Use of the MNCD Classification to Monitor Clinical Stage and Response to Levodopa-Entacapone-Carbidopa Intestinal Gel Infusion in Advanced Parkinson's Disease.

Background And Objective: Staging Parkinson's disease (PD) with a novel simple classification called MNCD, based on four axes (Motor; Non-motor; Cognition; Dependency) and five stages, correlated with disease severity, patients' quality of life and caregivers' strain and burden. Our aim was to apply the MNCD classification in advanced PD patients treated with device-aided therapy (DAT).

Patients And Methods: A multicenter observational retrospective study of the first patients to start the levodopa-entacapone-carbidopa intestinal gel (LECIG) in Spain was performed (LECIPARK study).

Targeting CEA in metastatic triple negative breast cancer with image-guided radiation followed by Fab-mediated chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy.

Introduction: Although CAR-T cell therapy has limited efficacy against solid tumors, it has been hypothesized that prior treatment with Image-Guided Radiation Therapy (IGRT) would increase CAR-T cell tumor infiltration, leading to improved antigen specific expansion of CAR-T cells.

Methods: To test this hypothesis in a metastatic triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) model, we engineered two anti-CEA single-chain Fab (scFab) CAR-T cells with signaling domains from CD28zeta and 4-1BBzeta, and tested them and .

Results: The anti-CEA scFab CAR-T cells generated from three different human donors demonstrated robust expression, expansion, and lysis of only CEA-positive TNBC cells, with the CD28z-CAR-T cells showing the highest cytotoxicity.

Microbiome and Resistome Studies of the Lithuanian Baltic Sea Coast and the Curonian Lagoon Waters and Sediments.

Background: the widespread use of antibiotics in human and veterinary medicine has contributed to the global challenge of antimicrobial resistance, posing significant environmental and public health risks.

Objectives: this study aimed to examine the microbiome and resistome dynamics across a salinity gradient, analyzing water and sediment samples from the Baltic Sea coast and the Curonian Lagoon between 2017 and 2023.

Methods: the composition of the water and sediment bacterial community was determined by Full-Length Amplicon Metagenomics Sequencing, while ARG detection and quantification were performed using the SmartChipTM Real-Time PCR system.

A Novel Approach to Assessing the Jumping to Conclusions bias: Evidence of Validity from the Real-Life Paradigm.

The Jumping to Conclusions bias (JTC), characterized by hasty decision-making with insufficient information, is associated with delusion development. The beads task, a standard measure for JTC, assesses information-gathering behaviour but may yield inconsistent results due to comprehension difficulties and limited engagement. To address these shortcomings, we developed the Real-Life Paradigm -two novel tasks simulating social scenarios, tested alongside the beads task under three experimental conditions (baseline, time pressure and cost-benefit), along with measures of psychotic experiences, emotional states, and task appraisal.

Could an evaluative conditioning intervention ameliorate paranoid beliefs? Self-reported and neurophysiological evidence from a brief intervention focused on improving self-esteem.

Introduction: Much research on the treatment of paranoia has involved cognitive-behavioural interventions that address explicit social cognition processes. However, much of human cognition is preverbal or implicit, raising the possibility that such social judgements are implicated in paranoia. One type of implicit social cognition that has been investigated concerning paranoia is implicit self-esteem with some evidence that it may be possible to change implicit self-esteem using techniques based on conditioning theory.