Early Prediction of Hypertensive Disorders of Pregnancy Using Machine Learning and Medical Records from the First and Second Trimesters.

Hypertensive disorders of pregnancy (HDPs) remain a major challenge in maternal health. Early prediction of HDPs is crucial for timely intervention. Most existing predictive machine learning (ML) models rely on costly methods like blood, urine, genetic tests, and ultrasound, often extracting features from data gathered throughout pregnancy, delaying intervention.

Evaluating Countermeasures Against Marburg Virus Using a Mouse Model.

Animal models are key tools for understanding Marburg virus (MARV) pathogenesis and evaluating novel countermeasures. Rodents, in particular, are useful model systems because they are inexpensive and easy to house and handle in maximum containment laboratories. Unfortunately, wild-type MARV, like other filoviruses, does not cause disease in immune-competent rodents and must first be adapted to the rodent host, typically through serial passaging.

Societal Discrimination, Vigilance, and Patient-Provider Relationships Among Perinatal Women: A Mixed Methods Study.

Introduction: In the United States, maternal mortality is high and patterned by race and socioeconomic status (SES). Patient-provider relationships and societal discrimination have been separately associated with poor maternal outcomes, but it is not clear how such mechanisms may be interrelated. Thus, the present study investigates how societal experiences of discrimination are associated with and manifest in patient-provider relationship quality among perinatal women.

Treatment efficacy of cidofovir and brincidofovir against clade II Monkeypox virus isolates.

While historically confined to endemic areas, Monkeypox virus (MPXV) infection has increasingly garnered international attention due to sporadic outbreaks in non-endemic countries in the last two decades and its potential for human-to-human transmission. In 2022, a multi-country outbreak of mpox disease was declared by the World Health Organization (WHO) and nearly 100 000 mpox cases have been reported since the beginning of this pandemic. The clade II variant of the virus appears to be responsible for the vast majority of these infections.

Delayed treatment of cynomolgus macaques with a FVM04/CA45 monoclonal antibody cocktail provides complete protection against lethal Sudan virus infection.

Unlabelled: Sudan ebolavirus (SUDV) is a member of the genus (Family ) and has caused sporadic outbreaks of Ebola disease (EBOD), or more specifically Sudan virus disease (SVD), with high mortality rates in Africa. Current vaccines and therapies that have been developed for filoviruses are almost all specific for Ebola virus (EBOV; of the species ), and there is a current lack of therapeutics specific for SUDV. The recent SUDV outbreak in Uganda, which was distributed across multiple districts, including Kampala, a densely populated urban center, highlights the critical need for the development of novel SUDV-specific or pan-Ebola virus therapeutics.

Socioeconomic and Racial/Ethnic Inequalities in Infertility Prevalence, Help-Seeking, and Help Received Since 1995.

Background: In the United States, infertility and treatment for infertility are marked by racial/ethnic and socioeconomic inequalities. Simultaneously, biomedical advances and increased public health attention toward preventing and addressing infertility have grown. It is not known, however, whether the racial/ethnic and socioeconomic inequalities observed in infertility prevalence, help-seeking, or help received have changed over time.

Mucosal Vaccination with a Newcastle Disease Virus-Vectored Vaccine Reduces Viral Loads in SARS-CoV-2-Infected Cynomolgus Macaques.

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) emerged following an outbreak of unexplained viral illness in China in late 2019. Since then, it has spread globally causing a pandemic that has resulted in millions of deaths and has had enormous economic and social consequences. The emergence of SARS-CoV-2 saw the rapid and widespread development of a number of vaccine candidates worldwide, and this never-before-seen pace of vaccine development led to several candidates progressing immediately through clinical trials.

A position statement on the post gene-therapy rehabilitation of aromatic I-amino acid decarboxylase deficiency patients.

Aromatic L-amino acid decarboxylase (AADC) deficiency is a rare genetic disorder of monoamine neurotransmitter synthesis that presents with a range of symptoms, including motor dysfunction and limited attainment of developmental motor milestones. The approval of eladocagene exuparvovec, a gene therapy for AADC deficiency with demonstrated efficacy for motor improvements, now expands the range of motor outcomes possible for patients with this disorder. However, recommendations and guidelines for therapy following treatment with gene therapy are lacking.

Barriers to Postpartum Care: A Mixed Methods Study of Midwestern Postpartum Women.

Purpose: Postpartum care is an opportunity to provide essential follow-up care to people who have given birth, but inequalities in access by race and socioeconomic status (SES) are well-documented. The purpose of this study is to provide an in-depth description of the barriers to postpartum care using a mixed-methods design.

Methods: Mixed method analyses using convergent design with three stages including (1) bivariate logistic regression of survey data representative of postpartum women in Kalamazoo County, Michigan, (2) thematic qualitative analyses of focus group interviews of survey participants, and (3) bivariate logistic regression and logistic regression meditation analyses using themes operationalized with survey data measures.

Parental sociodemographics of medically assisted reproduction births in the United States: a dyadic population-level study.

Objective: To study how men's and couples' sociodemographic characteristics predict the probability of having a birth conceived using medically assisted reproduction (MAR) in the United States.

Design: Population-based study.

Setting: Not applicable.

Hydroxyapatite coatings on cement paste as barriers against radiological contamination.

A novel method for precipitating hydroxyapatite (HAp) onto cement paste is investigated for protecting concrete infrastructure from radiological contamination. Legacy nuclear sites contain large volumes of contaminated concrete and are expensive and dangerous to decommission. One solution is to 'design for decommissioning' by confining contaminants to a thin layer.

The rVSV-EBOV vaccine provides limited cross-protection against Sudan virus in guinea pigs.

Recombinant vesicular stomatitis viruses (rVSVs) engineered to express heterologous viral glycoproteins have proven to be remarkably effective vaccines. Indeed, rVSV-EBOV, which expresses the Ebola virus (EBOV) glycoprotein, recently received clinical approval in the United States and Europe for its ability to prevent EBOV disease. Analogous rVSV vaccines expressing glycoproteins of different human-pathogenic filoviruses have also demonstrated efficacy in pre-clinical evaluations, yet these vaccines have not progressed far beyond research laboratories.

The Inability of Marburg Virus to Cause Disease in Ferrets Is Not Solely Linked to the Virus Glycoprotein.

Ebola virus (EBOV) causes lethal disease in ferrets, whereas Marburg virus (MARV) does not. To investigate this difference, we first evaluated viral entry by infecting ferret spleen cells with vesicular stomatitis viruses pseudotyped with either MARV or EBOV glycoprotein (GP). Both viruses were capable of infecting ferret spleen cells, suggesting that lack of disease is not due to a block in MARV entry.

Can short-term data accurately model long-term environmental exposures? Investigating the multigenerational adaptation potential of Daphnia magna to environmental concentrations of organic ultraviolet filters.

Organic ultraviolet filters (UVFs) are contaminants of concern, ubiquitously found in many aquatic environments due to their use in personal care products to protect against ultraviolet radiation. Research regarding the toxicity of UVFs such as avobenzone, octocrylene and oxybenzone indicate that these chemicals may pose a threat to invertebrate species; however, minimal long-term studies have been conducted to determine how these UVFs may affect continuously exposed populations. The present study modeled the effects of a 5-generation exposure of Daphnia magna to these UVFs at environmental concentrations.

An Outbred Guinea Pig Disease Model for Lassa Fever Using a Host-Adapted Clade III Nigerian Lassa Virus.

Nigeria experiences annual outbreaks of Lassa fever (LF) with high case numbers. At least three clades of Lassa virus (LASV) have been documented in Nigeria, though recent outbreaks are most often associated with clade II or clade III viruses. Using a recently isolated clade III LASV from a case of LF in Nigeria in 2018, we developed and characterized a guinea pig adapted virus capable of causing lethal disease in commercially available Hartley guinea pigs.

Fever integrates antimicrobial defences, inflammation control, and tissue repair in a cold-blooded vertebrate.

Multiple lines of evidence support the value of moderate fever to host survival, but the mechanisms involved remain unclear. This is difficult to establish in warm-blooded animal models, given the strict programmes controlling core body temperature and the physiological stress that results from their disruption. Thus, we took advantage of a cold-blooded teleost fish that offered natural kinetics for the induction and regulation of fever and a broad range of tolerated temperatures.

Experimental Infection of North American Deer Mice with Clade I and II Monkeypox Virus Isolates.

The global spread of monkeypox virus has raised concerns over the establishment of novel enzootic reservoirs in expanded geographic regions. We demonstrate that although deer mice are permissive to experimental infection with clade I and II monkeypox viruses, the infection is short-lived and has limited capability for active transmission.

Cell-Free Dot Blot: an Ultra-Low-Cost and Practical Immunoassay Platform for Detection of Anti-SARS-CoV-2 Antibodies in Human and Animal Sera.

Since its emergence in late 2019, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has caused severe disruption to key aspects of human life globally and highlighted the need for timely, adaptive, and accessible pandemic response strategies. Here, we introduce the cell-free dot blot (CFDB) method, a practical and ultra-low-cost immune diagnostic platform capable of rapid response and mass immunity screening for the current and future pandemics. Similar in mechanism to the widely used enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISAs), our method is novel and advantageous in that (i) it uses linear DNA to produce the target viral antigen fused to a SpyTag peptide in a cell-free expression system without the need for traditional cloning and antigen purification, (ii) it uses SpyCatcher2-Apex2, an Escherichia coli-produced peroxidase conjugate as a universal secondary detection reagent, obviating the need for commercial or sophisticated enzyme conjugates, and (iii) sera are spotted directly on a nitrocellulose membrane, enabling a simple "dipping" mechanism for downstream incubation and washing steps, as opposed to individual processing of wells in a multiwell plate.

Generation and Characterization of a SARS-CoV-2-Susceptible Mouse Model Using Adeno-Associated Virus (AAV6.2FF)-Mediated Respiratory Delivery of the Human ACE2 Gene.

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is the aetiological agent of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) that has caused a pandemic with millions of human infections. There continues to be a pressing need to develop potential therapies and vaccines to inhibit SARS-CoV-2 infection to mitigate the ongoing pandemic. Epidemiological data from the current pandemic indicates that there may be sex-dependent differences in disease outcomes.

'I just think it's weird': the nature of ethical and substantive non-ethical concerns about infertility treatments among Black and White women in U.S. graduate programmes.

In the United States, Black women's use of infertility treatments is relatively low, despite elevated or similar rates of infertility compared with White women. Ethical concerns about infertility treatments have been identified as a potential sociocultural factor contributing to these treatment-seeking disparities. Despite documented differences, the substance of these ethical concerns is unclear.

Geographic distribution of assisted reproductive technology clinics in the USA: a multilevel sociodemographic analysis.

Purpose: To investigate whether sociodemographic characteristics of US Census tracts and counties and state-level infertility insurance policy are associated with the presence of assisted reproductive technology (ART) clinics.

Methods: Multilevel logistic regression analyses using publicly available reports of ART clinic locations (2014-2018) matched with sociodemographic data from the US Census Bureau and state infertility insurance policy information.

Results: At the tract-level, multivariate multilevel logistic regression found significant associations with the likelihood of an ART clinic in a tract and the size of the tract population (adjusted odds ratio (aOR): 1.

AAV-monoclonal antibody expression protects mice from Ebola virus without impeding the endogenous antibody response to heterologous challenge.

Filoviruses cause severe hemorrhagic fever with case fatality rates as high as 90%. Filovirus-specific monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) confer protection in nonhuman primates as late as 5 days after challenge, and FDA-approved mAbs REGN-EB3 and mAb114 have demonstrated efficacy against Ebola virus (EBOV) infection in humans. Vectorized antibody expression mediated by adeno-associated virus (AAV) can generate protective and sustained concentrations of therapeutic mAbs in animal models for a variety of infectious diseases, including EBOV.

Safety and effectiveness of regional anesthesia compared with anesthetic techniques not using regional anesthesia on outcomes after free tissue flap surgery: a systematic review protocol.

Objective: This systematic review will aim to evaluate the evidence on the effectiveness of regional anesthesia, when compared with general anesthesia alone, on the outcomes of free flap surgeries.

Introduction: Free flap procedures involve complete separation of a flap of tissue from its native vascular bed, followed by reimplantation to a recipient site on the body. Optimal perfusion and successful neovascularization are crucial to survival of the grafted flap.

Adeno-associated virus mediated expression of monoclonal antibody MR191 protects mice against Marburg virus and provides long-term expression in sheep.

Vectored monoclonal antibody (mAb) expression mediated by adeno-associated virus (AAV) gene delivery leads to sustained therapeutic mAb expression and protection against a wide range of infectious diseases in both small and large animal models, including nonhuman primates. Using our rationally engineered AAV6 triple mutant capsid, termed AAV6.2FF, we demonstrate rapid and robust expression of two potent human antibodies against Marburg virus, MR78 and MR191, following intramuscular (IM) administration.