Antibiotics (Basel)
January 2025
Background: Methicillin-resistant (MRSA) is a significant burden globally, particularly in the Arabian Gulf region. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has experienced rising MRSA prevalence, with increasing diversity in the clonal complexes (CCs) identified. The COVID-19 pandemic, with its increased hospitalization rates and antibiotic use, may have further influenced MRSA's genetic evolution and epidemiology in the country.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The medial malleolus is involved in up to 50 % of ankle fractures. When surgery is required, a thorough understanding of bone mass distribution within the distal tibia is crucial for selecting and positioning screws to ensure stable fixation. Despite its clinical significance, data on the bone mass distribution in the distal tibia remains limited.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe spirochete causes Lyme disease. In some patients, an excessive, dysregulated proinflammatory immune response can develop in joints leading to persistent arthritis. In such patients, persistence of antigenic peptidoglycan (PG) fragments within joint tissues may contribute to the immunopathogenesis, even after appropriate antibiotic treatment.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIt has been well established that adenosine plays a key role in the control of inflammation through G protein coupled receptors and recently shown that it can regulate thermogenesis. Here we investigated the specific requirements of the adenosine A2A receptor (A2AR) in mature adipocytes for thermogenic functionality and metabolic homeostasis. We generated fat tissue specific adenosine A2A receptor knock-out mice to assess the influence of signaling through this receptor on brown and beige fat functionality, obesity, insulin sensitivity, inflammation and liver function.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA growing literature within the field of air pollution exposure assessment addresses the issue of environmental justice. Leveraging the increasing availability of exposure datasets with broad spatial coverage and high spatial resolution, a number of works have assessed inequalities in exposure across racial/ethnic and other socioeconomic groupings. However, environmental justice research presents the additional need to evaluate exposure inequity-inequality that is systematic, unfair, and avoidable-which may be framed in several ways.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAm J Obstet Gynecol
November 2024
Background: Bladder health encompasses total bladder well-being and not merely the absence of urinary symptoms. While much is known about the prevalence of urinary symptoms in women, little is known about the distribution of bladder health (eg, optimal to poor).
Objective: We report the distributions of multiple dimensions of bladder health and function in a population-based sample of community-dwelling women, overall and separately in women without urinary symptoms to begin to explore bladder health dimensions that may precede the onset of symptoms.
Objective: Bacterial biofilm control around dental implants is critical for the health of the peri-implant soft tissue and longevity of dental implants. The patient's role in regular biofilm removal around dental implants is just as important as that of the dental hygienist. The purpose of this study is to identify the relationship between at-home dental implant care and patients' perceptions of peri-implant soft tissue health.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFibroblast growth factor 23 (FGF23) is a bone-secreted protein widely recognized as a critical regulator of skeletal and mineral metabolism. However, little is known about the nonskeletal production of FGF23 and its role in tissues other than bone. Growing evidence indicates that circulating FGF23 levels rise with a high-fat diet (HFD) and they are positively correlated with body mass index (BMI) in humans.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe deep continental crust represents a vast potential habitat for microbial life where its activity remains poorly constrained. Organic acids like acetate are common in these ecosystems, but their role in the subsurface carbon cycle - including the mechanism and rate of their turnover - is still unclear. Here, we develop an isotope-exchange 'clock' based on the abiotic equilibration of H-isotopes between acetate and water, which can be used to define the maximum in situ acetate residence time.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Proteome Res
November 2024
Metabolic dysfunction in the liver represents a predominant feature in the early stages of alcohol-associated liver disease (ALD). However, the mechanisms underlying this are only partially understood. To investigate the metabolic characteristics of the liver in ALD, we did a relative quantification of polar metabolites and lipids in the liver of mice with experimental ALD using untargeted metabolomics and untargeted lipidomics.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUrogynecology (Phila)
February 2025
Importance: Bladder health in high school and collegiate females is not well understood.
Objective: The objective of this study was to compare toileting behaviors, lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTSs), and fluid intake in female athletes and nonathletes.
Study Design: English-speaking nulliparous females aged 13-23 years were recruited.
Introduction: Uroflowmetry is often used to assess lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS). Criteria for characterization of flow patterns are not well established, and subjective interpretation is the most common approach for flow curve classification. We assessed the reliability of uroflowmetry curve interpretation in adult women.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDifferent blood group systems have been characterized in people and other mammals. In domestic cats, the blood group system plays the most important clinical role and has been investigated extensively-from the phenotype to the molecular genetics. In non-domestic felids, phenotypic blood typing has been performed by different methods to detect the antigens, but the four informative markers in domestic cats were not able to identify types and () in non-domestic cats.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAntibody-mediated receptor activation is successfully used to develop medical treatments. If the activation induces a pathological response, such antibodies are also excellent tools for defining molecular mechanisms of target receptor malfunction and designing rescue therapies. Prominent examples are naturally occurring autoantibodies inducing the severe blistering disease pemphigus vulgaris (PV).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPrior research suggests that cognitive control, indicated by NoGo N2 amplitudes in Go/NoGo tasks, is associated with dispositional anxiety. This negative association tends to be reduced in anxiety-enhancing experimental conditions. However, anxiety-reducing conditions have not yet been investigated systematically.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: In non-impaired human locomotion, sagittal-plane slope adaptation of the foot-ankle complex is a volitional function driven by neuromotor control to support upright posture and forward ambulation. Loss of this adaptation due to transtibial amputation can lead to instability and compensatory motions as most commercially-available prosthetic feet do not permit automatic slope adjustments. A selection of slope-adaptive feet (SAF) have been developed to promote biomimetic ankle motion while ambulating over slopes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFContext: The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the significance of public health laboratories across the United States, while also revealing weaknesses in the laboratory system.
Objective: To identify actionable recommendations for building a more resilient public health laboratory system based on previously published lessons learned from COVID-19.
Design, Setting, And Participants: In April 2023, the Association of Public Health Laboratories, in cooperation with RAND , convened a 1.
Three-dimensional (3D) printed medical devices include orthopedic and craniofacial implants, surgical tools, and external prosthetics that have been directly used in patients. While the advances of additive manufacturing techniques in the production of medical devices have been on the rise, clinical translation of living cellular constructs face significant limitations in terms of regulatory affairs, process technology, and materials development. In this perspective, the current status-quo of 3D and four-dimensional (4D) (bio)printing is summarized, current advancements are discussed and the challenges that need to be addressed for improved industrial translation and clinical applications of bioprinting are highlighted.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: To illustrate the challenges encountered when gathering rapidly synthesized evidence in response to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.
Methods: In this article, we describe the challenges encountered when we performed a systematic literature review (SLR) of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) on the efficacy and safety of treatments for severe COVID-19. The methods of the SLR are described in full, to show the context of our objectives.