Protocol for isolating and purifying murine liver sinusoidal endothelial cells for in vitro culture and functional assays.

Liver sinusoidal endothelial cells (LSECs) line the liver sinusoids and play a crucial role in liver function. Isolating LSECs is beneficial for their functional evaluation in vitro. Here, we provide a protocol for obtaining purified LSECs from mice via gradient centrifugation and magnetic cell sorting (MACS), yielding cells suitable for culture and downstream analyses.

The Burden of Pain Symptoms in Individuals with Uterine Fibroids-Results from a Prospective Observational Study in the USA.

Purpose: To characterize the burden of uterine fibroids (UF) in individuals experiencing heavy menstrual bleeding (HMB) and moderate-to-severe UF-associated pain in terms of symptoms experienced, impact on work and activities, and pain medication use both on menstrual and non-menstrual days.

Patients And Methods: This prospective, real-world, observational study enrolled 350 participants in the USA with a self-reported UF diagnosis, HMB, and moderate-to-severe pain due to UF. Data collection took place from February 9 to July 19, 2021.

Anti-MDA5 positivity: describing the frequency and spectrum of clinically evident MDA5 disease.

To evaluate experience in a tertiary rheumatology service with melanoma differentiation-association-protein-5 (MDA5) disease and testing, patients with positive autoantibody results were reviewed for the presence of clinical disease. Anti-MDA5 positivity was detected in 2% of myositis-specific antibody tests. Of these, 29% did not have features consistent with anti-MDA5 disease.

Heart Transplantation and Left Ventricular Assist Devices: Long-Term Prognosis and Effects on Mental Health.

Heart transplantation and left ventricular assist devices (LVADs) have emerged as crucial interventions for end-stage heart failure, dramatically improving patient outcomes. This narrative review examines their historical context, indications, procedures, and outcomes, as well as their impact on long-term survival, quality of life, functional status, and mental health. While heart transplantation remains the optimal treatment, donor scarcity limits its application.

Receptive-field nonlinearities in primary auditory cortex: a comparative perspective.

Cortical processing of auditory information can be affected by interspecies differences as well as brain states. Here we compare multifeature spectro-temporal receptive fields (STRFs) and associated input/output functions or nonlinearities (NLs) of neurons in primary auditory cortex (AC) of four mammalian species. Single-unit recordings were performed in awake animals (female squirrel monkeys, female, and male mice) and anesthetized animals (female squirrel monkeys, rats, and cats).

CALMER Conflict: A Novel Curriculum for Graduating Medical Students to Manage and Defuse Patient-Provider Conflict.

Background: Workplace violence disproportionately affects healthcare workers and verbal aggression from patients frequently occurs. While verbal de-escalation is the first-line approach to defusing anger, there is a lack of consistent curricula or robust evaluation in undergraduate medical education.

Aim: To develop a medical school curriculum focused on de-escalation skills for adult patients and evaluate effectiveness with surveys and an objective structured clinical examination (OSCE).

A Verbal De-escalation Standardized Patient Workshop for Third- and Fourth-Year Medical Students.

Introduction: Verbal de-escalation is an essential skill for physicians across specialties and is the first-line intervention for patients who present with agitation. Training in verbal de-escalation for medical students is less robust compared to other health care disciplines. We describe the creation and evaluation of a novel verbal de-escalation curriculum for third- and fourth-year medical students on their psychiatry clerkship rotation.

Cutaneous mucormycosis infection owing to Rhizomucor variabilis presenting as recurrent lower limb ulceration and cellulitis in a diabetic patient.

Primary cutaneous mucormycosis is caused by environmental fungi and may complicate leg ulcers or traumatic wounds even in immunocompetent individuals. This case report highlights recurrent lower limb ulcers and cellulitis in a patient with type two diabetes mellitus, which was unresponsive to conventional antibiotic treatment. Histopathology revealed the diagnosis of cutaneous mucormycosis, and fungal cultures identified Rhizopus variabilis as the causative organism.

A Comparison and Safety Evaluation of Micellar versus Standard Vitamin D Oral Supplementation in a Randomized, Double-Blind Human Pilot Study.

The aim of this pilot study was to evaluate and compare bioavailability and safety of two Vitamin D formulations (softgels) in healthy adults, at single daily doses of 1000 and 2500 IU, over a 60-day period. A total of 69 participants were initially screened for eligibility in a double-blind randomized study with a four-arm parallel design; 35 participants were randomized to treatment groups: (1) standard Vitamin D 1000 IU (STD1000), (2) micellar Vitamin D 1000 IU (LMD1000), (3) standard Vitamin D 2500 IU (STD2500), and (4) micellar Vitamin D 2500 IU (LMD2500). Serum Vitamin D concentrations were determined through calcifediol [25(OH)D] at baseline (=before treatment), at day 5, 10, and 15 (=during treatment), at day 30 (=end of treatment), and at day 45 and 60 (=during follow-up/post treatment).

A single-center, assessor-blinded, randomized controlled clinical trial to test the safety and efficacy of a novel brain-computer interface controlled functional electrical stimulation (BCI-FES) intervention for gait rehabilitation in the chronic stroke population.

Background: In the United States, there are over seven million stroke survivors, with many facing gait impairments due to foot drop. This restricts their community ambulation and hinders functional independence, leading to several long-term health complications. Despite the best available physical therapy, gait function is incompletely recovered, and this occurs mainly during the acute phase post-stroke.

Vitamin A-treated natural killer cells reduce interferon-gamma production and support regulatory T-cell differentiation.

Natural killer (NK) cells are innate cytotoxic lymphocytes that contribute to immune responses against stressed, transformed, or infected cells. NK cell effector functions are regulated by microenvironmental factors, including cytokines, metabolites, and nutrients. Vitamin A is an essential micronutrient that plays an indispensable role in embryogenesis and development, but was also reported to regulate immune responses.

Hydrolytic degradation and biodegradation of polylactic acid electrospun fibers.

Increased use of bioplastics, such as polylactic acid (PLA), helps in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, decreases energy consumption and lowers pollution, but its degradation efficiency has much room for improvement. The degradation rate of electrospun PLA fibers of varying diameters ranging from 0.15 to 1.

The Role of Vitamins in Oral Potentially Malignant Disorders and Oral Cancer: A Systematic Review.

Background: Micronutrients are vital for general and oral health, and their potential anti-cancer properties are documented. We explore beneficial vitamins for oral potentially malignant disorders (OPMDs) and oral cancer (OC), assessing the therapeutic impacts of essential vitamin supplementation.

Methods: We systematically review evidence on vitamin supplementation's therapeutic effects for OPMDs and OC.

Growth hormone and testosterone delay vertebral fractures in boys with muscular dystrophy on chronic glucocorticoids.

Unlabelled: Glucocorticoid use in Duchenne and Becker muscular dystrophy prolongs ambulation but cause significant skeletal toxicity. Our analysis has immediate clinical implications, suggesting that growth hormone and testosterone have a stronger effect prior to first and subsequent vertebral fracture, respectively, relative to bisphosphonates alone in children with dystrophinopathies on chronic glucocorticoids.

Purpose: Glucocorticoids prolong ambulation in boys with Duchenne muscular dystrophy; however, they have significant endocrine side effects.

Liver sinusoidal endothelial cells orchestrate NK cell recruitment and activation in acute inflammatory liver injury.

Liver sinusoidal endothelial cells (LSECs) rapidly clear lipopolysaccharide (LPS) from the bloodstream and establish intimate contact with immune cells. However, their role in regulating liver inflammation remains poorly understood. We show that LSECs modify their chemokine expression profile driven by LPS or interferon-γ (IFN-γ), resulting in the production of the myeloid- or lymphoid-attracting chemokines CCL2 and CXCL10, respectively, which accumulate in the serum of LPS-challenged animals.

The Personalized Acne Treatment Tool - Recommendations to facilitate a patient-centered approach to acne management from the Personalizing Acne: Consensus of Experts.

Background: Acne, a commonly treated skin disease, requires patient-centered management due to its varying presentations, chronicity, and impact on health-related quality of life. Despite this, evidence-based clinical guidelines focus primarily on clinical severity of facial acne, omitting important patient- and disease-related factors, including ongoing management.

Objectives: To generate recommendations to support patient-centered acne management, which incorporate priority and prognostic factors beyond conventional clinical severity, traditionally defined by grading the appearance and extent of visible lesions.

Immature stages, new host plant records and shelter structures of Troyus phyllides (Röber, 1925) and Thoon ponka Evans, 1955 in the Peruvian Amazon (Lepidoptera: Hesperiidae: Hesperiinae: Hesperiini).

We describe here for the first time the complete immature life cycles and shelter structures of two Neotropical skipper butterflies in the subtribe Moncina, Troyus phyllides (Röber, 1925) and Thoon ponka Evans 1955, along with new natural host plant records for these species at Finca Las Piedras, Madre de Dios, Peru. Four eggs and a preantepenultimate larva of T. phyllides, as well as three eggs of Thoon ponka were collected in nature and each passed through five larval instars to adulthood.

ERNet: An Efficient and Reliable Human-Object Interaction Detection Network.

Human-Object Interaction (HOI) detection recognizes how persons interact with objects, which is advantageous in autonomous systems such as self-driving vehicles and collaborative robots. However, current HOI detectors are often plagued by model inefficiency and unreliability when making a prediction, which consequently limits its potential for real-world scenarios. In this paper, we address these challenges by proposing ERNet, an end-to-end trainable convolutional-transformer network for HOI detection.

Doing More with Moiré Pattern Detection in Digital Photos.

Detecting moiré patterns in digital photographs is meaningful as it provides priors towards image quality evaluation and demoiréing tasks. In this paper, we present a simple yet efficient framework to extract moiré edge maps from images with moiré patterns. The framework includes a strategy for training triplet (natural image, moiré layer, and their synthetic mixture) generation, and a Moiré Pattern Detection Neural Network (MoireDet) for moiré edge map estimation.

Targeted dual base editing with Campylobacter jejuni Cas9 by single AAV-mediated delivery.

Various CRISPR‒Cas9 orthologs are used in genome engineering. One of the smallest Cas9 orthologs is cjCas9 derived from Campylobacter jejuni, which is a highly specific genome editing tool. Here, we developed cjCas9-based base editors including a cytosine base editor (cjCBEmax) and an adenine base editor (cjABE8e) that can successfully induce endogenous base substitutions by up to 91.

Functional Analysis of Variants in BRCA1 Using CRISPR Base Editors.

To date, methods such as fluorescent reporter assays, embryonic stem cell viability assays, and therapeutic drug-based sensitivity assays have been used to evaluate the function of the variants of uncertain significance (VUS) of the BRCA genes. However, these methods have limitations as they are associated with overexpression and do not apply to post-transcriptional regulation. Therefore, there are several VUS whose functions are unclear.

Immature Stages and New Host Plant Records for Three Species in the "Taygetis Clade" of Euptychiina in Southeastern Peru (Lepidoptera: Nymphalidae: Satyrinae).

We report here the immature stages and natural host plants for three species in the so-called "Taygetis clade" of the nymphalid butterfly subtribe Euptychiina, Taygetis echo (Cramer, 1775), Taygetis sosis Hopffer, 1874, and Pseudodebis valentina (Cramer, 1779). The study was carried out at Finca Las Piedras in Madre de Dios department, Peru. Taygetis echo was observed utilizing a species of herbaceous bamboo, Olyra latifolia L.