Treatment outcomes of mild to moderate Clostridioides difficile infection in inflammatory bowel disease: an Australian experience.

Background: The incidence of Clostridioides difficile infection (CDI) in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is rising and associated with adverse outcomes. Optimal treatment for CDI in IBD remains unknown, with various organisations suggesting vancomycin as first-line therapy.

Aim: To compare treatment outcomes for metronidazole versus vancomycin in mild to moderate CDI in IBD.

Tummy Time Tracking: Examining Agreement Between Parent Recall and Direct Observation in Infants.

Importance: Parent recall is the primary method for measuring positioning practices such as tummy time in infants. Concerns regarding the accuracy of parent recall have been raised in the literature. To date, no study has examined the agreement of tummy time recall measures with gold-standard methods.

Competitive Immunoassay in a Microfluidic Biochip for In-Field Detection of Abscisic Acid in Grapes.

Viticulture and associated products are an important part of the economy in many countries. However, biotic and abiotic stresses impact negatively the production of grapes and wine. Climate change is in many aspects increasing both these stresses.

Scalable Processing of Cyclic Olefin Copolymer (COC) Microfluidic Biochips.

Microfluidics evolved with the appearance of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), an elastomer with a short processing time and the possibility for replication on a micrometric scale. Despite the many advantages of PDMS, there are well-known drawbacks, such as the hydrophobic surface, the absorption of small molecules, the low stiffness, relatively high cost, and the difficulty of scaling up the fabrication process for industrial production, creating a need for alternative materials. One option is the use of stiffer thermoplastics, such as the cyclic olefin copolymer (COC), which can be mass produced, have lower cost and possess excellent properties.

Effectiveness of Bundled Hyperpolypharmacy Deprescribing Compared With Usual Care Among Older Adults: A Randomized Clinical Trial.

Importance: Older patients using many prescription drugs (hyperpolypharmacy) may be at increased risk of adverse drug effects.

Objective: To test the effectiveness and safety of a quality intervention intended to reduce hyperpolypharmacy.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This randomized clinical trial allocated patients 76 years or older who used 10 or more prescription medications to a deprescribing intervention or to usual care (1:1 ratio) at an integrated health system with multiple preexisting deprescribing workflows.

Combined Use of Ionic Liquid-Based Aqueous Biphasic Systems and Microfluidic Devices for the Detection of Prostate-Specific Antigen.

Prostate cancer (PCa) is one of the cancer types that most affects males worldwide and is among the highest contributors to cancer mortality rates. Therefore, there is an urgent need to find strategies to improve the diagnosis of PCa. Microtechnologies have been gaining ground in biomedical devices, with microfluidics and lab-on-chip systems potentially revolutionizing medical diagnostics.

Development and pilot testing of an early childhood somatosensory assessment: Somatosensory test of reaching.

Thirty-two children (50% female, 59.3% White, 7-60 months), from middle to high socioeconomic status families, participated in pilot feasibility and validity testing of the somatosensory test of reaching (STOR). STOR tested the child's accuracy of reach to visual and somatosensory targets.

Towards personalized antibody cancer therapy: development of a microfluidic cell culture device for antibody selection.

Antibody therapy has been one of the most successful therapies for a wide range of diseases, including cancer. One way of expediting antibody therapy development is through phage display technology. Here, by screening thousands of randomly assembled peptide sequences, it is possible to identify potential therapeutic candidates.

Assessing sensory processing differences in children with idiopathic toe walking: A pilot study.

Idiopathic toe-walking (ITW) refers to persistent walking without heel contact for unknown reasons. An underexplored area is the relationship of sensory processing to ITW. This study presents methods to assess sensory differences in individuals with ITW and summarizes results from a pilot testing of the measures.

Quantitative Assessment of Prewriting Skills in Children: The Development and Validation of a Tablet Assessment Tool.

Our purpose in this study was to determine the feasibility of assessing children's prewriting with a new tablet tool, the Quantitative Assessment of Prewriting Skills (QAPS), while determining the validity of the QAPS for identifying visual motor skill differences. We recruited 10 children who were receiving occupational therapy (OT) services for visual motor deficits from a local OT clinic and 10 age-matched typically developing (TD) children from the local community. The QAPS assesses the accuracy of copying patterns on a tablet that records the child's finger position on the tablet, and the data are then analyzed for different dimensions of pattern copying.

Micropathological Chip Modeling the Neurovascular Unit Response to Inflammatory Bone Condition.

Organ-on-a-chip in vitro platforms accurately mimic complex microenvironments offering the ability to recapitulate and dissect mechanisms of physiological and pathological settings, revealing their major importance to develop new therapeutic targets. Bone diseases, such as osteoarthritis, are extremely complex, comprising of the action of inflammatory mediators leading to unbalanced bone homeostasis and de-regulation of sensory innervation and angiogenesis. Although there are models to mimic bone vascularization or innervation, in vitro platforms merging the complexity of bone, vasculature, innervation, and inflammation are missing.

A Systematic Approach for Developing 3D High-Quality PDMS Microfluidic Chips Based on Micromilling Technology.

In recent years, there has been an increased interest in exploring the potential of micro-and mesoscale milling technologies for developing cost-effective microfluidic systems with high design flexibility and a rapid microfabrication process that does not require a cleanroom. Nevertheless, the number of current studies aiming to fully understand and establish the benefits of this technique in developing high-quality microsystems with simple integrability is still limited. In the first part of this study, we define a systematic and adaptable strategy for developing high-quality poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA)-based micromilled structures.

Accurate and rapid microfluidic ELISA to monitor Infliximab titers in patients with inflammatory bowel diseases.

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a term used to describe disorders that involve chronic inflammation in the gastrointestinal tract, affecting more than 6.8 million people worldwide. Biological therapy is used in the most severe cases of IBD where anti-tumour necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α) antibodies are the first choice for a biological treatment.

Pre-miRNA-149 G-quadruplex as a molecular agent to capture nucleolin.

One of the most significant challenges in capturing and detecting biomarkers is the choice of an appropriate biomolecular receptor. Recently, RNA G-quadruplexes emerged as plausible receptors due to their ability to recognize with high-affinity proteins. Herein, we have unveiled and characterized the capability of the precursor microRNA 149 to form a G-quadruplex structure and determined the role that some ligands may have in its folding and binding capacity to nucleolin.

Microchromatography integrated with impedance sensor for bioprocess optimization: Experimental and numerical study of column efficiency for evaluation of scalability.

In the last decade, there has been a growing interest in developing microfluidic systems as new scale-down models for accelerated and cost-effective biopharmaceutical process development. Nonetheless, the research in this field is still in its infancy and requires further investigation to simplify and accelerate the microfabrication process. In addition, integration of different label-free sensors into the microcolumn systems has utmost importance to minimize result discrepancies during the scale-up process.

Monitoring Intracellular Calcium in Response to GPCR Activation: Comparison Between Microtiter Plates and Microfluidic Assays.

Microfluidic strategies combined with transduction and electronic integration have the promise of enabling miniaturized, combinatorial assays at higher speeds and lower costs, while at the same time mimicking the local chemical concentrations and force fields of the cellular in vivo environment. In this chapter we introduce a microfluidic structure with hydrodynamic cell traps and a culture volume in the nanoliter range (50 nL), to quantitatively evaluate the transient calcium response of the endogenous Muscarinic type 1 receptor (M1) in HEK 293 T cells. The microfluidic fabrication protocol is described as well as a methodology to monitor the cell response in real time, after stimulation with M1 agonists (e.

Aptamer-based approaches to detect nucleolin in prostate cancer.

We have investigated the expression of nucleolin (NCL) in liquid biopsies of prostate cancer (PCa) patients and healthy controls to determine its correlation with tumor prognosis. To detect NCL we used a modified AS1411 aptamer designated by AS1411-N5. In presence of NCL, AS1411-N5 increases the fluorescence by assuming a G-quadruplex (G4) structure, while in the absence of NCL the fluorescence signal remains quenched.

Microfluidic device for multiplexed detection of fungal infection biomarkers in grape cultivars.

Early diagnosis of fungal infections, which have seen an increase due to different environmental factors, is essential to an appropriate treatment of the plant by avoiding proliferation of the pathogen without excessive fungicide applications. In this work, we propose a microfluidic based approach to a multiplexed, point-of-need detection system capable of identifying infected grape cultivars. The system relies on the simultaneous detection of three plant hormones: salicylic, azelaic and jasmonic acids with a total assay time under 7 minutes, with LODs of 15 μM, 10 μM and 4.

Microfluidic bioreactors for enzymatic synthesis in packed-bed reactors-Multi-step reactions and upscaling.

Enzymatic synthesis of biochemical commodities is of upmost importance as it represents a greener alternative to traditional chemical synthesis and provides easier downstream processing strategies compared to fermentation-based processes. A microfluidic system used to optimize the enzymatic production of both levodopa (L-DOPA) and dopamine in both single-step and multistep-reaction sequences with yield of approximately 30 % for L-DOPA production and 70 % for dopamine production is presented. The system for L-DOPA production was then up-scaled (780-fold increase) to a milliliter scale system by maintaining similar mass transport properties resulting in the same yield, space-time yield and biocatalyst yield as its microscale counterpart.

Evidence for family-level variation of phenotypic traits in response to temperature of Brazilian Nyssorhynchus darlingi.

Background: Nyssorhynchus darlingi (also known as Anopheles darlingi) is the primary malaria vector in the Amazon River Basin. In Brazil, analysis of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) previously detected three major population clusters, and a common garden experiment in a laboratory setting revealed significant population variation in life history traits. Increasing temperatures and local level variation can affect life history traits, i.

Microfluidic platform for rapid screening of bacterial cell lysis.

Over the past decade significant progress has been found in the upstream production processes, shifting the main bottlenecks in current manufacturing platforms for biopharmaceuticals towards the downstream processing. Challenges in the purification process include reducing the production costs, developing robust and efficient purification processes as well as integrating both upstream and downstream processes. Microfluidic technologies have recently emerged as effective tools for expediting bioprocess design in a cost-effective manner, since a large number of variables can be evaluated in a small time frame, using reduced volumes and manpower.

Top-Down Fabricated Silicon Nanowire Arrays for Field-Effect Detection of Prostate-Specific Antigen.

Highly sensitive electrical detection of biomarkers for the early stage screening of cancer is desired for future, ultrafast diagnostic platforms. In the case of prostate cancer (PCa), the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) is of prime interest and its detection in combination with other PCa-relevant biomarkers in a multiplex approach is advised. Toward this goal, we demonstrate the label-free, potentiometric detection of PSA with silicon nanowire ion-sensitive field-effect transistor (Si NW-ISFET) arrays.

Microfluidic device for the point of need detection of a pathogen infection biomarker in grapes.

Bacterial, fungal and viral infections in plant systems are on the rise, most of which tend to spread quickly amongst crops. These pathogens are also gaining resistance to known treatments, which makes their early detection a priority to avoid extensive loss of crops and the spreading of disease to animal systems. In this work, we propose a microfluidic platform coupled with integrated thin-film silicon photosensors for the detection of pathogen infections in grapes.

Optimizing the Performance of Chromatographic Separations Using Microfluidics: Multiplexed and Quantitative Screening of Ligands and Target Molecules.

The optimization of chromatography ligands for the purification of biopharmaceuticals is highly demanded to meet the needs of the pharmaceutical industry. In the case of monoclonal antibodies (mAbs), synthetic ligands comprising multiple types of interactions (multimodal) provide process and economic advantages compared to protein-based affinity ligands. However, optimizing the operation window of these ligands requires the development of effective high-throughput screening platforms.