Pediatric firearm injuries and socioeconomic vulnerability before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Background: Pediatric firearm injuries disproportionately affect groups experiencing socioeconomic disadvantage. Firearm injuries increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, but the impact on communities by degree of socioeconomic disadvantage is unknown. We examined the association between socioeconomic vulnerability and change in pediatric firearm injuries before versus during the pandemic.

Novel Model of Childhood Appetitive Traits in Children with Obesity.

Background/objectives: Appetitive traits have a central role in energy intake and development of obesity. Child Eating Behavior Questionnaire (CEBQ) is a validated psychometric tool to measure appetitive traits in children. This study sought to assess the CEBQ factor structure in children with obesity.

DNA Methylation Signatures of Cardiovascular Health Provide Insights into Diseases.

Background: The association of overall cardiovascular health (CVH) with changes in DNA methylation (DNAm) has not been well characterized.

Methods: We calculated the American Heart Association's Life's Essential 8 (LE8) score to reflect CVH in five cohorts with diverse ancestry backgrounds. Epigenome-wide association studies (EWAS) for LE8 score were conducted, followed by bioinformatic analyses.

Bridging the Research-to-Practice Gap: The Individual Placement and Support Model.

The Research-to-Practice Gap often hinders the translation of effective healthcare interventions from clinical trials to routine care. Individual Placement and Support (IPS), an evidence-based practice designed to help individuals with mental health conditions achieve and maintain employment, has notably bridged this gap. Unlike many interventions that struggle with widespread implementation, IPS has successfully scaled to over 2,000 programs across all U.

Caregiving and Hypertension in Younger Black Women: The Jackson Heart Study.

Background: Caregiving has been associated with high blood pressure in middle-aged and older women, but this relationship is understudied among younger Black women, a population at high risk for hypertension. We examined the associations of caregiving stress and caregiving for high-needs dependents with incident hypertension among reproductive-age women in the JHS (Jackson Heart Study), a cohort of community-dwelling Black adults.

Methods: We included 453 participants, aged 21 to 44 years, with blood pressure <140/90 mm Hg, and not taking antihypertensive medication at baseline (2000-2004).

Incorporating Aeroallergen Exposure Metrics into Clinical Asthma Care: A Pilot Study Using A Mixed-Methods Survey to Assess Aeroallergen Knowledge, Perceived Asthma Control, and Mitigation Strategies in Households of Children with Asthma.

Mitigation of household allergens is associated with the reduction of asthma exacerbations in those with allergic asthma and is recommended in recent asthma guidelines. However, we need to better understand patient knowledge of aeroallergens in their homes prior to integrating direct allergen measurement methods into standard asthma care. We conducted a mixed-methods sequential pilot study consisting of a survey and virtual interview with caregivers of children aged 3 to 15 with asthma diagnosis (any severity) about asthma control, household environment, mitigation knowledge and strategies, and knowledge of allergens and asthma.

Impact of Nutritional Minerals Biomarkers on Cognitive Performance Among Bangladeshi Rural Adolescents-A Pilot Study.

Nutritional metals (NM) are essential for neurodevelopment and cognitive performance during growth. Nevertheless, epidemiological evidence regarding the associations between NM and brain function remains understudied, particularly among adolescents. Therefore, the objective of this pilot study was to examine the effects of NM biomarkers such as iron (Fe), selenium (Se), zinc (Zn), magnesium (Mg), and copper (Cu) on neurobehavioral functions among a group of rural Bangladeshi adolescents.

Brain age prediction and deviations from normative trajectories in the neonatal connectome.

Structural and functional connectomes undergo rapid changes during the third trimester and the first month of postnatal life. Despite progress, our understanding of the developmental trajectories of the connectome in the perinatal period remains incomplete. Brain age prediction uses machine learning to estimate the brain's maturity relative to normative data.

Distort, post, repeat: Laundering antisemitism on "cliquey networks" during COVID-19.

Today, in the age of the internet, during recent epidemics such as H1N1, Ebola and Covid-19, it is striking to see how old accusatory scripts are circulated and perpetuated via social media, which serve as new channels for discrimination and blame directed at traditional figures who have been scapegoated at different moments in the history of European epidemics. The article shows how the laundering of information into a cliquey network takes empirical shape during a health crisis. We do so by focusing on VKontakte, a Russian social network similar to Facebook and the 15th largest website in the world in terms of traffic.

Leveraging international stakeholders' experiences with oral PrEP costs to accelerate implementation of the monthly dapivirine vaginal ring: A qualitative study.

Background: Costing and financing systematic implementation are recognized barriers to human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) prevention. In the absence of empiric implementation and economic data, perspectives from international stakeholders involved in developing and supporting daily oral pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) policy, and programs can provide critical insights for developing costed plans to support and accelerate the rollout of novel long-acting PrEP (LA-PrEP) methods, such as the monthly dapivirine vaginal ring (PrEP ring).

Methods: We interviewed stakeholders from purposively selected international organizations about anticipated PrEP-ring implementation costs, evidence gaps and key process steps for developing a costed rollout plan template (CRPT).

PartIES: a disease subtyping framework with Partition-level Integration using diffusion-Enhanced Similarities from multi-omics Data.

Integrating multi-omics data helps identify disease subtypes. Many similarity-based methods were developed for disease subtyping using multi-omics data, with many of them focusing on extracting common clustering structures across multiple types of omics data, but not preserving data-type-specific clustering structures. Moreover, clustering performance of similarity-based methods is affected when similarity measures are noisy.

[F]FDG PET/CT performs better than CT in determining the bone biopsy site : randomized controlled clinical trial.

Background: Bone biopsy is the gold standard for diagnosing bone metastases. However, there is no clinical consensus regarding the optimal imaging test for determining the puncture site.

Methods: We compared the performance of [F]FDG PET/CT with CT in detecting bone metastases to achieve the highest biopsy efficiency.

Case-control study of clotting differences using ROTEM testing in pregnant patients with early vaginal bleeding.

Background: Vaginal bleeding in early pregnancy is a common presentation in the Emergency Department (ED), often resulting in pregnancy loss. Hypercoagulability exceeding normal physiological changes may be associated with miscarriage, but conventional clotting tests do not reliably detect this effect. Rotational thromboelastometry (ROTEM), which performs a more comprehensive clotting evaluation, may demonstrate coagulopathic abnormalities contributing to vaginal bleeding and miscarriage in early pregnancy that are not present in normal gestation.

Impact of neighborhood-level COVID-19 mortality on the increase in drug overdose mortality in New York City during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Background: Overdose mortality increased substantially during the COVID-19 pandemic, but it is unclear to what extent the COVID-19 mortality had contributed to this increase at the neighborhood level.

Methods: This was an ecological study based on New York City United Hospital Fund (NYC UHF) neighborhood-level data from 2019 to 2021, split into two time-windows: pre-COVID (2019) and during-COVID (2020 and 2021). Linear regression models were used to estimate the effect of cumulative COVID-19 mortality on the increase in drug overdose mortality from the pre-COVD to during-COVID periods at the neighborhood level, with and without adjusting for neighborhood characteristics.

Cost-effectiveness of viral load testing for transitioning antiretroviral therapy-experienced children to dolutegravir in South Africa: a modelling analysis.

Background: For children with HIV on antiretroviral therapy (ART), transitioning to dolutegravir-containing regimens is recommended. The aim of this study was to assess whether introducing viral load testing to inform new nucleoside or nucleotide reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NRTIs) for children with HIV and viraemia alongside dolutegravir-based ART is beneficial and of good economic value.

Methods: We used the Cost-Effectiveness of Preventing AIDS Complications-Pediatric model to project clinical and cost implications of three strategies among a simulated cohort of South African children aged 8 years with HIV receiving abacavir-lamivudine-efavirenz: (1) continue current ART (no dolutegravir; abacavir-lamivudine-efavirenz); (2) transition all children with HIV to dolutegravir, keeping current NRTIs (dolutegravir; abacavir-lamivudine-dolutegravir); or (3) transition to dolutegravir based on viral load testing (viral load plus dolutegravir), keeping current NRTIs if virologically suppressed (abacavir-lamivudine-dolutegravir, 70% of cohort) or switching abacavir to zidovudine (zidovudine) if viraemic (zidovudine-lamivudine-dolutegravir, 30%).

The association of HIV status with triple-negative breast cancer in patients with breast cancer in South Africa: a cross-sectional analysis of case-only data from a prospective cohort study.

Background: Breast cancer is the most common malignancy diagnosed among women in South Africa, with the aggressive triple-negative subtype comprising approximately 15% of breast cancers in this population. South Africa has the largest population of people with HIV in the world. This study aims to evaluate the association between HIV status and the proportion of patients with breast cancer with the triple-negative subtype.