Outcomes of venous sinus stenosis stenting in patients with pulsatile tinnitus and sigmoid sinus wall anomalies.

Background: Transverse sinus stenosis (TSS) and sigmoid sinus wall anomalies (SSWAs) are the most common causes of pulsatile tinnitus (PT). While these conditions may co-occur, they usually require different management approaches. This study aims to evaluate whether TSS stenting alone, without targeted treatment of SSWAs, is sufficient to resolve PT in patients presenting with PT, TSS, and SSWAs.

Basic Science and Pathogenesis.

Background: Single-nucleus RNA sequencing (snRNAseq) allows for the dissection of the cell type-specific transcriptional profiles of tissue specimens. In this study, we compared gene expression in multiple brain cell types in brain tissue from Alzheimer disease (AD) cases with no or other co-existing pathologies including Lewy body disease (LBD) and vascular disease (VaD).

Method: We evaluated differential gene expression measured from single nucleus RNA sequencing (snRNAseq) data generated from the hippocampus region tissue donated by 11 BU ADRC participants with neuropathologically confirmed AD with or without a co-existing pathology (AD-only = 3, AD+VaD = 6, AD+LBD = 2).

Parent-Targeted Oral Health Text Messaging for Underserved Children Attending Pediatric Clinics: A Randomized Clinical Trial.

Importance: Caries is the most common chronic childhood disease, with substantial health disparities.

Objective: To test whether parent-targeted oral health text (OHT) messages outperform child wellness text (CWT) messages on pediatric caries increment and oral health behaviors among underserved children attending pediatric well-child visits.

Design, Setting, And Participants: The parallel randomized clinical trial, Interactive Parent-Targeted Text Messaging in Pediatric Clinics to Reduce Caries Among Urban Children (iSmile), included participants who were recruited during pediatric medical clinic visits at 4 sites in Boston, Massachusetts, that serve low-income and racially and ethnically diverse (herein, underserved) populations.

Non-invasive screening for laryngeal cancer using the oral cavity as a proxy for differentiation of laryngeal cancer versus leukoplakia: A novel application of ESS technology and artificial intelligence supported statistical modeling.

Objective: This preliminary study tested whether non-invasive, remote Elastic Scattering Spectroscopy (ESS) measurements obtained in the oral cavity can be used as a proxy to accurately differentiate between patients with laryngeal cancer versus laryngeal leukoplakia.

Methods: 20 patients with laryngeal lesions [cancer (n = 10),leukoplakia (n = 10)] were clinically assessed and categorized by otolaryngologists per standard clinical practice. Patient demographics of age, race, sex, and smoking history were collected.

Pediatric Acute Otitis Media Clinical Trials: An Analysis of Diversity.

Objective: This study aims to assess the diversity and equity of pediatric acute otitis media (AOM) trials using ClinicalTrials.gov, focusing on participant demographics and representation to identify gaps in inclusivity and inform strategies for promoting diversity in future pediatric AOM studies.

Study Design: Retrospective analysis.

Associations between health-related social needs and postpartum linkage to care.

Introduction: Ongoing care after pregnancy is recommended. Health-related social needs (HRSNs) are recognized barriers to care, yet their pregnancy-related prevalence and associations with care are unknown. Researchers sought to assess (1) the prevalence of HRSNs during pregnancy-based care, and (2) their associations with ongoing care after pregnancy.

Assessing Auditory Brainstem Response (ABR) Quality: A Retrospective Review of One Center's Findings.

Objectives: Auditory brainstem response (ABR) is the gold standard to assess hearing loss in pediatric patients. Multiple widely accepted ABR protocols with varying parameters are accepted, difference in standards may lead to misdiagnosis or delay in diagnosis and treatment. This study investigates the quality of ABR testing in pediatric patients in addition to changes in diagnoses and management.

Associations of early life per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) exposure with body mass index and risk of overweight or obesity at age 2-18 years: Mixture analysis in the prospective Boston Birth Cohort.

Background: Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a class of widespread persistent chemicals, which may have obesogenic effects during the fetal period. This study investigated the long-term association of maternal plasma PFAS concentrations at delivery and their mixture with child body mass index (BMI) and the risk of Overweight or Obesity (OWO) at the age of 2-18 years.

Methods: The study included 1189 mother-child dyads from the prospective Boston Birth Cohort.

Antenatal Steroids Enhance Long-Term Neonatal Lung Outcomes and are Associated with Placental Alterations in Experimental Chorioamnionitis.

Intrauterine inflammation from chorioamnionitis (CA) is associated with placental dysfunction and increased risk of bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD), the chronic lung disease of prematurity. Antenatal steroid (ANS) treatment improves early respiratory outcomes for premature infants. However, it remains unclear whether ANS improve long-term respiratory outcomes, and whether these effects are mediated through improvement of placental dysfunction and/or direct impact on the fetal lung.

Pediatrics leading the way: co-enrollment as the next step in health-related social needs screening and referral.

Purpose Of Review: To contextualize how pediatrics led the field in developing and implementing tools to screen for social determinants of health in clinical care as well as in creating innovative interventions to mitigate them, and to summarize where the evidence points as the next frontier.

Recent Findings: The evidence showed that health-related social needs (HRSN), like food insecurity, energy insecurity, and housing instability, continue to drive poor health outcomes across the lifespan; patients and healthcare providers are open to discussing HRSN in clinical settings, though some providers feel ill-equipped to do so; to mitigate HRSN, healthcare plays a unique role in ensuring patients' HRSN are understood, referring to effective resources through building strong, lasting relationships with community partners, embedding services in the healthcare setting across all departments, and empowering patient families to participate in programs and services; and administrative burden hinders families from getting all the benefits to which they are entitled, which streamlined co-enrollment processes can address.

Summary: Pediatric providers can add a unique and credible voice to seeking changes to the safety-net, including co-enrollment, that could reduce administrative burden, address patients' HRSN, and improve health starting in the prenatal period through later adulthood.

Defining the transition from new to normal: a qualitative investigation of the clinical change process.

Background: Understanding how and when a new evidence-based clinical intervention becomes standard practice is crucial to ensure that healthcare is delivered in alignment with the most up-to-date knowledge. However, rigorous methods are needed to determine when a new clinical practice becomes normalized to the standard of care. To address this gap, this study qualitatively explores how, when, and why a clinical practice change becomes normalized within healthcare organizations.

Increasing diversity in the nutrition, obesity, and diabetes biomedical workforce: the BRIDGES consortium.

Scientists from diverse backgrounds are underrepresented (UR) in academia. This lack of diversity impedes scientific discovery and innovation. UR scientists tend to conduct research on issues relevant to UR populations, including chronic disease prevention and management, and health disparities.

Surgical Trends in Use of Lumbar Disk Arthroplasty Versus Lumbar Fusion From 2010 to 2021.

Introduction: Lumbar disk arthroplasty (LDA) is a relatively novel procedure with limited indications and use in the United States, especially relative to lumbar fusion (LF). This study aimed to determine surgical trends between LDA versus LF over the past 10 years to quantify absolute/relative surgical volume over time and compare baseline patient demographics, readmission, 2-year revision rates, and costs-of-care.

Methods: A total of 714,268 patients were identified from a nationwide database who underwent LF (n = 710,527) or LDA (n = 3,741) from 2010 to 2021.

Elucidating the Mechanism of Recognition and Binding of Heparin to Amyloid Fibrils of Serum Amyloid A.

Amyloid diseases feature pathologic deposition of normally soluble proteins and peptides as insoluble fibrils in vital organs. Amyloid fibrils co-deposit with various nonfibrillar components including heparan sulfate (HS), a glycosaminoglycan that promotes amyloid formation in vitro for many unrelated proteins. HS-amyloid interactions have been proposed as a therapeutic target for inflammation-linked amyloidosis wherein N-terminal fragments of serum amyloid A (SAA) protein deposit in the kidney and liver.

Deep learning algorithm enables automated Cobb angle measurements with high accuracy.

Objective: To determine the accuracy of automatic Cobb angle measurements by deep learning (DL) on full spine radiographs.

Materials And Methods: Full spine radiographs of patients aged > 2 years were screened using the radiology reports to identify radiographs for performing Cobb angle measurements. Two senior musculoskeletal radiologists and one senior orthopedic surgeon independently annotated Cobb angles exceeding 7° indicating the angle location as either proximal thoracic (apices between T3 and T5), main thoracic (apices between T6 and T11), or thoraco-lumbar (apices between T12 and L4).

PTSD symptom networks during treatment among residents in domestic violence shelters.

Little is known about how the interrelationships among posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms change throughout the treatment. We examined changes in PTSD symptoms among women who experienced intimate partner violence and received one of two evidence-based interventions. We conducted a secondary analysis of a completed randomized, double-blind clinical trial, which demonstrated efficacy in reducing PTSD symptoms.

Transcriptional Cofactors for Thyroid Hormone Receptors.

Thyroid hormone (TH) is essential throughout life. It's actions are mediated primarily by the thyroid hormone receptor (THR), which is a nuclear receptor. Classically, the THRs act as inducible transcription factors.

Management of thrombosed or failed dialysis access.

Hemodialysis (HD) access for patients with end-stage renal disease is a steadily increasing necessity, and maintaining patency of native or synthetic fistulas can be challenging. The main physiologic changes of an HD access that cause it to fail are inflow or outflow vessel stenosis or access thrombosis. These are propagated by factors intrinsic to end-stage renal disease, altered hemodynamics from a fistula, and typically further exacerbated by associated comorbidities.

Protocol for a randomized controlled trial of strength at home in Israel: A trauma informed intervention for intimate partner violence based on a social-information processing model.

Background: The social information processing (SIP) model of trauma and intimate partner violence (IPV), which emphasizes the impact of trauma on one's ability to accurately process social information and subsequent failure to generate and enact nonaggressive responses, has gained attention in the United States. Recent clinical trial evidence suggests that the Strength at Home (SAH) intervention, a 12-session program that is based on this model, is efficacious in reducing and ending abusive behavior among U.S.

Pain sensitization in fibromyalgia. Cross-sectional associations between quantitative sensory testing of pain sensitization and fibromyalgia disease burden.

Background: Whether fibromyalgia burden is related to measures of sensitization, assessed by quantitative sensory testing (QST), is not clear. We examine the associations between sensitization and fibromyalgia disease burden as measured by the polysymptomatic sistress scale (PDS) and the fibromyalgia impact questionnaire (FIQ) (range 0-100).

Materials And Methods: Participants were recruited from referrals to a rheumatology outpatient clinic and the fibromyalgia diagnosis was verified by a rheumatologist.

Genetic counselors' perspectives on genomic screening of apparently healthy newborns in the United States.

Purpose: There is growing international interest in using genomic sequencing to screen newborns and children for treatable genomic conditions. Although recent research has demonstrated increasing support for using genomic sequencing to screen newborns and children for treatable genomic conditions among various stakeholders, little is known about the perspectives of genetic counselors (GCs) in the United States, who are frequently engaged in the disclosure of positive newborn screening results and coordination of follow-up testing and management.

Methods: This study utilized a cross-sectional 3-section survey to explore GCs' perspectives on the benefits, limitations, and ethical and practical considerations of genomic sequencing in newborns as an adjunct screen to standard newborn screening (NBS).

Identifying predictors of long-term treatment outcomes using narratives from written exposure therapy and cognitive processing therapy for PTSD.

Objective: Cognitive processing therapy (CPT), a 12-session, gold-standard treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and written exposure therapy (WET), a brief, five-session treatment, have similar treatment efficacy. The aim of the present study was to identify predictors of long-term treatment outcomes of WET and CPT using clients' written narratives.

Method: Narratives from both treatments were coded with the Change and Growth Experiences Scale coding system to identify predictors of long-term PTSD symptom outcomes.