Deep learning on CT scans to predict checkpoint inhibitor treatment outcomes in advanced melanoma.

Immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) treatment has proven successful for advanced melanoma, but is associated with potentially severe toxicity and high costs. Accurate biomarkers for response are lacking. The present work is the first to investigate the value of deep learning on CT imaging of metastatic lesions for predicting ICI treatment outcomes in advanced melanoma.

In vitro susceptibility of 147 international clinical Mycobacterium abscessus isolates to epetraborole and comparators by broth microdilution.

Background: Mycobacterium abscessus is a highly drug-resistant non-tuberculous mycobacterium (NTM) for which treatment is limited by the lack of active oral antimycobacterials and frequent adverse reactions. Epetraborole is a novel oral, boron-containing antimicrobial that inhibits bacterial leucyl-tRNA synthetase, an essential enzyme in protein synthesis, and has been shown to have anti-M. abscessus activity in preclinical studies.

Limited use of opioid prescribing guidelines in Dutch emergency departments: results of a nationwide survey.

Background: In recent years, the Netherlands has experienced a notable increase in opioid prescriptions and associated fatalities. Emergency department (ED) patients exhibit relatively high rates of opioid use (15%) and misuse (23% of patients who present to the ED and use prescription opioids test positive for misuse). To mitigate opioid-related harm, the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) advocates for the use of non-opioid analgesics and minimal opioid prescriptions.

Towards safe and reliable deep learning for lung nodule malignancy estimation using out-of-distribution detection.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) models may fail or suffer from reduced performance when applied to unseen data that differs from the training data distribution, referred to as dataset shift. Automatic detection of out-of-distribution (OOD) data contributes to safe and reliable clinical implementation of AI models. In this study, we propose a recognized OOD detection method that utilizes the Mahalanobis distance (MD) and compare its performance to widely known classical methods.

Age-related unstable transient states and imbalanced activation proportion of brain networks in people with autism spectrum disorder: A resting-state fMRI study using coactivation pattern analyses.

The atypical static brain functions related to the executive control network (ECN), default mode network (DMN), and salience network (SN) in people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has been widely reported. However, their transient functions in ASD are not clear. We aim to identify transient network states (TNSs) using coactivation pattern (CAP) analysis to characterize the age-related atypical transient functions in ASD.

Genome-wide association study on chronic postsurgical pain after abdominal surgeries in the UK Biobank.

Introduction: Chronic pain is one of the most common and severe complications after surgery, affecting quality of life and overall wellbeing of patients. Several risk factors have been identified but the mechanisms of chronic postsurgical pain development remain unclear. This study aimed to identify single-nucleotide polymorphisms associated with developing chronic postsurgical pain after abdominal surgery, one of the most common types of surgery.

Replacing rifampicin with minocycline increases the activity of the treatment regimen for Mycobacterium avium complex pulmonary disease in a dynamic hollow-fibre system.

Mycobacterium avium complex bacteria cause chronic pulmonary disease (MAC-PD) in susceptible patients [1]. The recommended treatment regimen (rifampicin, ethambutol and azithromycin) achieves 65% cure rates but with considerable toxicity and drug-drug interactions [2,3]. Minocycline proved active in monotherapy experiments using the hollow-fibre model [4].

Syndromic Retinitis Pigmentosa.

Retinitis pigmentosa (RP) is a progressive inherited retinal dystrophy, characterized by the degeneration of photoreceptors, presenting as a rod-cone dystrophy. Approximately 20-30% of patients with RP also exhibit extra-ocular manifestations in the context of a syndrome. This manuscript discusses the broad spectrum of syndromes associated with RP, pathogenic mechanisms, clinical manifestations, differential diagnoses, clinical management approaches, and future perspectives.

A novel way to use cross-validation to measure connectivity by machine learning allows epilepsy surgery outcome prediction.

The rate of success of epilepsy surgery, ensuring seizure-freedom, is limited by the lack of epileptogenicity biomarkers. Previous evidence supports the critical role of functional connectivity during seizure generation to characterize the epileptogenic network (EN). However, EN dynamics is highly variable across patients, hindering the development of diagnostic biomarkers.

- a large-scale dataset of 3D medical shapes for computer vision.

Objectives: The shape is commonly used to describe the objects. State-of-the-art algorithms in medical imaging are predominantly diverging from computer vision, where voxel grids, meshes, point clouds, and implicit surface models are used. This is seen from the growing popularity of ShapeNet (51,300 models) and Princeton ModelNet (127,915 models).

Practical Application of Value-Based Medicine in Chronic Pelvic Pain: A Qualitative Study.

Rationale: Chronic pelvic pain syndrome (CPPS) is prevalent and a complex multifactorial condition. The incidence is rising. CPPS patients may benefit from multidisciplinary care in a structured care pathway.

FAIR Data Cube, a FAIR data infrastructure for integrated multi-omics data analysis.

Motivation: We are witnessing an enormous growth in the amount of molecular profiling (-omics) data. The integration of multi-omics data is challenging. Moreover, human multi-omics data may be privacy-sensitive and can be misused to de-anonymize and (re-)identify individuals.

Malnutrition Diagnosed via Global Leadership Initiative on Malnutrition (GLIM) Criteria - Association with Clinical Outcomes and Predictive Value: A Systematic Review of Systematic Reviews.

Objectives: Malnutrition is very common in people with cancer. The Global Leadership Initiative on Malnutrition (GLIM) recommendation on criteria has been proposed as a gold standard for diagnosing malnutrition. The diagnosis of malnutrition includes phenotypic criteria such as unintentional weight loss and etiologic criteria such as reduced food intake.

The influence of the dynamic context of the pandemic on the predictive performance of mortality predictions over time in older patients hospitalised for COVID-19.

Objective: During the COVID-19 pandemic, dynamic factors such as governmental policies, improved treatment and prevention options and viral mutations changed the incidence of outcomes and possibly changed the relation between predictors and outcomes. The aim of the present study was to assess whether the dynamic context of the pandemic influenced the predictive performance of mortality predictions over time in older patients hospitalised for COVID-19.

Study Design And Setting: The COVID-OLD study, a multicentre cohort study in the Netherlands, included COVID-19 patients aged 70 years and older hospitalised during the first (early 2020), second (late 2020), third (late 2021) or fourth wave (early 2022).

Cost-Effectiveness of Frontline TKI Strategies for Chronic Myeloid Leukemia Patients: in Pursuit of Treatment-Free Remission and Dose Reduction.

Objectives: Chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) management now includes dose-reduction (DR) and treatment-free remission (TFR). Evaluating cost-effectiveness of lifelong-prescribed expensive tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) for CML is crucial. Prior cost-effectiveness evaluations state that imatinib is the favorable frontline TKI.

Sexual, relational, and psychological functioning in male partners of women with reported Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser syndrome-a case-control study.

Study Question: Do sexual, relational, and psychological functioning of male partners of women with Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser (MRKH) syndrome differ from male partners of women without MRKH syndrome?

Summary Answer: Male partners of women with MRKH syndrome did not significantly differ in sexual functioning but reported higher relational satisfaction and less anxiety than the control group.

What Is Known Already: To date, only a few studies have reported occasionally about sexual, psychological, and relational functioning of partners of women with MRKH syndrome. The results seem to suggest sexual satisfaction in these men, contrary to the more often reported insecurities in women with MRKH syndrome surrounding sexuality and relationships.

Model-Informed Once-Daily Dosing Strategy for Bedaquiline and Delamanid in Children, Adolescents and Adults with Tuberculosis.

The complexity of the currently registered dosing schedules for bedaquiline and delamanid is a barrier to uptake in drug-resistant tuberculosis treatment across all ages. A simpler once-daily dosing schedule is critical to ensure patient-friendly regimens with good adherence. We assessed expected drug exposures with proposed once-daily doses for adults and compared novel model-informed once-daily dosing strategies for children with current World Health Organization (WHO) recommended dosing.

The relationship between callous-unemotional traits and internalizing psychopathology in adolescent psychiatric inpatients: a network analysis.

Background: Numerous studies have investigated the relevance of callous-unemotional traits in relation to externalizing psychopathology among children and adolescents. However, less research has examined the connections between callous-unemotional traits and internalizing psychopathology and findings were inconsistent. Consequently, the present study aimed to elucidate the role of callous-unemotional traits in the context of depression and anxiety while controlling for conduct problems, age, and gender.

Family concerns in organ donor conversations: a qualitative embedded multiple-case study.

Background: Listening and responding to family concerns in organ and tissue donation is generally considered important, but has never been researched in real time. We aimed to explore in real time, (a) which family concerns emerge in the donation process, (b) how these concerns manifest during and after the donor conversation, and (c) how clinicians respond to the concerns during the donor conversation.

Methods: A qualitative embedded multiple-case study in eight Dutch hospitals was conducted.

Assessment and ascertainment in psychiatric molecular genetics: challenges and opportunities for cross-disorder research.

Psychiatric disorders are highly comorbid, heritable, and genetically correlated [1-4]. The primary objective of cross-disorder psychiatric genetics research is to identify and characterize both the shared genetic factors that contribute to convergent disease etiologies and the unique genetic factors that distinguish between disorders [4, 5]. This information can illuminate the biological mechanisms underlying comorbid presentations of psychopathology, improve nosology and prediction of illness risk and trajectories, and aid the development of more effective and targeted interventions.

Generation and characterization of CRISPR-Cas9-mediated XPC gene knockout in human skin cells.

Xeroderma pigmentosum group C (XPC) is a versatile protein crucial for sensing DNA damage in the global genome nucleotide excision repair (GG-NER) pathway. This pathway is vital for mammalian cells, acting as their essential approach for repairing DNA lesions stemming from interactions with environmental factors, such as exposure to ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the sun. Loss-of-function mutations in the XPC gene confer a photosensitive phenotype in XP-C patients, resulting in the accumulation of unrepaired UV-induced DNA damage.

Evaluating the Learning Curve and Patient Outcomes in Endoscopically Assisted Craniosynostosis Surgery: A 20-Year Analysis.

Objectives: To analyze the learning curve associated with endoscopic-assisted craniosynostosis surgery (EACS) at a single institution over a period of 2 decades.

Material And Methods: Patients who underwent EACS between 2004 and 2023 were included in this retrospective study. The impact of surgical experience was assessed by analyzing the duration of surgery and anesthesia, blood loss, need for blood transfusion, postoperative complications, and length of hospital stay, in relation to the number of surgeries performed.