Cortisol and C-reactive protein (CRP) regulation in severe mental disorders.

Background: People with schizophrenia (SZ) and bipolar disorder (BD) show abnormalities in the biological stress system and low-grade inflammation. However, whether the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis-immune regulation is disrupted in SZ and BD, is yet to be determined.

Methods: Cortisol and C-reactive protein (CRP) were measured in blood samples collected at or before 10 am in participants with SZ (N = 257), BD (N = 153), and healthy controls (N = 40).

Symptomatic Progression, Recurrence, and Long-Term Follow-Up of Patients With Intracranial Epidermoid Cysts.

Background And Objectives: Intracranial epidermoid cysts are rare, slow-growing but highly recurrent tumors with incompletely understood symptoms, progression, complications, and outcomes. The aim of the study was to characterize the symptomatology, surgical management, and long-term outcomes of these tumors.

Methods: This single-center retrospective analysis identified patients with pathologically confirmed intracranial epidermoid cysts from 1989 to 2023.

Design, fabrication, and testing of a new soft-pouch robot with 6 degrees of freedom to expand the reach of open and endonasal skull base approaches.

Objective: Most robots currently used in neurosurgery aid surgeons in placing spinal hardware and guiding electrodes and biopsy probes toward brain targets. These robots are inflexible, cannot turn corners, and exert excessive force when dissecting and retracting brain tissue, limiting their applicability in cranial base surgery. In this study, the authors present a novel soft-pouch robot prototype driven by compressed air and capable of gentle tissue manipulation.

The Atrioventricular Conduction Axis in Man and Mouse.

Those using the mouse for the purposes of electrophysiological research presume that the morphology of the conduction axis is comparable with the human arrangement. As yet, however, to the best of our knowledge, no direct comparison has been made between the species. By comparing our extensive histological findings in the human heart with comparable serially-sectioned datasets prepared from adult murine hearts, we aimed to provide this information.

The association between salivary oxytocin, age, and puberty in children with and without OCD.

The oxytocin system has been thought to contribute to obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Few studies, only involving adults, have investigated this hypothesis and have found inconsistent results regarding oxytocin system activity and OCD. We investigated whether salivary oxytocin concentrations differed between children and adolescents with and without OCD and qualified our comparative analysis by investigating the possible covariates age, pubertal stage, and sex.

Model-averaged Bayesian t tests.

One of the most common statistical analyses in experimental psychology concerns the comparison of two means using the frequentist t test. However, frequentist t tests do not quantify evidence and require various assumption tests. Recently, popularized Bayesian t tests do quantify evidence, but these were developed for scenarios where the two populations are assumed to have the same variance.

Perineural invasion and laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma: a systematic review.

Objectives: Several studies have evaluated the prognostic significance of Perineural Invasion (IPN) in laryngeal cancer; however, the results are non-conclusive. Therefore, we conducted a meta-analysis aiming to identify the prognostic value of IPN in laryngeal cancer.

Methods: A literature review was performed, searching MedLine via PubMed, Scielo, Lilacs, Cochrane and Websco.

Telomere biology and its maintenance in schizophrenia spectrum disorders: Exploring links to cognition.

Objective: Contemporary research suggests reduced telomere length in schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SZ) compared to age-adjusted non-affected individuals. However, the role of telomere maintenance and telomere repair in SZ is poorly understood as well as the involvement of telomere biology in cognitive abnormalities in SZ.

Methods: The study consisted of 758 participants (SZ [n = 357] and healthy controls, HC [n = 401]) collected as part of the Norwegian TOP study.

Roadmap for integrating the AACN essentials with perioperative nursing.

Faculty members teaching in pre-licensure nursing programs are entrusted with revising nursing education to meet the American Association of Colleges of Nursing's The Essentials: Core Competencies for Professional Nursing Education. Colleges of nursing faculty experience difficulty establishing enough clinical sites as healthcare facilities continue to overcome staffing challenges since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Perioperative nursing is an underutilized area despite the potential for students to attain valuable nursing competencies and experiences in perioperative areas.

Use of a Monopolar Stimulator to Preserve the Frontotemporal Branches of the Facial Nerve During a Pterional Approach: 2-Dimensional Operative Video.

Preservation of the frontotemporal branches of the facial nerve is essential to obtain good cosmetic outcomes after anterolateral cranial base approaches.1,2 Since the description of the interfacial dissection, most nerve injuries are due to retraction of the nerve fibers and not direct transection.3-5 In this video, we showcase the use of a monopolar stimulator to guide the placement of hook retractors and assess no undue retraction is applied to the nerve fibers during a pterional craniotomy.

Calcified Meningiomas Demonstrate Equivocal Grade, Proliferation, and Immediate Surgical Outcomes.

Background/objective: Meningioma calcification is thought to predict reduced growth potential and aggression. However, historical studies have primarily focused on correlating calcification in small meningiomas (diameter less than 2.5 cm) rather than analyzing characteristics of calcified meningiomas across all sizes.

The interplay of oxytocin and sex hormones.

The neuropeptide oxytocin has historically been associated with reproduction and maternal behavior. However, more recent research has uncovered that oxytocin has a much wider range of roles in physiology and behavior. Despite the excitement surrounding potential therapeutical applications of intranasally administered oxytocin, the results of these intervention studies have been inconsistent.

Balanced bidirectional optogenetics reveals the causal impact of cortical temporal dynamics in sensory perception.

Whether the fast temporal dynamics of neural activity in brain circuits causally drive perception and cognition remains one of most longstanding unresolved questions in neuroscience . While some theories posit a 'timing code' in which dynamics on the millisecond timescale is central to brain function, others instead argue that mean firing rates over more extended periods (a 'rate code') carry most of the relevant information. Existing tools, such as optogenetics, can be used to alter temporal structure of neural dynamics , but they invariably change mean firing rates, leaving the interpretation of such experiments ambiguous.

The effects of oxytocin administration on social and routinized behaviors in autism: A preregistered systematic review and meta-analysis.

Oxytocin administration has demonstrated considerable promise for providing individualized support for autistic people. However, studies evaluating the effects of oxytocin administration on autistic characteristics have yielded inconsistent results. This systematic review and meta-analysis investigates the effect of oxytocin administration on social and routinized behaviors in autism using recently developed methods to accurately assess the potential impact of effect size dependency and publication bias.

An evolutionary timeline of the oxytocin signaling pathway.

Oxytocin is a neuropeptide associated with both psychological and somatic processes like parturition and social bonding. Although oxytocin homologs have been identified in many species, the evolutionary timeline of the entire oxytocin signaling gene pathway has yet to be described. Using protein sequence similarity searches, microsynteny, and phylostratigraphy, we assigned the genes supporting the oxytocin pathway to different phylostrata based on when we found they likely arose in evolution.

Pharmacodynamic of Recombinant Human Interferon Alpha-2b Nasal Drops and Effective Prophylaxis Against SARS-COV-2 Infection.

The recombinant human interferon alpha-2b (IFN-α2b) nasal drop formulation (Nasalferon) was studied as prophylaxis for SARS-CoV-2. Healthy volunteers between 19 and 80 years of age received 0.5 million international units of IFN in one drop (0.

Development and Validation of an Instrument to Measure Barriers to Surgical Conscience Action in Perioperative Nurses.

Surgical conscience is a concept well known to perioperative nurses, yet it is rarely studied. The purpose of this study was to develop and psychometrically validate an original instrument called the Surgical Conscience Scale with perioperative nurses. The Surgical Conscience Scale was designed after a review of the literature, the creation of a concept analysis, content validity, and pilot testing.

Assessing the Structural Validity of the Knee Injury and Osteoarthritis Outcome Score Scale.

Background: The Knee Injury and Osteoarthritis Outcome Score (KOOS) scale is used to assess patient perspectives on knee health. However, the structural validity of the KOOS has not been sufficiently tested; therefore, our objective was to assess the KOOS in a large, multi-site database of patient responses who were receiving care for knee pathology.

Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted using the Surgical Outcome System (SOS) database.

Redefining effect size interpretations for psychotherapy RCTs in depression.

Introduction: Effect sizes are often used to interpret the magnitude of a result and in power calculations when planning research studies. However, as effect size interpretations are context-dependent, Jacob Cohen's suggested guidelines for what represents a small, medium, and large effect are unlikely to be suitable for a diverse range of research populations and interventions. Our objective here is to determine empirically-derived effect size thresholds associated with psychotherapy randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in depression by calculating the effect size distribution.

[Neonatal hypoglycemia: glucose gel efficacy in the treatment of early hypoglycemia in newborns with risk factors. Randomized clinical trial].

Unlabelled: Hypoglycemia is the most frequent metabolic disorder in newborns; the administration of 40% glu cose gel in the oral mucosa could be as effective in its correction as the administration of formula milk, not interfering with breastfeeding.

Objective: To evaluate the efficacy of 40% glucose gel com pared with formula milk in the treatment of early asymptomatic hypoglycemia in newborns with risk factors.

Patients And Method: Randomized clinical trial, non-inferiority, conducted in a private hos pital.

Robust fault reconstruction using sliding mode observers with nonlinear nominal systems.

This paper is concerned with fault reconstruction based on sliding mode observers; its contribution is twofold: on the one hand, it develops a novel sliding mode observer whose nominal system is nonlinear, thus relaxing former limitations on the subject, namely, rank restrictions, linear outputs, and conservative bounds; on the other hand, based on the referred sliding mode observer, a novel robust fault reconstruction scheme is constructed which can solve a variety of problems that former methodologies cannot treat. Nonlinearities are cast as convex expressions, which enables obtaining design conditions in the form of linear matrix inequalities. Examples are provided to compare the proposal with former methodologies, thus highlighting the contributions.

Limitations and solutions of low cost virtual reality mirror therapy for post-stroke patients.

Mirror therapy is applied to reduce phantom pain and as a rehabilitation technique in post-stroke patients. Using Virtual Reality and head-mounted displays this therapy can be performed in virtual scenarios. However, for its efficient use in clinical settings, some hardware limitations need to be solved.