Phenotypic plasticity enables organisms to express a phenotype that is optimal in their current environment. The ability of organisms to obtain the optimum phenotype is determined by their (i) capacity for plasticity, which facilitates phenotypic adjustment corresponding to the amplitude of environmental change but also their (ii) rate of plasticity, because this determines if the expressed phenotype lags behind changes in the optimum. How the rate of- and capacity for plasticity have co-evolved will thus be critical for the resilience of organisms under different patterns of environmental change.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: A rapid expansion of systemic immunological treatment options for atopic dermatitis (AD) has created a need for clinically relevant and understandable comparative efficacy and safety information for patients and clinicians. Given the scarcity of head-to-head trials, network meta-analysis (NMA) is an alternative way to enable robust comparisons among treatment options; however, NMA results are often complex and difficult to directly implement in shared decision-making.
Objective: The aim of this study is to develop a website that effectively presents the results of a living systematic review and NMA on AD treatments to patient and clinician users.
An individual's fitness cost associated with environmental change likely depends on the rate of adaptive phenotypic plasticity, and yet our understanding of plasticity rates in an ecological and evolutionary context remains limited. We provide the first quantitative synthesis of existing plasticity rate data, focusing on acclimation of temperature tolerance in ectothermic animals, where we demonstrate applicability of a recently proposed analytical approach. The analyses reveal considerable variation in plasticity rates of this trait among species, with half-times (how long it takes for the initial deviation from the acclimated phenotype to be reduced by 50% when individuals are shifted to a new environment) ranging from 3.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInvasive predatory species are frequently observed to cause evolutionary responses in prey phenotypes, which in turn may lead to evolutionary shifts in the population dynamics of prey. Research has provided a link between rates of predation and the evolution of prey population growth in the lab, but studies from natural populations are rare. Here, we tested for evolutionary changes in population dynamics parameters of zooplankton following invasion by the predator into Lake Kegonsa, Wisconsin, US.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Limited data are available on the effects of systemic immunomodulatory treatments on COVID-19 outcomes in patients with atopic dermatitis (AD).
Objective: To investigate COVID-19 outcomes in patients with AD treated with or without systemic immunomodulatory treatments, using a global registry platform.
Methods: Clinicians were encouraged to report cases of COVID-19 in their patients with AD in the Surveillance Epidemiology of Coronavirus Under Research Exclusion for Atopic Dermatitis (SECURE-AD) registry.
Metabolic rate is a trait that may evolve in response to the direct and indirect effects of predator-induced mortality. Predators may indirectly alter selection by lowering prey densities and increasing resource availability or by intensifying resource limitation through changes in prey behavior (e.g.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWith rapid and less predictable environmental change emerging as the 'new norm', understanding how individuals tolerate environmental stress via plastic, often reversible changes to the phenotype (i.e., reversible phenotypic plasticity, RPP), remains a key issue in ecology.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFImportance: Systemic treatments for atopic dermatitis are being evaluated primarily in placebo-controlled trials; network meta-analysis can provide relative efficacy and safety estimates for treatments that have not been compared head to head.
Objective: To compare reported measures of efficacy and assessments of safety in clinical trials of systemic treatments for atopic dermatitis in a living systematic review and network meta-analysis.
Data Sources: The Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, MEDLINE, Embase, Latin American and Caribbean Health Science Information database, Global Resource of EczemA Trials database, and trial registries were searched through June 15, 2021.
High-quality dermatology patient registries often require considerable time to develop and produce meaningful data. Development time is influenced by registry complexity and regulatory hurdles that vary significantly nationally and institutionally. The rapid emergence of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) global pandemic has challenged health services in an unprecedented manner.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFComput Methods Programs Biomed
April 2021
Background And Objective: Coronary artery disease (CAD) and heart failure are the most common cardiovascular diseases. Non-invasive diagnostic testing for CAD requires radiation, heart rate acceleration, and imaging infrastructure. Early detection of left ventricular dysfunction is critical in heart failure management, the best measure of which is an elevated left ventricular end-diastolic pressure (LVEDP) that can only be measured using invasive cardiac catheterization.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose Of Review: Refinement in machine learning (ML) techniques and approaches has rapidly expanded artificial intelligence applications for the diagnosis and classification of heart failure (HF). This review is designed to provide the clinician with the basics of ML, as well as this technologies future utility in HF diagnosis and the potential impact on patient outcomes.
Recent Findings: Recent studies applying ML methods to unique data sets available from electrocardiography, vectorcardiography, echocardiography, and electronic health records show significant promise for improving diagnosis, enhancing detection, and advancing treatment of HF.
Widespread declines in the body size of aquatic ectotherms have been attributed to the poorer ability of older, larger individuals to tolerate high temperature. Here, using the thermal death time curve framework, we investigate the relationship between temperature tolerance and size/age by measuring the change in heat tolerance of the keystone zooplankton species across a range of temperature intensities (and hence exposures of varying duration) among individuals that differed up to 3-fold in size and thus varied in age also. Across the gradient of exposure temperatures, younger, smaller individuals were more tolerant than older, larger individuals.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFImportance: Most clinical trials assessing systemic immunomodulatory treatments for patients with atopic dermatitis are placebo-controlled.
Objective: To compare the effectiveness and safety of systemic immunomodulatory treatments for patients with atopic dermatitis in a systematic review and network meta-analysis.
Data Sources: The Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, MEDLINE, Embase, Latin American and Caribbean Health Science Information database, Global Resource of Eczema Trials database, and clinical trial registries were searched from inception to October 28, 2019.
When a change in the environment occurs, organisms can maintain an optimal phenotypic state via plastic, reversible changes to their phenotypes. These adjustments, when occurring within a generation, are described as the process of acclimation. While acclimation has been studied for more than half a century, global environmental change has stimulated renewed interest in quantifying variation in the rate and capacity with which this process occurs, particularly among ectothermic organisms.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLife-history theory predicts that investment per offspring should correlate negatively with the quality of the environment that offspring are anticipated to encounter; parents may use their own experience as juveniles to predict this environment and may modulate offspring traits, such as growth capacity and initial size. We manipulated nutrient levels in the juvenile habitat of wild Atlantic salmon () to investigate the hypothesis that the egg size that maximizes juvenile growth and survival depends on environmental quality. We also tested whether offspring traits were related to parental growth trajectory.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUsing data from wild Atlantic salmon Salmo salar returning to spawn in seven Scottish rivers, we developed a model of fecundity based on individual body size and key developmental traits. We used a novel approach to model selection which maximises predictive accuracy for application to target river stocks to select the best from a suite of Bayesian hierarchical models. This approach aims to ensure the optimal model within the candidate set includes covariates that best predict out-of-sample data to estimate fecundity in areas where no direct observations are available.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe capacity of organisms to acclimate will influence their ability to cope with ongoing global changes in thermal regimes. Here we highlight methodological issues associated with recent attempts to quantify variation in acclimation capacity among taxa and environments, and describe how these may introduce bias to conclusions. We then propose a measure of thermal acclimation capacity that more directly quantifies the process of acclimation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF