A novel suture-free nephroplication with 4D-printed biodegradable bag for giant hydronephrosis: initial experience from hydromechanics and clinical application.

Background: Giant hydronephrosis as an rare condition is often caused by chronic ureteral obstruction. Nephroplication is a crucial procedure to improve urinary drainage in the kidney-sparing surgery for patients with giant hydronephrosis. However, traditional nephroplication via suturing kidney has technical difficulty and many potential risks.

Cascading effects of hypobaric hypoxia on the testis: insights from a single-cell RNA sequencing analysis.

Most mammals tolerate exposure to hypobaric hypoxia poorly as it may affect multiple regulatory mechanisms and inhibit cell proliferation, promote apoptosis, limit tissue vascularization, and disrupt the acid-base equilibrium. Here, we quantified the functional state of germ cell development and demonstrated the interaction between the germ and somatic cells via single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq). The present study elucidated the regulatory effects of hypobaric hypoxia exposure on germ cell formation and sperm differentiation by applying enrichment analysis to genomic regions.

Genetic Insights into Intestinal Microbiota and Risk of Infertility: A Mendelian Randomization Study.

Background: The interaction between intestinal microbiota and infertility is less researched. This study was performed to investigate the causal association between gut microbiota and infertility.

Methods: In this two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) study, genetic variants of intestinal microbiota were obtained from the MiBioGen consortium, which included 18,340 individuals.

Identifying elevated risk for future pain crises in sickle-cell disease using photoplethysmogram patterns measured during sleep: A machine learning approach.

Transient increases in peripheral vasoconstriction frequently occur in obstructive sleep apnea and periodic leg movement disorder, both of which are common in sickle cell disease (SCD). These events reduce microvascular blood flow and increase the likelihood of triggering painful vaso-occlusive crises (VOC) that are the hallmark of SCD. We recently reported a significant association between the magnitude of vasoconstriction, inferred from the finger photoplethysmogram (PPG) during sleep, and the frequency of future VOC in 212 children with SCD.

Nocturnal peripheral vasoconstriction predicts the frequency of severe acute pain episodes in children with sickle cell disease.

The basic model of SCD physiology states that vaso-occlusion occurs when hemoglobin S-containing red blood cells (RBC) undergo sickling before they escape the capillary into a larger vessel. We have shown that mental stress, pain and cold, and events reported by patients to trigger SCD vaso-occlusive crisis (VOC), cause rapid and significant decrease in blood flow, reducing the likelihood that RBC could transit the microvasculature before sickling occurs. However, the critical link between decrease in microvascular blood flow and the incidence of future sickle VOC has never been established experimentally in humans.

Feasibility of through-time spiral generalized autocalibrating partial parallel acquisition for low latency accelerated real-time MRI of speech.

Purpose: To evaluate the feasibility of through-time spiral generalized autocalibrating partial parallel acquisition (GRAPPA) for low-latency accelerated real-time MRI of speech.

Methods: Through-time spiral GRAPPA (spiral GRAPPA), a fast linear reconstruction method, is applied to spiral (k-t) data acquired from an eight-channel custom upper-airway coil. Fully sampled data were retrospectively down-sampled to evaluate spiral GRAPPA at undersampling factors R = 2 to 6.