Evaluation of phenotypic risk indicators for the development of alopecia X (hair cycle arrest) in Pomeranian dogs in the Netherlands and Belgium.

Background: Alopecia X (AX) is a common noninflammatory alopecic condition of Pomeranian dogs with an unknown cause. While a genetic aetiology is suspected, no current tests can predict the development of this disorder or confirm the aetiology. Therefore, identifying potential risk indicators for the development of AX would be of value in this breed.

Enhancement of titanium surfaces using different acid solutions at room temperature to improve bone cell responses.

Background/purpose: Early osseointegration of titanium (Ti) dental implants relies on the surface topography. Surface modification of Ti seeks to enhance bone regeneration around implants. Acid etching is the simple, less technique sensitive and cost-effective technique for surface treatment.

Magnetic Resonance imaging evaluation of the distance to the popliteal artery in arthroscopic popliteus tendon versus posterior cruciate ligament reconstruction.

Purpose: Wide acceptance of arthroscopically treating posterolateral corner injuries has not occurred. There remains a fear of neurovascular (NV) injury while arthroscopically performing these reconstructions. The study's aim is to compare on Magnetic Resonance Scans the distance of the tibial tunnel in an arthroscopic popliteus tendon reconstruction (APB) and arthroscopic posterior cruciate ligament (PCL) reconstruction (APC) to the popliteal neurosvascular bundle.

Nebulized aminoglycosides for ventilator-associated pneumonia: Methodological considerations and lessons from experimental studies.

Aminoglycosides are concentration-dependent antibiotics exerting a bactericidal effect when concentrations at the site of infection are equal to or greater than 5 times the minimum inhibitory concentrations (MIC). When administered intravenously, they exhibit poor lung penetration and high systemic renal and ototoxicity, imposing to restrict their administration to 5 days. Experimental studies conducted in anesthetized and mechanically ventilated sheep and pigs provide evidence that high doses of nebulized aminoglycosides induce a rapid and potent bacterial killing in the infected lung parenchyma.

The crucial role of 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography/computed tomography in diagnosing pulmonary valve endocarditis in patients after transcatheter pulmonary valve implantation: a case report.

Background: Patients after transcatheter pulmonary valve implantation (TPVI) are at increased risk for infective prosthetic valve endocarditis. Diagnosis of infective endocarditis (IE) following TPVI is particularly difficult due to impaired visualization of the transcatheter pulmonary valve (TPV) with echocardiography [Delgado V, Ajmone Marsan N, de Waha S, Bonaros N, Brida M, Burri H, et al. 2023 ESC guidelines for the management of endocarditis.

Application of the market-ready NAVETTA electrodeposition chamber for controlled exposure with nano-scaled aerosols.

Exposure of lung epithelia to aerosols is omnipresent. Chronic exposure to polluted air is a significant factor in the development of pulmonary diseases, which are among the top global causes of death, including COVID-19, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, lung cancer, and tuberculosis. As efforts to prevent and treat lung diseases increase, the development of pulmonary drug delivery systems has become a major area of interest.

Treatment effects of CFTR modulators on people with cystic fibrosis carrying the Q359K/T360K variant.

https://bit.ly/45DjFw9.

Embedding-based pair generation for contrastive representation learning in audio-visual surveillance data.

Smart cities deploy various sensors such as microphones and RGB cameras to collect data to improve the safety and comfort of the citizens. As data annotation is expensive, self-supervised methods such as contrastive learning are used to learn audio-visual representations for downstream tasks. Focusing on surveillance data, we investigate two common limitations of audio-visual contrastive learning: false negatives and the minimal sufficient information bottleneck.

CytoNorm 2.0: A flexible normalization framework for cytometry data without requiring dedicated controls.

Cytometry is a single cell, high-dimensional, high-throughput technique that is being applied across a range of disciplines. However, many elements alongside the data acquisition process might give rise to technical variation in the dataset, called batch effects. CytoNorm is a normalization algorithm for batch effect removal in cytometry data that was originally published in 2020 and has been applied on a variety of datasets since then.

Aortic valve repair in adults: long-term clinical outcomes and echocardiographic evolution in different valve repair techniques.

Objective: Aortic valve repair/sparing have been established as effective treatments for aortic regurgitation and/or aortic aneurysms. However, concerns remain regarding long-term durability, reproducibility, and patient selection. This study aims to asses long-term clinical and echocardiographic outcomes, with a focus on aortic regurgitation grade and left ventricular ejection fraction evolution, in adults undergoing these procedures.

Multiple Sclerosis Nursing to Improve Care and Education (MSNICE): an observational study.

Objective: To explore differences in patient reported outcomes, health care resources and expenditures in persons with multiple sclerosis (pwMS) with or without access to an MS-nurse.

Methodology: An observational, multicenter and cross-sectional study was conducted. Seven centers with, and twelve centers without an MS-nurse participated.

The multi-omics signatures of telomere length in childhood.

Background: Telomere length is an important indicator of biological age and a complex multi-factor trait. To date, the telomere interactome for comprehending the high-dimensional biological aspects linked to telomere regulation during childhood remains unexplored. Here we describe the multi-omics signatures associated with childhood telomere length.

Developing a clinical prediction model to modify empirical antibiotics for non-typhoidal Salmonella bloodstream infection in children under-five in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Background: Non-typhoidal Salmonella (NTS) frequently cause bloodstream infection in children under-five in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in malaria-endemic areas. Due to increasing drug resistance, NTS are often not covered by standard-of-care empirical antibiotics for severe febrile illness. We developed a clinical prediction model to orient the choice of empirical antibiotics (standard-of-care versus alternative antibiotics) for children admitted to hospital in settings with high proportions of drug-resistant NTS.

The biodiversity of ice-free Antarctica database.

Antarctica is one of Earth's most untouched, inhospitable, and poorly known regions. Although knowledge of its biodiversity has increased over recent decades, a diverse, wide-ranging, and spatially explicit compilation of the biodiversity that inhabits Antarctica's permanently ice-free areas is unavailable. This absence hinders both Antarctic biodiversity research and the integration of Antarctica in global biodiversity-related studies.

Oocyte/zygote/embryo maturation arrest: a clinical study expanding the phenotype of NOBOX variants.

Purpose: Primary ovarian insufficiency (POI) is an important cause of female infertility, stemming from follicle dysfunction or premature oocyte depletion. Pathogenic variants in genes such as NOBOX, GDF9, BMP15, and FSHR have been linked to POI. NOBOX, a transcription factor expressed in oocytes and granulosa cells, plays a pivotal role in folliculogenesis.

An Exploration of the Interplay Between Caffeine and Antidepressants Through the Lens of Pharmacokinetics and Pharmacodynamics.

Caffeine consumption is regarded as a widespread phenomenon, and its usage has continued to increase. In addition, the growing usage of antidepressants worldwide and increase in mental health disorders were shown in recent statistical analyses conducted by the World Health Organisation. The coadministration of caffeine and antidepressants remains a concern due to potential interactions that can alter a patient's response to therapy.

Rome Foundation Working Team Report on overlap in disorders of gut-brain interaction.

In patients with disorders of gut-brain interaction (DGBI), overlapping non-gastrointestinal conditions such as fibromyalgia, headaches, gynaecological and urological conditions, sleep disturbances and fatigue are common, as is overlap among DGBI in different regions of the gastrointestinal tract. These overlaps strongly influence patient management and outcome. Shared pathophysiology could explain this scenario, but details are not fully understood.

RNA-sequencing unveils FLT4 splice site variants in variable congenital heart disease.

The etiology of congenital heart disease (CHD) is complex, comprising both genetic and environmental factors. Despite documented familial occurrences, the genetic etiology remains largely elusive. Trio exome sequencing identified a heterozygous FLT4 splice site variant in two families with respectively tetralogy of Fallot (TOF), and variable CHD comprising both the TOF spectrum and aortic coarctation.

Machine learning meta-analysis identifies individual characteristics moderating cognitive intervention efficacy for anxiety and depression symptoms.

Cognitive training is a promising intervention for psychological distress; however, its effectiveness has yielded inconsistent outcomes across studies. This research is a pre-registered individual-level meta-analysis to identify factors contributing to cognitive training efficacy for anxiety and depression symptoms. Machine learning methods, alongside traditional statistical approaches, were employed to analyze 22 datasets with 1544 participants who underwent working memory training, attention bias modification, interpretation bias modification, or inhibitory control training.

NIRS-BIDS: Brain Imaging Data Structure Extended to Near-Infrared Spectroscopy.

Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) is an increasingly popular neuroimaging technique that measures cortical hemodynamic activity in a non-invasive and portable fashion. Although the fNIRS community has been successful in disseminating open-source processing tools and a standard file format (SNIRF), reproducible research and sharing of fNIRS data amongst researchers has been hindered by a lack of standards and clarity over how study data should be organized and stored. This problem is not new in neuroimaging, and it became evident years ago with the proliferation of publicly available neuroimaging datasets.

Helioseismic inference of the solar radiative opacity.

The Sun is the most studied of all stars, and thus constitutes a benchmark for stellar models. However, our vision of the Sun is still incomplete, as illustrated by the current debate on its chemical composition. The problem reaches far beyond chemical abundances and is intimately linked to microscopic and macroscopic physical ingredients of solar models such as radiative opacity, for which experimental results have been recently measured that still await theoretical explanations.

Genetic coupling of enhancer activity and connectivity in gene expression control.

Gene enhancers often form long-range contacts with promoters, but it remains unclear if the activity of enhancers and their chromosomal contacts are mediated by the same DNA sequences and recruited factors. Here, we study the effects of expression quantitative trait loci (eQTLs) on enhancer activity and promoter contacts in primary monocytes isolated from 34 male individuals. Using eQTL-Capture Hi-C and a Bayesian approach considering both intra- and inter-individual variation, we initially detect 19 eQTLs associated with enhancer-eGene promoter contacts, most of which also associate with enhancer accessibility and activity.

Lateral pterygoid muscle enthesis reconstruction in alloplastic total temporomandibular joint replacement: An animal experiment with histological verification.

In current alloplastic total temporomandibular joint replacements (TMJRs) typically the lateral pterygoid muscle (LPM) insertion is sacrificed, affecting joint function. This study assesses a novel additively manufactured TMJR (CADskills BV, Gent, Belgium) designed to enable LPM reinsertion through a scaffold feature on the implant. Thirteen TMJRs were implanted in Swifter crossbreed sheep, with follow-up CT scans after 288 days to evaluate LPM reintegration.