Navigating UK internal medicine training applications: 10 essential tips.

Internal medicine training applications in the UK have become increasingly competitive. This article provides ten tips for optimizing internal medicine training applications covering portfolio development, teaching experience, project selection, and interview preparation. We outline strategies for maximizing application scores through efficient resource allocation, effective project selection, and structured interview preparation.

Dexterity assessment of hospital workers: prospective comparative study.

Objectives: To compare the manual dexterity and composure under pressure of people in different hospital staff roles using a buzz wire game.

Design: Prospective, observational, comparative study (Tremor study).

Setting: Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, Leeds, UK, during a three week period in 2024.

Dose-Response Associations Between Diet and Risk of Rheumatoid Arthritis: A Meta-Analysis of Prospective Cohort Studies.

To provide a systematic and quantitative summary of dietary factors and rheumatoid arthritis (RA) risk. A systematic review and meta-analysis included prospective cohort studies from 2000 to 2024 reporting relative risks (RRs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for RA incidence relating to 32 different dietary exposures. Linear and non-linear dose-response analyses were conducted.

Joint British Societies' position statement on cardiology training in the United Kingdom.

Cardiology training in the UK is facing significant challenges due to a range of factors. Recent curriculum changes have further compounded this issue and significantly risk the ability to produce adequately trained consultants capable of managing patients with increasingly complex cardiovascular disease. The introduction of mandatory dual accreditation in general internal medicine (GIM) alongside cardiology, by design, results in significantly reduced training opportunities, including procedural and subspecialty exposure.

Outlier detection in cardiac diffusion tensor imaging: Shot rejection or robust fitting?

Cardiac diffusion tensor imaging (cDTI) is highly prone to image corruption, yet robust-fitting methods are rarely used. Single voxel outlier detection (SVOD) can overlook corruptions that are visually obvious, perhaps causing reluctance to replace whole-image shot-rejection (SR) despite its own deficiencies. SVOD's deficiencies may be relatively unimportant: corrupted signals that are not statistical outliers may not be detrimental.

Pregnancy Outcomes in Type 2 Diabetes: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

Objective: Type 2 diabetes (T2D) now accounts for the majority of pre-existing diabetes affecting pregnancy in the UK. Our aim was to determine its impact on pregnancy outcomes compared to type 1 diabetes (T1D), gestational diabetes (GDM) and non-diabetes pregnancies.

Data Sources: PubMed was searched 1 January 2009-2024.

Quality of life, healthcare usage and finances of UK cancer survivors five years post-diagnosis: a matched controlled study.

Purpose: Assessing the long-term impact of cancer on people's lives is challenging due to confounding issues such as aging and comorbidities. We aimed to investigate this impact by comparing the outcomes of cancer survivors with a matched control cohort.

Methods: This was a cross-sectional survey of breast, colorectal and ovarian cancer survivors approximately 5 years post-diagnosis and a cohort of age, sex and social deprivation-matched controls who had never had a cancer diagnosis.

Delayed changes in the transcriptomic profile of cerebral arteries in a rat model of subarachnoid hemorrhage.

Aneurismal subarachnoid hemorrhage (aSAH) is a neurovascular disease characterized by blood released into the subarachnoid space due to rupture of the cerebral arteries. After the onset of bleeding, secondary associated vasospasm (VSP) remains a dramatic side effect that causes severe comorbidities. We analyzed alterations in the expression profiles of arteries from a rat model of SAH using microarray and bioinformatics approaches.

Circulating Blood-Brain Barrier Proteins for Differentiating Ischaemic Stroke Patients from Stroke Mimics.

Background: Stroke is one of the leading causes of death and disability worldwide. The diagnosis of stroke remains largely clinical, yet widely used stroke scoring systems and brain imaging do not satisfactorily allow the distinction of ischaemic stroke (IS) patients from stroke mimics (SMs). Blood biomarkers are promising tools that could facilitate clinical triage.

Brown and beige adipose tissue-derived metabokine and lipokine inter-organ signalling in health and disease.

Adipose tissue has an established endocrine function through the secretion of adipokines. However, a role for bioactive metabolites and lipids, termed metabokines and lipokines, is emerging in adipose tissue-mediated autocrine, paracrine and endocrine signalling and inter-organ communication. Traditionally seen as passive entities, metabolites are now recognized for their active roles in regulating cellular signalling and local and systemic metabolism.

Cardiac structural, functional and energetic assessments during and after pregnancy in women with gestational diabetes mellitus, preeclampsia and healthy pregnancy.

Background: GDM and preeclampsia are common complications of pregnancy, for which overweight/obesity is a common risk factor. Both conditions are associated with a two-to-four-fold increase in future incident heart failure, which may be linked to early maladaptive myocardial changes.

Objectives: To determine maternal myocardial structural, functional, and energetic responses to pregnancies complicated by gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) or preeclampsia compared to healthy pregnancies (HP) at third-trimester of pregnancy and twelve-months postpartum.

Ultrasound-mediated catheter delivery of tissue plasminogen activator promotes thrombolysis by altering fibrin fibre thickness and clot permeability.

It has been proposed that low power, high frequency ultrasound can augment the ability of thrombolytic agents to dissolve clot in patients with venous thromboembolism. We created a bench model to examine what role and mechanism ultrasound may have in this process. Fibrin polymerisation was analysed through modified light-scattering experiments with the inclusion of catheter-mediated ultrasound application.

'More like a partnership': A qualitative evaluation of Communication Coaching for Sonographers (CCS) in obstetric ultrasound.

Introduction: Sonographers are required to deliver unexpected news to expectant parents in real time during obstetric ultrasound scans. The complexity of these interactions requires sonographers to conduct the clinical task while communicating their findings and managing the expectant parent's response within the designated appointment time. Communication coaching for sonographers (CCS) is a tailored intervention that has previously been associated with improvements in confidence and news delivery practice.

Metabolomic signatures associated with fetal growth restriction and small for gestational age: a systematic review.

The pathways involved in the pathophysiology of fetal growth restriction (FGR) and small for gestational age (SGA) are incompletely understood. We conduct a systematic review to identify metabolomic signatures in maternal and newborn tissues and body fluids samples associated with FGR/SGA. Here, we report that 825 non-duplicated metabolites were significantly altered across the 48 included studies using 10 different human biological samples, of which only 56 (17 amino acids, 12 acylcarnitines, 11 glycerophosphocholines, six fatty acids, two hydroxy acids, and eight other metabolites) were significantly and consistently up- or down-regulated in more than one study.

Metformin associates with higher myocardial perfusion reserve and survival in type 2 diabetes mellitus patients.

Metformin is an antihyperglycemic used to treat type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). Patients with T2DM are at increased risk of cardiovascular disease. We explored the association between metformin use and cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) derived stress myocardial blood flow (MBF), myocardial perfusion reserve (MPR) and major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE; all cause death, MI, stroke, heart failure hospitalisation and coronary revascularisation) in patients with T2DM.

Two cooperative lipid binding sites within the pleckstrin homology domain are necessary for AKT binding and stabilization to the plasma membrane.

Almost four decades after the identification of the AKT protein and understanding of its role in cancer, barriers remain in the translation of AKT inhibitors for clinical applications. Here, we provide new molecular insight into the first step of AKT activation where AKT binds to the plasma membrane and its orientation is stabilized in a bilayer with lateral heterogeneity (L-L phase coexistence). We have applied molecular dynamic simulations and molecular and cell biology approaches, and demonstrate that AKT recruitment to the membrane requires a second binding site in the AKT pleckstrin homology (PH) domain that acts cooperatively with the known canonical binding site.