An Effective and Safe Novel Treatment of Opioid Use Disorder: Unilateral Transcranial Photobiomodulation.

The opioid epidemic is a global tragedy even with current treatments, and a novel, safe, and effective treatment would be welcomed. We report here our findings from our second randomized controlled trial to evaluate unilateral transcranial photobiomodulation as a treatment for opioid use disorder. We enrolled 39 participants with active opioid cravings at 2 sites, 19 received the active treatment which consisted of a 4-min twice weekly (every 3 or 4 days) application of a light-emitting diode at 810 nm with an irradiance of 250 mW/cm and a fluence of 60 J/cm to the forehead over either the left or right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex with a fluence to the brain of 2.

Rare autosomal trisomies, revealed by maternal plasma DNA sequencing, suggest increased risk of feto-placental disease.

Whole-genome sequencing (WGS) of maternal plasma cell-free DNA (cfDNA) can potentially evaluate all 24 chromosomes to identify abnormalities of the placenta, fetus, or pregnant woman. Current bioinformatics algorithms typically only report on chromosomes 21, 18, 13, X, and Y; sequencing results from other chromosomes may be masked. We hypothesized that by systematically analyzing WGS data from all chromosomes, we could identify rare autosomal trisomies (RATs) to improve understanding of feto-placental biology.

An empirical estimate of carrier frequencies for 400+ causal Mendelian variants: results from an ethnically diverse clinical sample of 23,453 individuals.

Purpose: Recent developments in genomics have led to expanded carrier screening panels capable of assessing hundreds of causal mutations for genetic disease. This new technology enables simultaneous measurement of carrier frequencies for many diseases. As the resultant rank-ordering of carrier frequencies impacts the design and prioritization of screening programs, the accuracy of this ranking is a public health concern.

The demographic impact of Partition in the Punjab in 1947.

We use data from the 1931, 1941, and 1951 censuses of India and the 1951 census of Pakistan to examine the demographic consequences of Partition in the Punjab in 1947. Had growth rates for the period 1931-41 for the Punjab as a whole continued to 1951, the population of the Punjab would have been 2.9 million larger than that recorded in 1951.

Biochemical markers in persons with preclinical familial Alzheimer disease.

Background: Persons at risk for familial Alzheimer disease (FAD) provide a model in which biomarkers can be studied in presymptomatic disease.

Methods: Twenty-one subjects at risk for presenilin-1 (n = 17) or amyloid precursor protein (n = 4) mutations underwent evaluation with the Clinical Dementia Rating (CDR) scale. We obtained plasma from all subjects and CSF from 11.