Effect of mass drug administration on malaria incidence in southeast Senegal during 2020-22: a two-arm, open-label, cluster-randomised controlled trial.

Background: In Africa, the scale-up of malaria-control interventions has reduced malaria burden, but progress towards elimination has stalled. Mass drug administration (MDA) is promising as a transmission-reducing strategy, but evidence from low-to-moderate transmission settings is needed. We aimed to assess the safety, coverage, and effect of three cycles of MDA with dihydroartemisinin-piperaquine plus single, low-dose primaquine on Plasmodium falciparum incidence and prevalence in southeast Senegal.

Baseline predictors of cross-sectional and longitudinal performance on the symbol digit modalities test in individuals with multiple sclerosis.

Background: Cognitive impairment occurs frequently in persons with multiple sclerosis (PwMS) at some point in the course of the disease. However, not all PwMS develop cognitive difficulties suggesting a role for important moderating factors. We examined baseline predictors of cross-sectional and longitudinal change in cognitive performance in PwMS.

Insomnia Prevalence and Correlates in Cancer Patients Undergoing Treatment.

Background: Insomnia is the most common sleep disturbance among cancer patients undergoing active treatment. If untreated, it is associated with significant physical and psychological health consequences. Prior efforts to determine insomnia prevalence and correlates have primarily assessed patients in clinical trials, in limited disease groups, and excluding important patient subgroups.

Molecule interacting with CasL-2 enhances tumor progression and alters radiosensitivity in cervical cancer.

Objective: Cervical cancer is a common malignancy among women, and radiotherapy remains a primary treatment modality across all disease stages. However, resistance to radiotherapy frequently results in treatment failure, highlighting the need to identify novel therapeutic targets to improve clinical outcomes.

Methods: The expression of molecule interacting with CasL-2 (MICAL2) was confirmed in cervical cancer tissues and cell lines through western blotting (WB) and immunohistochemistry (IHC).

Unsupervised deep learning of electrocardiograms enables scalable human disease profiling.

The 12-lead electrocardiogram (ECG) is inexpensive and widely available. Whether conditions across the human disease landscape can be detected using the ECG is unclear. We developed a deep learning denoising autoencoder and systematically evaluated associations between ECG encodings and ~1,600 Phecode-based diseases in three datasets separate from model development, and meta-analyzed the results.

The impact of ovulation-suppressing contraceptives on behavioral and functional difficulties in borderline personality disorder.

Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is characterized by rapidly shifting emotional, interpersonal, and behavioral symptoms, often co-morbid with mood and anxiety disorders. Females are more likely to be diagnosed with BPD than males and exhibit greater functional impairment. Hormonal fluctuations may influence the manifestation of BPD symptoms.

Small protein ERSP encoded by LINC02870 promotes triple negative breast cancer progression via IRE1α/XBP1s activation.

Clinical treatment options for triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) are currently limited to chemotherapy because of a lack of effective therapeutic targets. Recent evidence suggests that long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) encode bioactive peptides or proteins, thereby playing noncanonical yet significant roles in regulating cellular processes. However, the potential of lncRNA-translated products in cancer progression remains largely unknown.

BOston Neonatal Brain Injury Data for Hypoxic Ischemic Encephalopathy (BONBID-HIE): I. MRI and Lesion Labeling.

Hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy (HIE) is a brain injury that occurs in 1 ~ 5/1000 term neonates. Accurate identification and segmentation of HIE-related lesions in neonatal brain magnetic resonance images (MRIs) is the first step toward identifying high-risk patients, understanding neurological symptoms, evaluating treatment effects, and predicting outcomes. We release the first public dataset containing neonatal brain diffusion MRI and expert annotation of lesions from 133 patients diagnosed with HIE.

Evolution of Omicron lineage towards increased fitness in the upper respiratory tract in the absence of severe lung pathology.

The emergence of the Omicron lineage represented a major genetic drift in SARS-CoV-2 evolution. This was associated with phenotypic changes including evasion of pre-existing immunity and decreased disease severity. Continuous evolution within the Omicron lineage raised concerns of potential increased transmissibility and/or disease severity.

mosGILT antibodies interfere with Plasmodium sporogony in Anopheles gambiae.

Plasmodium, the causative agents of malaria, are obtained by mosquitoes from an infected human. Following Plasmodium acquisition by Anopheles gambiae, mosquito gamma-interferon-inducible lysosomal thiol reductase (mosGILT) plays a critical role in its subsequent sporogony in the mosquito. A critical location for this development is the midgut, a tissue we show expresses mosGILT.

CRISPR-Hybrid: A CRISPR-Mediated Intracellular Directed Evolution Platform for RNA Aptamers.

Recent advances in gene editing and precise regulation of gene expression based on CRISPR technologies have provided powerful tools for the understanding and manipulation of gene functions. Fusing RNA aptamers to the sgRNA of CRISPR can recruit cognate RNA-binding protein (RBP) effectors to target genomic sites, and the expression of sgRNA containing different RNA aptamers permit simultaneous multiplexed and multifunctional gene regulations. Here, we report an intracellular directed evolution platform for RNA aptamers against intracellularly expressed RBPs.

A population based study of bariatric surgery in Illinois.

Background: Utilization of metabolic and bariatric surgery has increased significantly over the last 2decades, yet barriers to access remain.

Objectives: This study aimed to 1) define rates of metabolic and bariatric surgery utilization for qualifying adults in Illinois and 2) describe patient characteristics associated with undergoing surgery at Illinois hospitals with low metabolic and bariatric surgery volume.

Setting: Metabolic and bariatric surgery at all nonfederal Illinois hospitals was included.

A Radiomic-Clinical Model of Contrast-Enhanced Mammography for Breast Cancer Biopsy Outcome Prediction.

Rationale And Objectives: In the USA over 1 million breast biopsies are performed annually. Approximately 9.6% diagnostic exams were given Breast Imaging Reporting and Data System (BI-RADS) ≥4A, most of which are 4A/4B.

Optimized mammalian expression system for the ubiquitin E3 ligase E6AP/UBE3A.

E6AP/UBE3A is the founding member of the HECT (Homologous to the E6-AP Carboxyl Terminus) ubiquitin E3 ligase family, which add ubiquitin post-translationally to protein substrates. E6AP has been structurally defined in complex with human papillomavirus (HPV) oncoprotein E6 and its gain-of-function substrate tumor suppressor p53; however, there is currently no report of E6AP being expressed and purified from mammalian cells, as studies to date have isolated E6AP from E. coli or insect cells.

N-terminal fragment shedding contributes to signaling of the full-length adhesion receptor ADGRL3.

Most adhesion GPCRs undergo autoproteolytic cleavage during receptor biosynthesis, resulting in non-covalently bound N- and C-terminal fragments (NTF and CTF) that remain associated during receptor trafficking to the plasma membrane. While substantial evidence supports increased G protein signaling when just the CTF is expressed, there is an ongoing debate about whether NTF removal is required to initiate signaling in the context of the wild-type receptor. Here, we use adhesion GPCR latrophilin-3 (ADGRL3) as a model receptor to investigate tethered agonist-mediated activation.

Association between activity quotient and cause-specific mortality - A prospective cohort study of 0.5 million participants in Asia.

Background: Regular physical activity (PA) is important for reducing the risk of chronic diseases and improving overall health. Activity Quotient (AQ) is a novel metric that translates heart rate during PA into a weekly score, providing an objective measure of an individual's PA. We prospectively examined the association of AQ with cancer and cardiovascular (CVD) mortality outcomes, the two major causes of death, in a Taiwanese population.

Q&A with Lin Shen.

Professor Lin Shen, MD, graduated from Xuzhou Medical College in 1984 and Beijing Medical University in 1995. She trained at the US National Institutes of Health in 2000, focusing on therapies for gastrointestinal tumors. Currently, she is director of the Department of Gastrointestinal Oncology and Department of Early Drug Development Center, Peking University Cancer Hospital.

Safety and immunogenicity of ascending doses of influenza A(H7N9) inactivated vaccine with or without MF59®.

Introduction: While it remains impossible to predict the timing of the next influenza pandemic, novel avian influenza A viruses continue to be considered a significant threat.

Methods: A Phase II study was conducted in healthy adults aged 18-64 years to assess the safety and immunogenicity of two intramuscular doses of pre-pandemic 2017 influenza A(H7N9) inactivated vaccine administered 21 days apart. Participants were randomized (n = 105 in each of Arms 1-3) to receive 3.

A Phase 2b, multicenter, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study to evaluate the efficacy and safety of intravenous prasinezumab in early-stage Parkinson's disease (PADOVA): Rationale, design, and baseline data.

Introduction: Prasinezumab was shown to potentially delay motor progression in individuals with early-stage Parkinson's disease (PD) who were either treatment-naïve or on monoamine oxidase type B inhibitor (MAO-Bi) therapy in the PASADENA study. We report the rationale, design, and baseline patient characteristics of the PADOVA study, designed to evaluate prasinezumab in an early-stage PD population receiving standard-of-care (SOC) symptomatic medications.

Methods: PADOVA (NCT04777331) is a Phase 2b, multicenter, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel-group study, in which individuals with early-stage PD on SOC stable symptomatic monotherapy (levodopa or MAO-Bi) receive intravenous prasinezumab 1500 mg every 4 weeks.

RAMIE: retrieval-augmented multi-task information extraction with large language models on dietary supplements.

Objective: To develop an advanced multi-task large language model (LLM) framework for extracting diverse types of information about dietary supplements (DSs) from clinical records.

Methods: We focused on 4 core DS information extraction tasks: named entity recognition (2 949 clinical sentences), relation extraction (4 892 sentences), triple extraction (2 949 sentences), and usage classification (2 460 sentences). To address these tasks, we introduced the retrieval-augmented multi-task information extraction (RAMIE) framework, which incorporates: (1) instruction fine-tuning with task-specific prompts; (2) multi-task training of LLMs to enhance storage efficiency and reduce training costs; and (3) retrieval-augmented generation, which retrieves similar examples from the training set to improve task performance.