Publications by authors named "Watson C"

Background And Objectives: There have been calls for a Medicare Benefits Schedule rebate to support a young person's health assessment in general practice. The aim of this study was to understand Victorian providers' needs and perspectives about implementing young people's health assessments in general practice.

Method: Focus groups and interviews were conducted over Zoom with current general practitioners (GPs), practice nurses (PNs) and practice managers (PMs).

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Background: The optimal spontaneous breathing trial (SBT) duration is not known for children who are critically ill. The study objective was to evaluate extubation outcomes between cohorts exposed to a 1- or 2-h SBT.

Methods: This was a retrospective cohort study of a quality improvement project database in a 24-bed pediatric ICU.

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Topoisomerase 3α (TOP3A) is an enzyme that removes torsional strain and interlinks between DNA molecules. TOP3A localises to both the nucleus and mitochondria, with the two isoforms playing specialised roles in DNA recombination and replication respectively. Pathogenic variants in TOP3A can cause a disorder similar to Bloom syndrome, which results from bi-allelic pathogenic variants in BLM, encoding a nuclear-binding partner of TOP3A.

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Article Synopsis
  • Over 1,000 unexplained pediatric hepatitis cases have been identified globally, with a study focusing on 38 cases and various control groups to understand potential viral causes.
  • High levels of adeno-associated virus 2 (AAV2) DNA were found in most cases, while low levels of adenovirus and human herpesvirus 6B were also detected; however, AAV2 appeared infrequently in healthy controls even when they were immunocompromised.
  • The study suggests that abnormal replication of AAV2, potentially influenced by other viruses like HAdV and HHV-6B, may be responsible for immune-related liver disease in susceptible children.
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A low-resource emotional speech synthesis system for empathetic speech synthesis based on modelling prosody features is presented here. Secondary emotions, identified to be needed for empathetic speech, are modelled and synthesised in this investigation. As secondary emotions are subtle in nature, they are difficult to model compared to primary emotions.

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Introduction: Urine drug screens (UDS) have unproven clinical utility in emergency department (ED) chest pain presentations. A test with such limited clinical utility may exponentiate biases in care, but little is known about the epidemiology of UDS use for this indication. We hypothesized that UDS utilization varies nationally across race and gender.

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The alteration of environmental conditions has two major outcomes on the demographics of living organisms: population decline of the common species and extinction of the rarest ones. Halting the decline of abundant species as well as the erosion of biodiversity require solutions that may be mismatched, despite being rooted in similar causes. In this study, we demonstrate how rank abundance distribution (RAD) models are mathematical representations of a dominance-diversity dilemma.

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Introduction: Paediatric heart failure is a common clinical syndrome that may be experienced by children with congenital heart disease (CHD) and/or cardiomyopathy. It is characterised by clinical signs/symptoms which reflect the underlying pathophysiology based on one of three main clinical states: Pulmonary over-circulation, pressure overload, and ventricular failure. Current diagnosis relies on clinical assessment and echocardiogram imaging as cardiac biomarkers has been predominantly scientific to date.

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Importance: Cancer transmission is a known risk for recipients of organ transplants. Many people wait a long time for a suitable transplant; some never receive one. Although patients with brain tumors may donate their organs, opinions vary on the risks involved.

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Background: The widespread adoption of exome sequencing has greatly increased the rate of genetic diagnosis for inherited conditions. However, the detection and validation of large deletions remains challenging. While numerous bioinformatics approaches have been developed to detect deletions from whole - exome sequencing and targeted panels, further work is typically required to define the physical breakpoints or integration sites.

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Transmission trees can be established through detailed contact histories, statistical or phylogenetic inference, or a combination of methods. Each approach has its limitations, and the extent to which they succeed in revealing a 'true' transmission history remains unclear. In this study, we compared the transmission trees obtained through contact tracing investigations and various inference methods to identify the contribution and value of each approach.

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Secondary hypothalamic amenorrhoea is a common menstrual disorder affecting women of reproductive age. In some cases, periods become absent due to prolonged stress on the body, caused by undereating, overexercising and psychological stress. Secondary hypothalamic amenorrhoea is often underdiagnosed and undertreated, and patients may be prescribed oral contraception, which can mask the problem.

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Development and validation of rapid and easy-to-perform diagnostics continue to be a high priority during the current COVID-19 pandemic. Although vaccines are now widely available, early detection and consistent transmission control provide ideal means to mitigate the spread of SARS-CoV-2. Nucleic acid-based real-time PCR tests are widely acknowledged as the gold standard for reliable diagnosis of COVID-19 infection.

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Alzheimer's disease (AD) progresses through a lengthy asymptomatic period during which pathological changes accumulate prior to development of clinical symptoms. As disease-modifying treatments are developed, tools to stratify risk of clinical disease will be required to guide their use. In this study, we examine the relationship of AD biomarkers in healthy middle-aged individuals to health history, family history, and neuropsychological measures and identify cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biomarkers to stratify risk of progression from asymptomatic to symptomatic AD.

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Article Synopsis
  • Pathogenic variants in KMT5B, a lysine methyltransferase, are linked to global developmental issues, macrocephaly, autism, and other congenital anomalies, but the disorder is still not fully understood.
  • A study examining 43 patients revealed new significant features like hypotonia and congenital heart defects not previously associated with this condition.
  • Research using patient cell lines and KMT5B knockout mice showed that these variants lead to slow growth and highlighted alterations in pathways related to nervous system development, enhancing our understanding of the disorder's molecular mechanisms.
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Importance: Pre-heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (pre-HFpEF) is common and has no specific therapy aside from cardiovascular risk factor management.

Objective: To investigate the hypothesis that sacubitril/valsartan vs valsartan would reduce left atrial volume index using volumetric cardiac magnetic resonance imaging in patients with pre-HFpEF.

Design, Setting, And Participants: The Personalized Prospective Comparison of ARNI [angiotensin receptor/neprilysin inhibitor] With ARB [angiotensin-receptor blocker] in Patients With Natriuretic Peptide Elevation (PARABLE) trial was a prospective, double-blind, double-dummy, randomized clinical trial carried out over 18 months between April 2015 and June 2021.

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Introduction: Studies characterizing differences in youth flavored tobacco product use prevalence, curiosity/susceptibility, and harm perceptions by race and ethnicity are limited. This study comprehensively examines flavored tobacco product use and harm perceptions among U.S.

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Heart failure (HF) is the leading cause of hospitalisations worldwide, with only 35% of patients surviving the first 5 years after diagnosis. The pathogenesis of HF with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF) is still unclear, impeding the implementation of effective treatments. FK506-binding protein like (FKBPL) and its therapeutic peptide mimetic, AD-01, are critical mediators of angiogenesis and inflammation.

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Age-associated B cells (ABCs) are formed under inflammatory conditions and are considered a type of memory B cell (MBC) expressing the transcription factor T-bet. In SLE, ABC frequency is correlated with disease, and they are thought to be the source of autoantibody-secreting cells. However, in inflammatory conditions, whether autoreactive B cells can become resting MBCs is uncertain.

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Importance: The social, behavioral, and economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic may be associated with unstable and/or unsafe living situations and intimate partner violence (IPV) among pregnant individuals.

Objective: To investigate trends in unstable and/or unsafe living situations and IPV among pregnant individuals prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Design, Setting, And Participants: A cross-sectional population-based interrupted time-series analysis was conducted among Kaiser Permanente Northern California members who were pregnant and screened for unstable and/or unsafe living situation and IPV as part of standard prenatal care between January 1, 2019, and December 31, 2020.

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In critically ill trauma patients, adequate nutrition is essential for the body's healing process. Currently, there is no clinical standard for initiating feeds after percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy (PEG) tube placement. We aimed to demonstrate that early enteral nutrition (EN) is as safe as delayed EN in patients who have undergone PEG tube insertion.

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T cell receptors (TCRs) recognize peptide fragments presented by the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) and are critical to T cell-mediated immunity. Recent data have indicated that genetic diversity within TCR-encoding gene regions is underexplored, limiting understanding of the impact of TCR loci polymorphisms on TCR function in disease, even though TCR repertoire signatures (1) are heritable and (2) associate with disease phenotypes. To address this, we developed a targeted long-read sequencing approach to generate highly accurate haplotype resolved assemblies of the TCR beta (TRB) and alpha/delta (TRA/D) loci, facilitating the genotyping of all variant types, including structural variants.

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Objective: Human papillomavirus (HPV)-related squamous intraepithelial lesion (SIL) or malignancy is associated with a significantly increased risk of second-site SIL or malignancy. The primary objective of this study was to determine the feasibility and acceptability of concurrent anal, cervical, and vulvovaginal screening in patients with a history of HPV-related gynecologic high-grade SIL or malignancy. The secondary objective was to assess subjects' knowledge regarding HPV screening and risks.

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Aim: The main aim of the present study is to examine the expectations and feelings of people awaiting lung transplantation.

Background: The assessment of the benefits of lung transplant should consider, among other things, the subjective perceptions of patients about the procedure, especially in relation to the context and to their values, goals and expectations. This is an issue that has not been studied in depth, especially in Spain.

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Background: Deceased donor livers are prone to biliary complications, which may necessitate retransplantation, and we, and others, have suggested that these complications are because of peribiliary vascular fibrin microthrombi. We sought to determine the prevalence and consequence of occult fibrin within deceased donor livers undergoing normothermic ex situ perfusion (NESLiP) and evaluate a role for fibrinolysis.

Methods: D-dimer concentrations, products of fibrin degradation, were assayed in the perfusate of 163 livers taken after 2 h of NESLiP, including 91 that were transplanted.

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