austria, Bolivia, Germany, Italy, Mexico, and Portugal-this article uses the concept of performativity to explore how participants understand, and relate to science, in the COVID-19 context. By performativity, we mean the ways by which participants understand themselves as particular sorts of publics through identification with, and differentiation from, various other actors in matters that are perceived as controversies surrounding science: COVID-19 vaccination, media communication of science, and the interactions between governments and scientists.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn May 2022, the European Commission issued the Proposal for a Regulation on the European Health Data Space (EHDS), with the aims of granting citizens increased access to and control of their (electronic) health data across the EU, and facilitating health data re-use for research, innovation, and policymaking. As the first in a series of European domain-specific "data spaces", the EHDS is a high-stakes development that will transform health data governance in the EU region. As an international consortium of experts from health policy, law, ethics and the social sciences, we are concerned that the EHDS Proposal will detract from, rather than lead to the achievement of, its stated aims.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCalls for solidarity have been an ubiquitous feature in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, we know little about how people have thought of and practised solidarity in their everyday lives since the beginning of the pandemic. What role does solidarity play in people's lives, how does it relate to COVID-19 public health measures and how has it changed in different phases of the pandemic? Situated within the medical humanities at the intersection of philosophy, bioethics, social sciences and policy studies, this article explores how the practice-based understanding of solidarity formulated by Prainsack and Buyx helps shed light on these questions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJuvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) associated uveitis (JIA-U) is the most common extra-articular manifestation of JIA, affecting 10-15% of patients, especially in oligoarticular JIA where its course may be faint. Therefore, JIA-U is one of the most challenging pediatric uveitis, associated with major ocular morbidity and possibly leading to irreversible structural ocular damage and to vision-threatening complications. Adequate management is crucial for avoiding visual impairment complications.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe rapid spread of SARS-CoV-2 worldwide has triggered intense activity in the field of biotechnology, leading to the development and regulatory approval of multiple COVID-19 vaccines in less than 1 year while raising sustained scrutiny as to the ethical issues associated with this process. This article pursues a twofold objective. First, it reconstructs and provides a thorough overview of the different steps, from clinical trial design to regulatory procedures, underpinning the "fast-tracking" of COVID-19 vaccine R&D and approval.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe uptake ofCOVID-19 vaccines has varied considerably across European countries. This study investigates people's decision-making process regarding vaccination by analyzing qualitative interviews (n = 214) with residents from five European countries: Austria, Germany, Italy, Portugal, and Switzerland. We identify three factors that shape vaccination decision-making: individual experiences and pre-existing attitudes towards vaccination, social environment, and socio-political context.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOcul Immunol Inflamm
December 2023
Aim: To describe the efficacy and safety of subcutaneous tocilizumab (SC-TCZ) in a cohort of juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) patients with refractory uveitis.
Methods: Retrospective observational monocentric study including patients with JIA-associated uveitis treated with SC-TCZ.
Results: Thirteen patients were enrolled.
Vaccine uptake is essential to managing the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, and vaccine hesitancy is a persistent concern. At the same time, both decision-makers and the general population have high hopes for COVID-19 vaccination. Drawing from qualitative interview data collected in October 2020 as part of the pan-European SolPan study, this study explores early and anticipatory expectations, hopes and fears regarding COVID-19 vaccination across seven European countries.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHigh Grade Serous Ovarian cancer (HGSOC) is a major unmet need in oncology, due to its precocious dissemination and the lack of meaningful human models for the investigation of disease pathogenesis in a patient-specific manner. To overcome this roadblock, we present a new method to isolate and grow single cells directly from patients' metastatic ascites, establishing the conditions for propagating them as 3D cultures that we refer to as single cell-derived metastatic ovarian cancer spheroids (sMOCS). By single cell RNA sequencing (scRNAseq) we define the cellular composition of metastatic ascites and trace its propagation in 2D and 3D culture paradigms, finding that sMOCS retain and amplify key subpopulations from the original patients' samples and recapitulate features of the original metastasis that do not emerge from classical 2D culture, including retention of individual patients' specificities.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMobile applications for digital contact tracing have been developed and introduced around the world in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Proposed as a tool to support 'traditional' forms of contact-tracing carried out to monitor contagion, these apps have triggered an intense debate with respect to their legal and ethical permissibility, social desirability and general feasibility. Based on a large-scale study including qualitative data from 349 interviews conducted in nine European countries (Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, German-speaking Switzerland, the United Kingdom), this paper shows that the binary framing often found in surveys and polls, which contrasts privacy concerns with the usefulness of these interventions for public health, does not capture the depth, breadth, and nuances of people's positions towards COVID-19 contact-tracing apps.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAs digital health technologies (DHT) have been embraced as a 'panacea' for health care systems, they have evolved from a buzzword into a high priority objective for health policy across the globe. In the realm of quality and safety standards for medical devices, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been a frontrunner in adapting its regulatory framework to DHT. However, despite the utmost relevance of quality and safety standards and their role for sustaining the innovation pathway of DHT, their actual making has not yet been subjected to in-depth social-science scrutiny.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: To evaluate the long-term role of adherence to oral acyclovir prophylaxis in reducing the risk for recurrent herpes simplex virus keratitis (HSK) in children.
Methods: A retrospective cohort study was performed including all pediatric patients 16 years or younger) with their first HSK diagnosis and treatment at our center. Children were started on a standardized oral acyclovir prophylactic regimen after the acute phase.