Continuity of supervision: Balancing continuous and episodic relationships for assessment and learning.

Introduction: Meaningful supervisor-resident relationships enhance feedback and learning, yet not all relationships reach this potential. While there is increasing interest in continuity of supervision (CoS) to build relationships that support feedback and promote learning, there remains a limited understanding of how relationships develop and influence assessment over time. The aim of this study was to explore how supervisors and learners in postgraduate medical education perceive CoS relationships and their impact on feedback and assessment.

Genomic epidemiology of early SARS-CoV-2 transmission dynamics in Bangladesh.

Background: Genomic epidemiology has helped reconstruct the global and regional movement of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). However, there is still a lack of understanding of SARS-CoV-2 spread in some of the world's least developed countries (LDCs).

Methods: To begin to address this disparity, we studied the transmission dynamics of the virus in Bangladesh during the country's first COVID-19 wave by analysing case reports and whole-genome sequences from all eight divisions of the country.

EpiFusion: Joint inference of the effective reproduction number by integrating phylodynamic and epidemiological modelling with particle filtering.

Accurately estimating the effective reproduction number (Rt) of a circulating pathogen is a fundamental challenge in the study of infectious disease. The fields of epidemiology and pathogen phylodynamics both share this goal, but to date, methodologies and data employed by each remain largely distinct. Here we present EpiFusion: a joint approach that can be used to harness the complementary strengths of each field to improve estimation of outbreak dynamics for large and poorly sampled epidemics, such as arboviral or respiratory virus outbreaks, and validate it for retrospective analysis.

COVID-19 pandemic interventions reshaped the global dispersal of seasonal influenza viruses.

The global dynamics of seasonal influenza viruses inform the design of surveillance, intervention, and vaccination strategies. The COVID-19 pandemic provided a singular opportunity to evaluate how influenza circulation worldwide was perturbed by human behavioral changes. We combine molecular, epidemiological, and international travel data and find that the pandemic's onset led to a shift in the intensity and structure of international influenza lineage movement.

Machine Learning to Predict Interim Response in Pediatric Classical Hodgkin Lymphoma Using Affordable Blood Tests.

Purpose: Response assessment of classical Hodgkin lymphoma (cHL) with positron emission tomography-computerized tomography (PET-CT) is standard of care in well-resourced settings but unavailable in most African countries. We aimed to investigate correlations between changes in PET-CT findings at interim analysis with changes in blood test results in pediatric patients with cHL in 17 South African centers.

Methods: Changes in ferritin, lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR), albumin, total white cell count (TWC), absolute lymphocyte count (ALC), and absolute eosinophil count were compared with PET-CT Deauville scores (DS) after two cycles of doxorubicin, bleomycin, vinblastine, and dacarbazine in 84 pediatric patients with cHL.

V-pipe 3.0: a sustainable pipeline for within-sample viral genetic diversity estimation.

The large amount and diversity of viral genomic datasets generated by next-generation sequencing technologies poses a set of challenges for computational data analysis workflows, including rigorous quality control, scaling to large sample sizes, and tailored steps for specific applications. Here, we present V-pipe 3.0, a computational pipeline designed for analyzing next-generation sequencing data of short viral genomes.

Developing Self-Nanoemulsifying Drug Delivery Systems Comprising an Artemether-Lumefantrine Fixed-Dose Combination to Treat Malaria.

Background: Despite attempts to control malaria, poor drug bioavailability means malaria still places enormous pressure on health globally. It has been found that the solubility of highly lipophilic compounds can be enhanced through lipid formulations, e.g.

Community engagement in mobile and hard-to-reach populations: a community-based intervention for malaria elimination in a tri-national region of the Guiana Shield.

Several countries of the Guiana Shield are aiming at the control and elimination of malaria in areas where Artisanal and Small-scale Gold Mining (ASGM) activities predominate, raising questions about how to strengthen community engagement to improve the effectiveness of health programs. The Curema project focuses its intervention on the mobile and hard-to-reach ASGM population, complementing the efforts of national programs in the Guiana Shield. The Curema intervention combines targeted drug administration for suspected asymptomatic carriers, the Malakit distribution, and health education activities.

High-resolution epidemiological landscape from ~290,000 SARS-CoV-2 genomes from Denmark.

Vast amounts of pathogen genomic, demographic and spatial data are transforming our understanding of SARS-CoV-2 emergence and spread. We examined the drivers of molecular evolution and spread of 291,791 SARS-CoV-2 genomes from Denmark in 2021. With a sequencing rate consistently exceeding 60%, and up to 80% of PCR-positive samples between March and November, the viral genome set is broadly whole-epidemic representative.

Pneumatic extrusion bioprinting-based high throughput fabrication of a melanoma 3D cell culture model for anti-cancer drug screening.

The high incidence of malignant melanoma highlights the need formodels that accurately represent the tumour microenvironment, enabling developments in melanoma therapy and drug screening. Despite several advancements in 3D cell culture models, appropriate melanoma models for evaluating drug efficacy are still in high demand. The 3D pneumatic extrusion-based bioprinting technology offers numerous benefits, including the ability to achieve high-throughput capabilities.

Development of a Plant-Expressed Subunit Vaccine against Brucellosis.

Brucellosis is an important bacterial disease of livestock and the most common zoonotic disease. The current vaccines are effective but unsafe, as they result in animal abortions and are pathogenic to humans. Virus-like particles are being investigated as molecular scaffolds for foreign antigen presentation to the immune system.

Core principles of Malakit intervention for transferability in other contexts.

To eliminate malaria, all populations must be included. For those who are not reached by the health care system, specific interventions must be tailor-made. An innovative Malakit strategy, based on the distribution of self-diagnosis and self-treatment kits, has been evaluated in the Suriname-French Guiana- Amapá (Brazil) region.

The influence of viscosity of hydrogels on the spreading and migration of cells in 3D bioprinted skin cancer models.

Various three-dimensional (3D) tissue culture models of human and diseased skin exist. Nevertheless, there is still room for the development and improvement of 3D bioprinted skin cancer models. The need for reproducible bioprinting methods, cell samples, biomaterial inks, and bioinks is becoming increasingly important.

Development of a workplace breastfeeding support practice model in South Africa.

Background: Globally, mothers have identified work as one of the main obstacles to exclusive and continued breastfeeding. The support a woman receives in her workplace in terms of workplace arrangements can be critical to enable women to continue breastfeeding. This study aimed to develop and assess the face validity of a practice model to support exclusive and continued breastfeeding in workplaces in the Western Cape, South Africa.

Training-of-trainers program for community health workers involved in an innovative and community-based intervention against malaria among goldminers in the Guiana shield: a quality and effectiveness evaluation.

Introduction: An innovative and community-based intervention is implemented in the Guiana Shield to eliminate malaria among people involved in artisanal and small-scale gold mining. The intervention consists of the distribution of malaria self-management kits to goldminers and the presumptive treatment for individuals at risk of carrying hypnozoites. The intervention is possible owing to community health workers (CHWs) who are previously trained to master all intervention procedures, including health education activities and goldmining training.

Social determinants of health among people working on informal gold mines in French Guiana: a multicentre cross-sectional survey.

Introduction: Social determinants of health, such as living and working conditions, economical and environmental context and access to care, combine to impact the health of individuals and communities. In French Guiana (FG), the persons working in informal artisanal and small-scale gold mining in the rainforest are a particularly vulnerable population which lives in precarious conditions and far from the health system. Previous studies have demonstrated their high morbidity due to infectious diseases.

Ancient chicken remains reveal the origins of virulence in Marek's disease virus.

The pronounced growth in livestock populations since the 1950s has altered the epidemiological and evolutionary trajectory of their associated pathogens. For example, Marek's disease virus (MDV), which causes lymphoid tumors in chickens, has experienced a marked increase in virulence over the past century. Today, MDV infections kill >90% of unvaccinated birds, and controlling it costs more than US$1 billion annually.

Improved survival of children and adolescents with classical Hodgkin lymphoma treated on a harmonised protocol in South Africa.

Background: Historic South African 5-year overall survival (OS) rates for Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) from 2000 to 2010 were 46% and 84% for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-positive and HIV-negative children, respectively. We investigated whether a harmonised treatment protocol using risk stratification and response-adapted therapy could increase the OS of childhood and adolescent HL.

Methods: Seventeen units prospectively enrolled patients less than 18 years, newly diagnosed with classical HL onto a risk-stratified, response-adapted treatment protocol from July 2016 to December 2022.

Steps of spermiogenesis in the ostrich (Struthio camelus).

Few studies describe the sequence of morphological events that characterize spermiogenesis in birds. In this paper, the clearly observable steps of spermiogenesis are described and illustrated for the first time in a commercially important ratite, the ostrich, based on light microscopy of toluidine blue-stained plastic sections. Findings were supplemented and supported by ultrastructural observations, PNA labeling of acrosome development, and immunocytochemical labeling of isolated spermatogenic cells.

Flow cytometry as an analytical method of drug-induced apoptosis in 3D bioprinted melanoma cells.

Three-dimensional (3D) cell culture systems have gained increasing interest in drug discovery and tissue engineering due to its inherent advantages in providing more physiologically relevant information and more predictive data fortests. Along with the development of more physiologically relevant 3D cell culture models, researchers bear the responsibility to validate new cell assay techniques capable of measuring and evaluating constructs that are physically larger and more complex compared to two-dimensional cell cultures. It is important to note that assays based on monolayer cultures may be insufficient for the use in 3D cell cultures models.

Genomic epidemiology of infection in sympatric badger and cattle populations in Northern Ireland.

Bovine tuberculosis (bTB) is a costly, epidemiologically complex, multi-host, endemic disease. Lack of understanding of transmission dynamics may undermine eradication efforts. Pathogen whole-genome sequencing improves epidemiological inferences, providing a means to determine the relative importance of inter- and intra-species host transmission for disease persistence.