A New Way Forward for Women's Health Research at the National Institutes of Health: A Roadmap From the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine's Consensus Report.

Despite efforts to address inequities, research on women's health conditions (defined as those that uniquely or differently affect women and female individuals) remain significantly understudied. As directed by Congress, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of Research on Women's Health requested the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (National Academies) to conduct an assessment of the state of women's health research at the NIH. The findings of the National Academies committee include: 1) a significant funding inequity, with less than 8% of the total NIH grant budget for fiscal year 2023 allocated to women's health research; 2) a need for improved strategic NIH-wide priority setting, oversight, and adherence to existing policies to support women's health research; 3) a need for a specific institute for research on conditions specific to women's health; and 4) a need for sufficient training and additional funding to grow and retain the women's health research workforce.

Optimal CPAP Weaning Approaches: A Scoping Review.

Background: Bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD) is a prevalent chronic lung disease affecting premature infants, leading to long-term respiratory complications, hospital readmissions, and significant financial burden on families and the health care system. BPD is caused by lung injury, making it crucial to focus on methods to minimize lung injury and prevent the transition from respiratory distress syndrome to BPD by following evidence-based respiratory support strategies.

Purpose: This scoping review examines methods for weaning preterm infants off continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) and evaluates their effectiveness in maintaining respiratory independence.

Enhancing engagement in HIV care among adolescents and young adults: A focus on phone-based navigation and relationship building to address barriers in HIV care.

Structural, psychological, and clinical barriers to HIV care engagement among adolescents and young adults living with HIV (AYAH) persist globally despite gains in HIV epidemic control. Phone-based peer navigation may provide critical peer support, increase delivery flexibility, and require fewer resources. Prior studies show that phone-based navigation and automated text messaging interventions improve HIV care engagement, adherence, and retention among AYAH.

Canine urothelial cell model to study intracellular bacterial community development by uropathogenic Escherichia coli.

Urinary tract infections (UTIs) are among the most common bacterial infections of both dogs and humans, with most caused by uropathogenic Escherichia coli (UPEC). Recurrent UPEC infections are a major concern in the treatment and management of UTIs in both species. In humans, the ability of UPECs to form intracellular bacterial communities (IBCs) within urothelial cells has been implicated in recurrent UTIs.

Secure privacy-preserving record linkage system from re-identification attack.

Privacy-preserving record linkage (PPRL) technology, crucial for linking records across datasets while maintaining privacy, is susceptible to graph-based re-identification attacks. These attacks compromise privacy and pose significant risks, such as identity theft and financial fraud. This study proposes a zero-relationship encoding scheme that minimizes the linkage between source and encoded records to enhance PPRL systems' resistance to re-identification attacks.

Effect of fatigue on neuromuscular and biomechanical variables after anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction: a systematic review.

Introduction: This systematic review is aimed to evaluate the outcomes of published studies on the topic of fatigue-induced neuromuscular and biomechanical changes after anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction.

Evidence Acquisition: The identification of studies involved a search across three databases - PubMed, Scopus, and Sportdiscus - until July 2023. The key terms utilized were fatigue, anterior cruciate ligament, biomechanics, electromyography, and landing.

Non-cell-autonomous regulation of mTORC2 by Hedgehog signaling maintains lipid homeostasis.

Organisms allocate energetic resources between essential cellular processes to maintain homeostasis and, in turn, maximize fitness. The nutritional regulators of energy homeostasis have been studied in detail; however, how developmental signals might impinge on these pathways to govern metabolism is poorly understood. Here, we identify a non-canonical role for Hedgehog (Hh), a classic regulator of development, in maintaining intestinal lipid homeostasis in Caenorhabditis elegans.

Hydrogen sulfide mediates the interaction between C. elegans and Actinobacteria from its natural microbial environment.

Caenorhabditis elegans proliferates poorly in the presence of abundant Actinobacteria from its natural ecology, but it is unknown why. Here, we show how perturbed levels of hydrogen sulfide modulate the growth rate of both C. elegans and Actinobacteria.

Exploring Demographic Disparities in Private Well Water Testing in North Carolina.

The natural, built, and social environments shape drinking water quality supplied by private wells. However, the combined effects of these factors are not well understood. Using North Carolina as a case study, we (i) estimate the demographic characteristics of the private well population; (ii) evaluate representation in well testing records; and (iii) demonstrate how spatial scale influences knowledge of well-using household demographics and representation in testing.

Bayesian Gene Set Benchmark Dose Estimation for "omic" responses.

Motivation: Estimating a toxic reference point using tools like the benchmark dose (BMD) is a critical step in setting policy to regulate pollution and ensure safe environments. Toxicity can be measured for different endpoints, including changes in gene expression and histopathology for various tissues, and is typically explored one gene or tissue at a time in a univariate setting that ignores correlation. In this work, we develop a multivariate estimation procedure to estimate the BMD for specified gene sets.

Common and uncommon risky drinking patterns in young adulthood uncovered by person-specific computational modeling.

Objective: Alcohol use offers social benefits for young adults, but also carries risk of significant negative consequences. Better understanding of processes driving alcohol use for those who experience negative consequences can prevent these harms. These at-risk young adults likely have drinking patterns in common and patterns unique to each individual.

Substance use negatively impacts change in reinforcement during the year following substance use treatment.

Objective: Although research supports an association between increased alternative reinforcement and decreased substance use, the impact of substance use on changes in reinforcement during posttreatment recovery remains untested. This study tested the effect of abstinence duration and substance use frequency on the trajectories of four reinforcement mechanisms, behavioral activation, reward probability, reward barriers, and valued living, from pre- to 12-month posttreatment.

Method: Adults in intensive outpatient substance use disorder treatment ( = 206) completed self-report measures of the four reinforcement constructs and substance use over six timepoints from pre- to 12-month posttreatment.

Atrial Fibrillation and Retinal Stroke.

Importance: Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common, chronic, cardiac arrythmia in older US adults. It is not known whether AF is independently associated with increased risk of retinal stroke (central retinal artery occlusion), a subtype of ischemic stroke that causes severely disabling visual loss in most cases and is a harbinger of further vascular events.

Objective: To determine whether there is an association between AF and retinal stroke.

Shared Local Oncology Care After Allogeneic Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation: A Randomized Clinical Trial.

Importance: Although sharing care with local oncologists after allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) has been proposed for patients living far from HCT centers, it is not known whether a shared strategy is safe or improves patient quality of life (QOL).

Objective: To determine the efficacy and safety of sharing follow-up care after HCT between the HCT specialty center and local oncologists.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This was a multicenter collaborative randomized clinical trial of patients undergoing HCT at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI)-a high volume HCT center in Boston (Massachusetts)-and 8 local oncology practices.

Lessons Learned from the Implementation of the Wake County, North Carolina EMS Medication for Opioid Use Disorder Program.

Objectives: Buprenorphine has recently emerged as a prehospital treatment for opioid use disorder. Limited data exist regarding the implementation of prehospital buprenorphine programs. Our objective was to describe the development, deployment, lessons learned, and ongoing evolution of the Wake County EMS buprenorphine program using data from the first year following implementation.

Registry versus claims-based index dates for studies of cancer diagnosis in administrative data.

Purpose: Studies of healthcare encounters leading to cancer diagnosis have increased over recent years. While some studies examine healthcare utilization before the cancer registry date of diagnosis, relevant pre-diagnosis interactions are not always immediately prior to this date due to date abstraction guidelines. We evaluated agreement of a registry date with a claims-based index and examined Emergency Department (ED) involvement in cancer diagnosis as an example of possible pre-diagnostic healthcare misclassification that could arise from improper date choice.

A Hitchhiker's Guide Toward CSF Biomarkers for Neuro-Oncology.

Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) has emerged as a valuable liquid biopsy source for glioma biomarker discovery and validation. CSF produced within the ventricles circulates through the subarachnoid space, where the composition of glioma-derived analytes is influenced by the proximity and anatomical location of sampling relative to tumor, in addition to underlying tumor biology. The substantial gradients observed between lumbar and intracranial CSF compartments for tumor-derived analytes underscore the importance of sampling site selection.

Pain Coping Skills Training for Patients Receiving Hemodialysis: The HOPE Consortium Randomized Clinical Trial.

Importance: Chronic pain is common among individuals with dialysis-dependent kidney failure.

Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of pain coping skills training (PCST), a cognitive behavioral intervention, on pain interference.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This multicenter randomized clinical trial of PCST vs usual care was conducted across 16 academic centers and 103 outpatient dialysis facilities in the US.

Outcomes of Older Adults and Frail Patients Receiving Idecabtagene Vicleucel: A CIBMTR Study.

Idecabtagene vicleucel (ide-cel) is an anti-BCMA CAR-T cell therapy approved for patients with relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma (RRMM) after 2 prior lines of therapy. There is limited data on outcomes of CAR T in older adults and frail patients with RRMM. In this study, we utilized data from the Center for International Blood and Marrow Transplantation Registry to describe the safety and efficacy of ide-cel in these clinically important subgroups.

Conservation benefits of a large marine protected area network that spans multiple ecosystems.

Marine protected areas (MPAs) are widely implemented tools for long-term ocean conservation and resource management. Assessments of MPA performance have largely focused on specific ecosystems individually and have rarely evaluated performance across multiple ecosystems either in an individual MPA or across an MPA network. We evaluated the conservation performance of 59 MPAs in California's large MPA network, which encompasses 4 primary ecosystems (surf zone, kelp forest, shallow reef, deep reef) and 4 bioregions, and identified MPA attributes that best explain performance.

Biomarkers.

Background: Growth/differentiation factor-15 (GDF15) has been associated with dementia risk, yet its predictive value across cohorts and sub-population, as well as its relationship with endophenotypes relevant to dementia, remains unknown.

Methods: Using the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) study as the discovery cohort, we examined the relationship between plasma GDF15 levels (SomaScan) and risk for incident all-cause dementia (ACD) in late-life (N=4,287, 7-year follow-up, M=75±5) and in midlife (N=11,595, 20-year follow-up, M=57±6). Utilizing the UK Biobank (UKB; replication cohort), we related plasma GDF15 (Olink) to incident ACD (N=35,673, 14-year follow-up, M=61±5), vascular dementia (VaD) and Alzheimer's disease dementia (AD).