SPIRIT-DEFINE explanation and elaboration: recommendations for enhancing quality and impact of early phase dose-finding clinical trials protocols.

Unlabelled: Transparent and accurate reporting in early phase dose-finding (EPDF) clinical trials is crucial for informing subsequent larger trials. The SPIRIT statement, designed for trial protocol content, does not adequately cover the distinctive features of EPDF trials. Recent findings indicate that the protocol contents in past EPDF trials frequently lacked completeness and clarity.

CONSORT-DEFINE explanation and elaboration: recommendations for enhancing reporting quality and impact of early phase dose-finding clinical trials.

Unlabelled: Early phase dose-finding (EPDF) trials are key in the development of novel therapies, with their findings directly informing subsequent clinical development phases and providing valuable insights for reverse translation. Comprehensive and transparent reporting of these studies is critical for their accurate and critical interpretation, which may improve and expedite therapeutic development. However, quality of reporting of design characteristics and results from EPDF trials is often variable and incomplete.

Misdiagnosed hamstring strain injury: a case report of early cauda equina syndrome.

Objective: This case report discusses the diagnostic challenges associated with the early identification of cauda equina syndrome in a 25-year-old patient without lumbar spinal pain. It introduces a new classification scheme related to a more effective diagnosis.

Clinical Features: The patient experienced pain in the right hamstring, diagnosed as a pulled muscle.

A qualitative study investigating research priorities and investigative capacity in sports-focused chiropractic research, part 2: exploring the challenges and opportunities for research capacity development.

Objectives: To explore the challenges and opportunities for research capacity development in the sports chiropractic field.

Methods: A qualitative description study was conducted using semi-structured interviews with 20 sports chiropractic researchers from eight countries and focus group interviews with 12 sports chiropractic leaders from Canada.

Results: Challenges and opportunities for research capacity development were identified within four main themes - 1) affiliations and collaborations, 2) human resources, 3) financial resources, and 4) operational resources.

Management of persistent patellofemoral pain conditions using a tricompartmental offloading knee brace: a case series.

Objective: To describe the utility of a tricompartmental offloading knee brace as an adjunct intervention for managing persistent PFP conditions.

Clinical Features: Three cases of active adult females with persistent PFP following non-response to conventional and guideline aligned management strategies are presented.

Intervention And Outcomes: Patients were managed using a tricompartmental offloading knee brace alongside individualized exercise programs for up to 12 weeks.

The Evaluation of Change in Psychosocial Risk With Caregivers of Children With Chronic Kidney Disease: A Short-term Longitudinal Mixed-Methods Study.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic and its accompanying safeguards intensified many of the ongoing daily challenges faced by caregivers of young people with chronic kidney disease (CKD) both pre-transplant and post-transplant, and also created a variety of new and pressing concerns. Little is known about how these families managed this unexpected adversity in their lives.

Objective: To evaluate change in psychosocial risk for families of young people with CKD during the COVID-19 pandemic health emergency from the perspective of caregivers.

The design space of E(3)-equivariant atom-centred interatomic potentials.

Molecular dynamics simulation is an important tool in computational materials science and chemistry, and in the past decade it has been revolutionized by machine learning. This rapid progress in machine learning interatomic potentials has produced a number of new architectures in just the past few years. Particularly notable among these are the atomic cluster expansion, which unified many of the earlier ideas around atom-density-based descriptors, and Neural Equivariant Interatomic Potentials (NequIP), a message-passing neural network with equivariant features that exhibited state-of-the-art accuracy at the time.

Hepatitis C Virus Seroprevalence, Incidence, and Screening Patterns in Ontario Preexposure Prophylaxis Users.

Background: Hepatitis C virus (HCV) has emerged as a sexually transmitted infection in gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men (GBM). We estimated the seroprevalence and incidence of HCV infection and examined patterns of HCV testing among GBM using human immunodeficiency virus preexposure prophylaxis (PrEP) in Ontario, Canada.

Methods: We analyzed data from the Ontario PrEP Cohort Study (ON-PrEP), a prospective cohort of PrEP users from 10 Ontario clinics.

Impact of Policy Changes Expanding Access to Direct-Acting Antivirals on Hepatitis C Virus-Related Hospitalizations in People With HIV: A Population-Based Study.

Background: The burden of hepatitis C virus (HCV)-related hospitalizations is substantial, particularly among people with HIV and HCV. In Ontario, Canada, use of direct-acting antivirals (DAAs) increased following policies removing fibrosis-stage restrictions and approving of pangenotypic agents in 2017 and 2018, respectively. We examined the impact of expanded DAA access on HCV-related hospitalizations in people with HIV.

Evidence update on the cancer risk of vaping e-cigarettes: A systematic review.

Introduction: There is substantial interest in the association of vaping e-cigarettes with the risk of cancer. We analyzed this risk in different populations by updating the Kings College London (KCL) review to include the period between July 2021 and December 2023.

Methods: We searched six databases and included peer-reviewed human, animal, and cell/ original studies examining the association between e-cigarettes and cancer risk, but we excluded qualitative studies.

Impact of SARS-CoV-2 vaccination and of seasonal variations on the innate immune inflammatory response.

Introduction: The innate immune response is an important first checkpoint in the evolution of an infection. Although adaptive immunity is generally considered the immune component that retains antigenic memory, innate immune responses can also be affected by previous stimulations. This study evaluated the impact of vaccination on innate cell activation by TLR7/8 agonist R848, as well as seasonal variations.

Heat-health messaging in Canada: A review and content analysis of public health authority webpages and resources.

Background: With the growing threat posed by extreme heat, heat-health messaging communicated by public health authorities is critical for raising community awareness and action. This study sought to (i) identify what heat-health content is shared online by Canadian public health authorities and (ii) analyse the material to develop an understanding of the content included within the resources.

Study Design: Qualitative content analysis.

Vaping guidance and women's decision-making during pregnancy & postpartum.

Background: Vaping during pregnancy remains under researched and under reported, making appropriate prevention, health promotion and intervention difficult to design and mount. In this article we assessed the experiences and considerations of women who vape during pregnancy and/or within 2 years post-partum, in order to underpin realistic and informative health information for women and providers in face of conflicting and minimal guidance.

Design: 22 interviews were conducted with pregnant and post-partum women who vape(d) nicotine, cannabis, or both during pregnancy and/or after delivery.

Facebook recruitment: understanding research relations Prior to data collection.

This article considers the multiple relations that emerge from and between Facebook commenters, as well as between commenters, researchers, and the research project during recruitment. To do so, we draw on our experiences of recruiting individuals who have concerns about or are opposed to a range of recent social and legal changes in 'post-equality' contexts. Understanding research as co-created rather than 'collecting data from' participants, we consider the researcher, commenters, and Facebook technologies as active agents, and ask how the emergent relationalities between these agents shapes the social media recruitment process.

Clustering Sequence Data with Mixture Markov Chains with Covariates Using Multiple Simplex Constrained Optimization Routine (MSiCOR).

Mixture Markov Model (MMM) is a widely used tool to cluster sequences of events coming from a finite state-space. However, the MMM likelihood being multi-modal, the challenge remains in its maximization. Although Expectation-Maximization (EM) algorithm remains one of the most popular ways to estimate the MMM parameters, however, convergence of EM algorithm is not always guaranteed.

Source-specific bias correction of US background and anthropogenic ozone modeled in CMAQ.

United States (US) background ozone (O) is the counterfactual O that would exist with zero US anthropogenic emissions. Estimates of US background O typically come from chemical transport models (CTMs), but different models vary in their estimates of both background and total O. Here, a measurement-model data fusion approach is used to estimate CTM biases in US anthropogenic O and multiple US background O sources, including natural emissions, long-range international emissions, short-range international emissions from Canada and Mexico, and stratospheric O.

Functional principal component analysis with informative observation times.

Functional principal component analysis has been shown to be invaluable for revealing variation modes of longitudinal outcomes, which serve as important building blocks for forecasting and model building. Decades of research have advanced methods for functional principal component analysis, often assuming independence between the observation times and longitudinal outcomes. Yet such assumptions are fragile in real-world settings where observation times may be driven by outcome-related processes.

How dairy heifers initially respond to freestalls: The effect of neck-rail placement.

Dairy heifers are often kept on open packs early in life and later transitioned to freestalls. The neck rail in freestalls acts as a barrier intended to prevent animals from entering too far in the stall, with the aim of improving stall cleanliness. Unfortunately, this barrier can hinder stall use and may be a hazard to animals due to physical contact, perhaps especially when animals first learn to use the stall.

A methodological approach to assess the ropy character of stirred acid dairy gels based on the measure of adhesiveness.

This work aims to evaluate the potential and limits of adhesiveness measurement using a texturometer to assess the ropiness of acid dairy gels for starter selection. Commercial yogurts of various formulations and textures were used to assess the ability of adhesiveness to detect ropiness and to compare performance of different probes. Chemically acidified gels using different concentrations of glucono-delta-lactone (GDL) were tested to determine the effect of pH on adhesiveness.

Effect of weaning strategies on biosynthesis of oxylipids in Holstein dairy calves.

The aim of this study was to determine the effect of the weaning calves at 2 ages (early vs. late) and 2 weaning paces (abrupt over 3 d vs. gradual over 14 d) on plasma oxylipids.

Insulin, IGF-I, and lactoferrin concentrations and yields and their associations with other components within colostrum, transition, and whole milk of primiparous and multiparous Holstein cattle.

The primary objective of the study was to characterize concentrations and yields of lactoferrin (LF), insulin, and IGF-I in colostrum, transition milk (TM), and whole milk (WM) of multiparous (MP) and primiparous (PP) cows. A secondary objective was to determine associations between colostrum and TM components (fat, protein, lactose), IgG, and bioactive compounds (oligosaccharides, LF, insulin, IGF-I; defined as compounds present in micro quantities that stimulate physiological responses systemically or locally within the neonate). Holstein cows (10 MP and 10 PP) were assigned to the study at calving and colostrum was collected 5.

Stocking density at feeders and drinkers and temporal feed restriction affects dairy cows' drinking behavior.

Water is an essential resource for dairy cows, and its consumption is closely linked to feed intake. Social competition can lead to changes in drinking behavior, especially for subordinate cows. We studied how changes in stocking density at the feeder (1 or 2 cows per feeder), and drinker (6 or 12 cows per drinker) and a temporal feed restriction (14- or 24-h access) affects drinking in 4 groups of 6 cows each, following a Latin square design.