Metabolic Syndrome and the Risk of Postoperative Complications Following Esophagectomy: National Surgical Quality Improvement Program Study.

Introduction: Metabolic syndrome has become a major health risk affecting patients worldwide and has been shown to be a risk factor for postoperative complications following abdominal surgery. This study aims to elucidate the link between metabolic syndrome and postoperative complications and mortality following esophagectomy.

Methods: This is a retrospective study analyzing the American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program database (2017-2021).

Encorafenib, cetuximab and chemotherapy in BRAF-mutant colorectal cancer: a randomized phase 3 trial.

Encorafenib + cetuximab (EC) is approved for previously treated BRAF V600E-mutant metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) based on the BEACON phase 3 study. Historically, first-line treatment of BRAF V600E-mutant mCRC with chemotherapy regimens has had limited efficacy. The phase 3 BREAKWATER study investigated EC+mFOLFOX6 versus standard of care (SOC) in patients with previously untreated BRAF V600E mCRC.

Maternal and neonatal outcomes after metabolic and bariatric surgery among women with severe obesity.

Background: Earlier evidence indicated that metabolic and bariatric surgery (MBS) may adversely affect neonatal outcomes among patients conceiving soon after MBS, but recent studies demonstrated conflicting results, especially for new surgical techniques.

Objectives: The aim of this study was to assess the effects of MBS types and surgery to birth interval on maternal, birth, and nonbirth outcomes in women with severe obesity.

Setting: New York State's all-payer hospital discharge database (2008-2019).

Cumulative Exposure to Unconventional Natural Gas Development and the Risk of Childhood Cancer: A Registry-Based Case-Control Study.

The rapid growth of unconventional natural gas development (UNGD), also known as hydraulic fracturing, has raised concerns of potential exposures to hazardous chemicals. Few studies have examined the risk of childhood cancer from exposure to UNGD. A case-control study included 498 children diagnosed with leukemia, lymphoma, central nervous system neoplasms, and malignant bone tumors during the period 2010-2019 identified through the Pennsylvania Cancer Registry.

A Scoping Review of the Current Knowledge of the Social Determinants of Health and Infectious Diseases (Specifically COVID-19, Tuberculosis, and H1N1 Influenza) in Canadian Arctic Indigenous Communities.

Social determinants of health (SDHs) and the impact of colonization can make Canadian Arctic Indigenous communities susceptible to infectious diseases, including the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). This scoping review followed the PRISMA guidelines for scoping reviews and studied what is known about selected pandemics (COVID-19, tuberculosis, and H1N1 influenza) and SDHs (healthcare accessibility, food insecurity, mental health, cultural continuity, housing, community infrastructure, and socioeconomic status (SES)) for Canadian Arctic Indigenous communities. Original studies published in English and French up to October 2024 were located in databases (PubMed, Medline, and CINAHL), , and through reference tracking.

Longitudinal phage-bacteria dynamics in the early life gut microbiome.

Microbial colonization of the human gut occurs soon after birth, proceeds through well-studied phases and is affected by lifestyle and other factors. Less is known about phage community dynamics during infant gut colonization due to small study sizes, an inability to leverage large databases and a lack of appropriate bioinformatics tools. Here we reanalysed whole microbial community shotgun sequencing data of 12,262 longitudinal samples from 887 children from four countries across four years of life as part of the The Environmental Determinants of Diabetes in the Young (TEDDY) study.

Chromatin accessibility provides a window into the genetic etiology of human brain disease.

Neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative diseases have a significant genetic component. Risk variants often affect the noncoding genome, altering cis-regulatory elements (CREs) and chromatin structure, ultimately impacting gene expression. Chromatin accessibility profiling methods, especially assay for transposase-accessible chromatin with high-throughput sequencing (ATAC-seq), have been used to pinpoint disease-associated SNPs and link them to affected genes and cell types in the brain.

Antinuclear antibodies and progression of quantitative interstitial lung changes: The Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA)-Lung Study.

Antinuclear antibodies (ANA) are often found in ILD; whether ANA is associated with radiographic progression of quantitive interstital lung changes is unknown. We performed longitudinal analyses of adults in the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis using linear mixed effects models with random intercept and slope to evaluate whether baseline ANA was associated with change in the amount of lung with high attenuation areas on CT (HAAs, percentage of imaged lung with -600 to -250 HU). In 6,638 subjects with 17,293 CT scans over 18 years, 741 (11%) were ANA positive.

Substituent-driven ESIPT in Chromeno-pyrroloquinoline probe for differentiating normal and cancer cells.

Despite significant advancements in the structural flexibility and functional diversity of fluorescent molecular sensors, the chromophores often require complex synthetic processes and are typically designed to perform only a specific function. Herein, we have demonstrated the unique features of fluorophores based on a fused coumarin-indole scaffold, which are synthetically available via a one-step reaction. Four fluorophores (ICH, ICEst, ICOMe, and ICNMe2) with varying substituents were synthesized and characterized.

Nutritional Interventions to Attenuate Quadriceps Muscle Deficits following Anterior Cruciate Ligament Injury and Reconstruction.

Following anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury, quadriceps muscle atrophy persists despite rehabilitation, leading to loss of lower limb strength, osteoarthritis, poor knee joint health and reduced quality of life. However, the molecular mechanisms responsible for these deficits in hypertrophic adaptations within the quadriceps muscle following ACL injury and reconstruction are poorly understood. While resistance exercise training stimulates skeletal muscle hypertrophy, attenuation of these hypertrophic pathways can hinder rehabilitation following ACL injury and reconstruction, and ultimately lead to skeletal muscle atrophy that persists beyond ACL reconstruction, similar to disuse atrophy.

On-TRACC Pilot Study: A Novel Intervention for Persistent Post-Concussive Cognitive Symptoms.

Objective: To present the results of a pilot study of On-TRACC (Tools for Recovery and Clinical Care), a novel intervention for individuals experiencing persistent cognitive difficulties after mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI). On-TRACC is a 5-session, 1:1 manualized treatment that integrates psychoeducation, cognitive rehabilitation strategies, and self-management skills to target symptoms and increase understanding of the interaction between cognitive difficulties, injury history, and comorbid medical and psychological conditions. The primary study goals were to evaluate the feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary effectiveness of On-TRACC.

Structural Characterization of the Platinum Nanoparticle Hydrogen-Evolving Catalyst Assembled on Photosystem I by Light-Driven Chemistry.

Directed assembly of abiotic catalysts onto biological redox protein frameworks is of interest as an approach for the synthesis of biohybrid catalysts that combine features of both synthetic and biological materials. In this report, we provide a multiscale characterization of the platinum nanoparticle (NP) hydrogen-evolving catalysts that are assembled by light-driven reductive precipitation of platinum from an aqueous salt solution onto the photosystem I protein (PSI), isolated from cyanobacteria as trimeric PSI. The resulting PSI-NP assemblies were analyzed using a combination of X-ray energy-dispersive spectroscopy (XEDS), high-angle annular dark-field scanning transmission electron microscopy (HAADF-STEM), small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS), and high-energy X-ray scattering with atomic pair distribution function (PDF) analyses.

Effects of cold storage on double integrating sphere optical property measurements of porcine dermis and subcutaneous fat from 400 to 1100 nm.

Significance: Accurate values of skin optical properties are essential for developing reliable computational models and optimizing optical imaging systems. However, published values show a large variability due to a variety of factors, including differences in sample collection, preparation, experimental methodology, and analysis.

Aim: We aim to explore the influence of storage conditions on the optical properties of the excised skin from 400 to 1100 nm.

Challenges and applications of artificial intelligence in infectious diseases and antimicrobial resistance.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has transformed infectious disease control, enhancing rapid diagnosis and antibiotic discovery. While conventional tests delay diagnosis, AI-driven methods like machine learning and deep learning assist in pathogen detection, resistance prediction, and drug discovery. These tools improve antibiotic stewardship and identify effective compounds such as antimicrobial peptides and small molecules.

Pharmacological Strategies for High-Output Ileostomies in Children: A Narrative Review.

Aim: Nutritional measures often suffice for managing high-output ileostomy (HOI) in paediatric patients, but pharmacological treatment may be required to control ostomy output. This paper reviews the literature on the pharmacological management of paediatric HOI and provides recommendations.

Methods: PubMed and Embase were searched for relevant articles up to 22 May 2024.

Detection of clinically relevant variants in the gene below 10% allelic frequency: A multicenter study by ERIC, the European Research Initiative on CLL.

In chronic lymphocytic leukemia, the reliability of next-generation sequencing (NGS) to detect variants ≤10% allelic frequency (low-VAF) is debated. We tested the ability to detect 23 such variants in 41 different laboratories using their NGS method of choice. The sensitivity was 85.

Wildland fire entrainment: The missing link between wildland fire and its environment.

Wildfires are growing in destructive power, and accurately predicting the spread and intensity of wildland fire is essential for managing ecological and societal impacts. No current operational models used for fire behavior prediction resolve critical fire-atmospheric coupling or nonlocal influences of the fire environment, rendering them inadequate in accounting for the range of wildland fire behavior scenarios under increasingly novel fuel and climate conditions. Here, we present a new perspective on a dominant fire-atmospheric feedback mechanism, which we term wildland fire entrainment (WFE).

Long-term Recurrence Rates After Isolated Arthroscopic Bankart Repair in Selected Patients Without Preoperative Bone Loss Versus Open Latarjet Procedure: A Matched-Pair Analysis.

Background: Clinical studies have shown that the open Latarjet procedure (OLP) has lower recurrence rates than the isolated arthroscopic Bankart (IAB) procedure for recurrent anterior shoulder instability, but no long-term comparative studies exist for IAB in patients without bone loss.

Purpose/hypothesis: This study aimed to compare the outcomes of IAB in selected patients without bone loss versus OLP. The hypothesis was that OLP would be more successful in preventing recurrence, even in carefully selected patients for IAB.

Pembrolizumab and chemotherapy in high-risk, early-stage, ER/HER2 breast cancer: a randomized phase 3 trial.

Addition of pembrolizumab to neoadjuvant chemotherapy followed by adjuvant pembrolizumab improved outcomes in patients with high-risk, early-stage, triple-negative breast cancer. However, whether the addition of neoadjuvant pembrolizumab to chemotherapy would improve outcomes in high-risk, early-stage, estrogen receptor-positive/human epidermal growth factor receptor 2-negative (ER/HER2) breast cancer remains unclear. We conducted a double-blind, placebo-controlled phase 3 study (KEYNOTE-756) in which patients with previously untreated ER/HER2 grade 3 high-risk invasive breast cancer (T1c-2 (≥2 cm), cN1-2 or T3-4, cN0-2) were randomly assigned (1:1) to neoadjuvant pembrolizumab 200 mg or placebo Q3W given with paclitaxel QW for 12 weeks, followed by four cycles of doxorubicin or epirubicin plus cyclophosphamide Q2W or Q3W.

Art of TIL immunotherapy: SITC's perspective on demystifying a complex treatment.

In a first for solid cancers, cellular immunotherapy has entered standard of care in the treatment of patients with metastatic melanoma. The infusion of autologous tumor-infiltrating T lymphocytes (TIL) is capable of mediating durable tumor regression and is now Food and Drug Administration-approved for patients with disease refractory to immune checkpoint inhibitors. Since the advent of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells for patients with hematological malignancies, a growing network of centers capable of delivering effector T cell products to patients has developed.

Fundus Autofluorescence Variation in Geographic Atrophy of Age-Related Macular Degeneration: A Clinicopathologic Correlation.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to develop ground-truth histology about contributors to variable fundus autofluorescence (FAF) signal and thus inform patient selection for treating geographic atrophy (GA) in age-related macular degeneration (AMD).

Methods: One woman with bilateral multifocal GA, foveal sparing, and thick choroids underwent 535 to 580 nm excitation FAF in 6 clinic visits (11 to 6 years before death). The left eye was preserved 5 hours after death.

MRI-assessed Dynamic Hyperinflation Induced by Tachypnea in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease: The SPIROMICS-HF Study.

Purpose To assess the repeatability of real-time cine pulmonary MRI measures of metronome-paced tachypnea (MPT)-induced dynamic hyperinflation and its relationship with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) severity. Materials and Methods SubPopulations and InteRmediate Outcome Measures In COPD Study (SPIROMICS) (ClinicalTrials.gov identifier no.

Visual Stimulus Materials Used in Spoken Narrative Discourse Elicitation After Traumatic Brain Injury: A Scoping Review.

Purpose: Management of discourse is acknowledged as a critical component of speech-language pathology practice with cognitive communication after traumatic brain injury (TBI). This scoping review aimed to collate the visual materials that are being used in empirical research for spoken narrative elicitation post-TBI, in both assessment and treatment contexts. We aimed to examine the format, structure, and sources for visuals used.

Microbiome transplants may not improve health and longevity in Drosophila melanogaster.

The gut microbiome, which is composed of bacteria, viruses, and fungi, and is involved in multiple essential physiological processes, changes measurably as a person ages, and can be associated with negative health outcomes. Microbiome transplants have been proposed as a method to improve gut function and reduce or reverse multiple disorders, including age-related diseases. Here, we take advantage of the laboratory model organism, Drosophila melanogaster, to test the effects of transplanting the microbiome of a young fly into middle-aged flies, across multiple genetic backgrounds and both sexes, to test whether age-related lifespan could be increased, and late-life physical health declines mitigated.