Aim This study aims to determine if routine use of intraoperative Doppler ultrasonography is preventative of life-threatening vascular complications (VCs) after orthotopic liver transplantation. Methods This single-center, retrospective study reviewed all adult orthotopic liver transplants at Saint Louis University Hospital from 2015 to 2020 (N = 188). The sample population consists of men and women in the age range of 18 to 75.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) is a chronic inflammatory disorder with no cure. Most children are prescribed several medications aimed at controlling disease activity, managing symptoms, and reducing pain. Physical activity is also encouraged to retain musculoskeletal function.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose Of Review: This critical review begins by presenting the history of Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis (JIA) management. To move the conversation forward in addressing the current shortcomings that exist in the clinical management of children living with JIA, we argue that to date, the advancement of successful treatments for JIA has been historically slow. Factors implicated in this situation include a lack of rigorous research, JIA being considered a rare disease, and JIA's idiopathic and complex pathophysiology.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJuvenile idiopathic arthritis can be influenced by pain, medication adherence, and physical activity. A new digital health intervention, InteractiveClinics, aims to monitor these modifiable risk factors. Twelve children, aged 10 to 18 years, received daily notifications on a smartwatch to record their pain levels and take their medications, using a customised mobile app synchronised to a secure web-based platform.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Type 2 diabetes has a growing prevalence and confers significant cost burden to the health care system, raising the urgent need for cost-effective and easily accessible solutions. The management of type 2 diabetes requires significant commitment from the patient, caregivers, and the treating team to optimize clinical outcomes and prevent complications. Technology and its implications for the management of type 2 diabetes is a nascent area of research.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe advancement of digital health provides strategic and cost-effective opportunities for the progression of health care in children and adolescents. It is important for clinicians to be aware of the potential of emerging pain outcome measures and employ evidence-based tools capable of reliably tracking acute and chronic pain over time. The main emerging pain outcome measures for children and adolescents were examined.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnderstanding the relationship between amino acid sequence and protein function is a long-standing challenge with far-reaching scientific and translational implications. State-of-the-art alignment-based techniques cannot predict function for one-third of microbial protein sequences, hampering our ability to exploit data from diverse organisms. Here, we train deep learning models to accurately predict functional annotations for unaligned amino acid sequences across rigorous benchmark assessments built from the 17,929 families of the protein families database Pfam.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) management aims to promote remission through timely, individualized, well-coordinated interdisciplinary care using a range of pharmacological, physical, psychological, and educational interventions. However, achieving this goal is workforce-intensive. Harnessing the burgeoning eHealth and mobile health (mHealth) interventions could be a resource-efficient way of supplementing JIA management.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMost reproductive-aged women are exposed to fluctuating female steroid hormones due to the menstrual cycle or oral contraceptive use. This study investigated the potential effect of the menstrual cycle and combined monophasic oral contraceptive cycle on various aspects of muscle performance. Thirty active females (12 with a natural menstrual cycle, 10 taking a high-androgenicity oral contraceptive and 8 taking a low-androgenicity oral contraceptive), aged 18 to 30 years, were tested three times throughout one menstrual or oral contraceptive cycle.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: This study aimed to investigate the effect of fluctuating female hormones during the menstrual cycle (MC) and oral contraceptive (OC) cycle on different measures of body composition.
Methods: Twenty-two women with a natural MC and thirty women currently taking combined monophasic OC were assessed over three phases of the menstrual or oral contraceptive cycle. Body weight, skinfolds, bioelectric impedance analysis (BIA), ultrasound, dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA), and peripheral quantitative computed tomography (pQCT) measurements were performed to assess body composition.
Genome-wide association studies (GWASs) require accurate cohort phenotyping, but expert labeling can be costly, time intensive, and variable. Here, we develop a machine learning (ML) model to predict glaucomatous optic nerve head features from color fundus photographs. We used the model to predict vertical cup-to-disc ratio (VCDR), a diagnostic parameter and cardinal endophenotype for glaucoma, in 65,680 Europeans in the UK Biobank (UKB).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Considering the changing landscape of internet use and rising ownership of digital technology by young people, new methods could be considered to improve the current model of juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) management.
Objective: This systematic review aims to evaluate the usability of eHealth and mobile health (mHealth) interventions currently available for young people living with JIA.
Methods: The PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) guidelines were used to oversee this review.
Background: Accurate quantification of pain in a clinical setting is vital. The use of an electronic pain scale enables data to be collected, analyzed, and utilized much faster compared with traditional paper-based scales. The advancement of smart technology in pediatric and adult pain evaluation may offer opportunities to introduce easy-to-use and reliable pain assessment methods within different clinical settings.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Resistance training is well known to increase strength and lean body mass, and plays a key role in many female athletic and recreational training programs. Most females train throughout their reproductive years when they are exposed to continuously changing female steroid hormone profiles due to the menstrual cycle or contraceptive use. Therefore, it is important to focus on how female hormones may affect resistance training responses.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWhen confronted with a substance of unknown identity, researchers often perform mass spectrometry on the sample and compare the observed spectrum to a library of previously collected spectra to identify the molecule. While popular, this approach will fail to identify molecules that are not in the existing library. In response, we propose to improve the library's coverage by augmenting it with synthetic spectra that are predicted from candidate molecules using machine learning.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMaternal undernutrition during pregnancy is prevalent across the globe, and the origins of many chronic diseases can be traced back to in utero conditions. This systematic review considers the current evidence in animal models regarding the relationship between maternal global nutrient restriction during pregnancy and offspring kidney structure and function. CINAHL, Cochrane, EMBASE, MEDLINE, and Scopus were searched to November 2017.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFScott, BR, Slattery, KM, Sculley, DV, and Dascombe, BJ. Hypoxia during resistance exercise does not affect physical performance, perceptual responses, or neuromuscular recovery. J Strength Cond Res 32(8): 2174-2182, 2018-This study aimed to determine whether performing resistance exercise in hypoxia affects markers of physical performance, perceptual responses, and neuromuscular function.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis study assessed whether hypoxia during high-load resistance exercise could enhance the acute physiological responses related to muscular development. Twelve trained men performed exercise in three conditions: normoxia (fraction of inspired oxygen [F O ] = 21%), moderate-level hypoxia (F O = 16%) and high-level hypoxia (F O = 13%). Exercise comprised high-load squats and deadlifts (5 × 5 using 80% of 1-repetition maximum with 180-s rest).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe global epidemic of diabetes, with increasing prevalence of type 2 diabetes (T2D), is placing a huge burden on health care management and financial systems. Unless new strategic solutions are developed, the increasing prevalence of T2D will result in a significant rise in morbidity, health care costs, and complications associated with diabetes. The introduction of smart devices in diabetes management may provide meaningful improvements in clinical outcomes, patient engagement, as well as potential cost reductions for the health care system.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPediatr Rheumatol Online J
May 2017
Background: Children and adolescents with Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis (JIA) typically have reduced physical activity level and impaired aerobic and anaerobic exercise capacity when compared to their non-JIA counterparts. Low intensity exercise regimens appear to be safe in children with JIA and may results in improvements in overall physical function. Poor adherence to paediatric rheumatology treatment may lead to negative clinical outcomes and possibly increased disease activity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFScott, BR, Slattery, KM, Sculley, DV, Lockhart, C, and Dascombe, BJ. Acute physiological responses to moderate-load resistance exercise in hypoxia. J Strength Cond Res 31(7): 1973-1981, 2017-This study assessed whether hypoxia augments anabolic responses to moderate-load resistance exercise.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFStevens, CJ, Bennett, KJM, Sculley, DV, Callister, R, Taylor, L, and Dascombe, BJ. A comparison of mixed-method cooling interventions on preloaded running performance in the heat. J Strength Cond Res 31(3): 620-629, 2017-The purpose of this investigation was to assess the effect of combining practical methods to cool the body on endurance running performance and physiology in the heat.
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