Publications by authors named "Scherag A"

Background: The integration of real-world evidence (RWE) from real-world data (RWD) in clinical research is crucial for bridging the gap between clinical trial results and real-world outcomes. Analyzing routinely collected data to generate clinical evidence faces methodological concerns like confounding and bias, similar to prospectively documented observational studies. This study focuses on additional limitations frequently reported in the literature, providing an overview of the challenges and biases inherent to analyzing routine clinical care data, including health claims data (hereafter: routine data).

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Healthcare integrated biobanking describes the annotation and collection of residual samples from hospitalized patients for research purposes. The central idea of the current work is to establish an automated workflow for sample annotation, selection and storage for diabetes mellitus. This is challenging due to incomplete data at the time of sample selection.

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Objective: After infection with SARS-CoV-2, a substantial proportion of patients develop long-lasting sequelae. These sequelae include fatigue (potentially as severe as that seen in ME/CFS cases), cognitive dysfunction, and psychiatric symptoms. Because the pathophysiology of these sequelae remains unclear, existing therapeutic concepts address the symptoms through pacing strategies, cognitive training, and psychological therapy.

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Background: Surviving sepsis can lead to chronic physical, psychological and cognitive impairments, which affect millions of patients worldwide, including survivors after COVID-19 viral sepsis. We aimed to characterize the magnitude and trajectory of functional dependence and new impairments post-sepsis.

Methods: We conducted a prospective cohort study including sepsis survivors who had been discharged from five German intensive care units (ICUs), until 36 months post-discharge.

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Article Synopsis
  • Some young people with extreme obesity (very high body weight) face more physical pain and mental health issues than those with less obesity.
  • In a study of 431 youths, those with extreme obesity reported more pain, depression, and lower quality of life.
  • Girls with extreme obesity experienced more pain and depression than boys, showing that it's important to focus on both pain relief and mental health support for these young people.
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  • * This study aimed to validate the role of 11 specific SNPs across 6 immune-related genes in the susceptibility to infections using two independent cohorts of AML patients undergoing chemotherapy.
  • * Findings revealed that certain SNPs, particularly in the DC-SIGN gene, were significantly associated with sepsis across both cohorts, while other genes like PTX3 and Dectin-1 showed links to invasive fungal disease in individual cohorts, highlighting the importance of genetic factors in managing infections in AML patients. *
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Healthcare-associated infections (HCAIs) represent an enormous burden for patients, healthcare workers, relatives and society worldwide, including Germany. The central tasks of infection prevention are recording and evaluating infections with the aim of identifying prevention potential and risk factors, taking appropriate measures and finally evaluating them. From an infection prevention perspective, it would be of great value if (i) the recording of infection cases was automated and (ii) if it were possible to identify particularly vulnerable patients and patient groups in advance, who would benefit from specific and/or additional interventions.

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Medication analyses by ward pharmacists are an important measure of drug therapy safety (DTS). Medication-related problems (MRPs) are identified and resolved with the attending clinicians. However, staff resources for extended medication analyses and complete documentation are often limited.

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  • Sepsis leads to long-term cognitive impairments in survivors, particularly affecting visual attention and working memory.
  • Psychophysical tests revealed that these survivors have a reduced working memory capacity compared to healthy controls, impacting their performance on neuropsychological assessments.
  • The findings suggest that working memory reductions are significant contributors to cognitive deficits in sepsis survivors and warrant further research to explore underlying mechanisms and potential interventions.
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Background: Quarantine is one of the most effective interventions to contain an infectious disease outbreak, yet it is one of the most disruptive. We investigated the quarantine of an entire village to better understand risk communication requirements for groups.

Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional, mixed-methods survey study on a single cohort of adult residents in Neustadt am Rennsteig, Germany, six weeks after the removal of a 14-day mandatory community quarantine.

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Article Synopsis
  • * A randomized controlled trial will involve 100 healthy participants aged 60-75, assessing their cognitive function, brain structure, physical fitness, and gut microbiome before and after an eight-week physical activity training program compared to a relaxation group.
  • * The main goal is to determine how physical activity affects visual processing speed, measured before and after the intervention, while additional exploratory analyses will investigate changes in other cognitive and gut-related outcomes.
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Background: Sepsis survivors often suffer from new morbidities. Current rehabilitation therapies are not tailored to their specific needs. The perspective of sepsis survivors and their caregivers on rehabilitation and aftercare is insufficiently understood.

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Background: Artificial intelligence (AI) is influencing our society on many levels and has broad implications for the future practice of hematology and oncology. However, for many medical professionals and researchers, it often remains unclear what AI can and cannot do, and what are promising areas for a sensible application of AI in hematology and oncology. Finally, the limits and perils of using AI in oncology are not obvious to many healthcare professionals.

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Purpose: The Co-HCW study is a prospective, longitudinal, single-center observational study that aims to assess the SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence and infection status in staff members of Jena University Hospital (JUH) in Jena, Germany.

Methods: This follow-up study covers the observation period from 19th May 2020 to 22nd June 2021. At each of the three voluntary study visits, participants filled out a questionnaire regarding their SARS-CoV-2 exposure and provided serum samples to detect specific SARS-CoV-2 antibodies.

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Unlabelled: Understanding persistent cellular and humoral immune responses to SARS-CoV-2 will be of major importance to terminate the ongoing pandemic. Here, we assessed long-term immunity in individuals with mild COVID-19 up to 1 year after a localized SARS-CoV-2 outbreak. CoNAN was a longitudinal population-based cohort study performed 1.

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Article Synopsis
  • * Researchers analyzed data from 35,552 patients hospitalized for severe sepsis or septic shock in 2014, focusing on 90-day mortality and a composite long-term outcome of 1-year mortality or increased dependence on chronic care.
  • * Results indicated that over half of the patients died within 90 days, and many survivors faced significant long-term health challenges, while the study's risk models successfully identified predictive factors and minimized variability in outcomes among hospitals.
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Importance: Staphylococcus aureus bacteremia (SAB) is a common and potentially severe infectious disease (ID). Retrospective studies and derived meta-analyses suggest that bedside infectious disease consultation (IDC) for SAB is associated with improved survival; however, such IDCs might not always be possible because of the lack of ID specialists, particularly at nonacademic hospitals.

Objectives: To investigate whether unsolicited telephone IDCs (triggered by an automated blood stream infection reporting system) to nonacademic hospitals improved 30-day all-cause mortality in patients with SAB.

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Introduction: Severe COVID-19 constitutes a form of viral sepsis. Part of the specific pathophysiological pattern of this condition is the occurrence of cardiovascular events. These include pulmonary embolism, arrhythmias and cardiomyopathy as manifestations of extra-pulmonary organ dysfunction.

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Objective: Isolated tricuspid valve surgery is perceived as high-risk. This perception is nurtured by patients who often present with substantial liver dysfunction, which is inappropriately reflected in current surgical risk scores (eg, the Society of Thoracic Surgeons [STS] score has no specific tricuspid model). The Model for End-Stage Liver Disease (MELD) has was developed as a measure for the severity of liver dysfunction.

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Objectives: To investigate the efficacy, safety and applicability of internet-based, therapist-led partner-assisted cognitive-behavioural writing therapy (iCBT) for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms after intensive care for sepsis in patients and their spouses compared with a waitlist (WL) control group.

Design: Randomised-controlled, parallel group, open-label, superiority trial with concealed allocation.

Setting: Internet-based intervention in Germany; location-independent via web-portal.

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Background: Cardiac surgery often represents the only treatment option in patients with infective endocarditis (IE). However, IE surgery may lead to a sudden release of inflammatory mediators, which is associated with postoperative organ dysfunction. We investigated the effect of hemoadsorption during IE surgery on postoperative organ dysfunction.

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Background: Sequelae of COVID-19 can be severe and longlasting. We compared frequencies of fatigue, depression and cognitive dysfunction in survivors of SARS-CoV-2-infection and sepsis.

Methods: We performed a prospective cohort study of 355 symptomatic post-COVID patients who visited our out-patient clinic for post-COVID-19 care.

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In clinical diagnostics and research, blood samples are one of the most frequently used materials. Nevertheless, exploring the chemical composition of human plasma and serum is challenging due to the highly dynamic influence of pre-analytical variation. A prominent example is the variability in pre-centrifugation delay (time-to-centrifugation; TTC).

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Introduction: The acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) is a highly relevant entity in critical care with mortality rates of 40%. Despite extensive scientific efforts, outcome-relevant therapeutic measures are still insufficiently practised at the bedside. Thus, there is a clear need to adhere to early diagnosis and sufficient therapy in ARDS, assuring lower mortality and multiple organ failure.

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