Resolving tissue complexity by multimodal spatial omics modeling with MISO.

Spatial molecular profiling has provided biomedical researchers valuable opportunities to better understand the relationship between cellular localization and tissue function. Effectively modeling multimodal spatial omics data is crucial for understanding tissue complexity and underlying biology. Furthermore, improvements in spatial resolution have led to the advent of technologies that can generate spatial molecular data with subcellular resolution, requiring the development of computationally efficient methods that can handle the resulting large-scale datasets.

Serum Biomarkers of Pulmonary Damage and Risk for Progression of Rheumatoid Arthritis-Associated Interstitial Lung Disease.

Objective: To investigate baseline and change of pulmonary damage biomarkers (serum Krebs von den Lungen 6 [KL-6], human surfactant protein D [hSP-D], and matrix metalloproteinase 7 [MMP-7]) with rheumatoid arthritis-associated interstitial lung disease (RA-ILD) progression.

Methods: In the Korean Rheumatoid Arthritis Interstitial Lung Disease (KORAIL) cohort, a prospective cohort, we enrolled patients with RA and ILD confirmed by chest computed tomography imaging and followed annually. ILD progression was defined as worsening in physiological and radiological domains of the 2022 American Thoracic Society, European Respiratory Society, Japanese Respiratory Society, and Latin American Thoracic Society guideline for progressive pulmonary fibrosis (PPF).

The impact of neoadjuvant therapy in patients with left-sided resectable pancreatic cancer: an international multicenter study.

Purpose: To assess the association between neoadjuvant therapy and overall survival (OS) in patients with left-sided resectable pancreatic cancer (RPC) compared to upfront surgery.

Background: Left-sided pancreatic cancer is associated with worse OS compared to right-sided pancreatic cancer. Although neoadjuvant therapy is currently seen as not effective in patients with RPC, current randomized trials included mostly patients with right-sided RPC.

Risk of Osteoporotic Fractures among Patients with Thyroid Cancer: A Nationwide Population-Based Cohort Study.

Background: The associations between thyroid cancer and skeletal outcomes have not been thoroughly investigated. We aimed to investigate the risk of osteoporotic fractures in patients with thyroid cancer compared to that in a matched control group.

Methods: This retrospective cohort study included 2,514 patients with thyroid cancer and 75,420 matched controls from the Korean National Health Insurance Service-National Sample Cohort (NHIS-NSC, 2006-2019).

Can fast wall shear stress computation predict adverse cardiac events in patients with intermediate non-flow limiting stenoses?

Background And Aims: Coronary angiography-derived wall shear stress (WSS) may enable identification of vulnerable plaques and patients. A new recently introduced software allows seamless three-dimensional quantitative coronary angiography (3D-QCA) reconstruction and WSS computation within a single user-friendly platform carrying promise for clinical applications. This study examines for the first time the efficacy of this software in detecting vulnerable lesions in patients with intermediate non-flow limiting stenoses.

Engineering Yarrowia lipolytica for the production of β-carotene by carbon and redox rebalancing.

Background: β-Carotene is a natural product that has garnered significant commercial interest. Considerable efforts have been made to meet such demand through the metabolic engineering of microorganisms, yet there is still potential for improvement. In this study, engineering approaches including carbon and redox rebalancing were used to maximize β-carotene production in Yarrowia lipolytica.

Graphene Quantum Dots as Antifibrotic Therapy for Kidney Disease.

Graphene quantum dots (GQDs) have received much attention for their biomedical applications, such as bioimaging and drug delivery. Additionally, they have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties. We used GQDs to treat renal fibrosis and confirmed their ability to protect renal cells from excessive oxidative stress in vitro and in vivo.

The Effects of Musical Factors on the Perception of Auditory Illusions.

This study delves into how various musical factors influence the experience of auditory illusions, building on Diana Deutsch's scale illusion experiments and subsequent studies. Exploring the interaction between scale mode and timbre, this study assesses their influence on auditory misperceptions, while also considering the impact of an individual's musical training and ability to discern absolute pitch. Participants were divided into nonmusicians, musicians with absolute pitch, and musicians with relative pitch, and were exposed to stimuli modified across three scale modes (tonal, dissonant, atonal) and two timbres (same, different).

Intraoperative Facet Joint Block Reduces Pain After Oblique Lumbar Interbody Fusion: A Double-Blinded, Randomized, Placebo-Controlled Clinical Trial.

Background: Oblique lumbar interbody fusion (OLIF) results in less tissue damage than in other surgeries, but immediate postoperative pain occurs. Notably, facet joint widening occurs in the vertebral body after OLIF. We hypothesized that the application of a facet joint block to the area of widening would relieve facet joint pain.

Atomic-Level Stoichiometry Control of Ferroelectric HfZrO Thin Films by Understanding Molecular-Level Chemical Physical Reactions.

HfO-based thin films have garnered significant interest for integrating robust ferroelectricity into next-generation memory and logic chips, owing to their applicability with modern Si device technology. While numerous studies have focused on enhancing ferroelectric properties and understanding their fundamentals, the fabrication of ultrathin HfO-based ferroelectric films has seldom been reported. This study presents the concept of atomic-level stoichiometry control of ferroelectric HfZrO films by examining the molecular-level interactions of precursor molecules in the atomic layer deposition (ALD) process through theoretical calculations.

Safety and Efficacy of Tranexamic Acid in General Surgery.

Importance: Perioperative bleeding is common in general surgery. The POISE-3 (Perioperative Ischemic Evaluation-3) trial demonstrated efficacy of prophylactic tranexamic acid (TXA) compared with placebo in preventing major bleeding without increasing vascular outcomes in noncardiac surgery.

Objective: To determine the safety and efficacy of prophylactic TXA, specifically in general surgery.

Gender Disparities and Lung Cancer Screening Outcomes Among Individuals Who Have Never Smoked.

Importance: Lung cancer in individuals who have never smoked (INS) is a growing global concern, with a rapidly increasing incidence and proportion among all lung cancer cases. Particularly in East Asia, opportunistic lung cancer screening (LCS) programs targeting INS have gained popularity. However, the sex-specific outcomes and drawbacks of screening INS remain unexplored, with data predominantly focused on women.

Advances, Challenges, and Opportunities in Plasmonic Nanogap-Enhanced Raman Scattering with Nanoparticles.

Surface-enhanced Raman scattering has been widely used for molecular/material characterization and chemical and biological sensing and imaging applications. In particular, plasmonic nanogap-enhanced Raman scattering (NERS) is based on the highly localized electric field formed within the nanogap between closely spaced metallic surfaces to more strongly amplify Raman signals than the cases with molecules on metal surfaces. Nanoparticle-based NERS offers extraordinarily strong Raman signals and a plethora of opportunities in sensing, imaging and many different types of biomedical applications.

The role of mTOR activation in steroid-resistant asthma: insights from particulate matter-induced mouse model and patient studies.

Particulate matter (PM) exposure has been proposed as one of the causes of steroid resistance. However, studies investigating this using patient samples or animals are still lacking. Therefore, in this study, we aimed to investigate the changes in cytokines and mTOR (mammalian target of rapamycin) activation in patients with steroid resistant asthma and the role of mTOR in a mouse model of steroid resistant asthma induced by PM.

CXR-LLaVA: a multimodal large language model for interpreting chest X-ray images.

Objective: This study aimed to develop an open-source multimodal large language model (CXR-LLaVA) for interpreting chest X-ray images (CXRs), leveraging recent advances in large language models (LLMs) to potentially replicate the image interpretation skills of human radiologists.

Materials And Methods: For training, we collected 592,580 publicly available CXRs, of which 374,881 had labels for certain radiographic abnormalities (Dataset 1) and 217,699 provided free-text radiology reports (Dataset 2). After pre-training a vision transformer with Dataset 1, we integrated it with an LLM influenced by the LLaVA network.

Accuracy of Fully Automated and Human-assisted AI-based CT Quantification of Pleural Effusion Changes after Thoracentesis.

Quantifying pleural effusion change on chest CT is important for evaluating disease severity and treatment response. The purpose of this study was to assess the accuracy of artificial intelligence (AI)-based volume quantification of pleural effusion change on CT images, using the volume of drained fluid as the reference standard. Seventy-nine participants (mean age, 65 ± [SD] 13 years; 47 male) undergoing thoracentesis were prospectively enrolled from October 2021 to September 2023.

Identifying Disease Associated Multi-Omics Network With Mixed Graphical Models Based on Markov Random Field Model.

In this article, we proposed a new method named fused mixed graphical model (FMGM), which can infer network structures associated with dichotomous phenotypes. FMGM is based on a pairwise Markov random field model, and statistical analyses including the proposed method were conducted to find biological markers and underlying network structures of the atopic dermatitis (AD) from multiomics data of 6-month-old infants. The performance of FMGM was evaluated with simulations by using synthetic datasets of power-law networks, showing that FMGM had superior performance for identifying the differences of the networks compared to the separate inference with the previous method, causalMGM (F1-scores 0.

Cell-Interface-Deciphering Lipid Nanotablet for Nanoparticle Logic Gate-Based Real-Time Single-Cell Analysis.

Analyzing the cell interface is of paramount importance in understanding how cells interact and communicate with other cells, but an advanced analytical platform that can process complex and networked interactions between cell surface ligands and receptors is lacking. Herein, we developed the cell-interface-deciphering lipid nanotablet (CID-LNT) for multiplexed real-time cell analysis. LNT is a nanoparticle-tethered lipid bilayer chip where freely diffusing plasmonic nanoparticles induce scattering signal changes.

Use of Immunoglobulin Replacement Therapy in Clinical Practice: A Review.

Immunoglobulins (Igs) are produced by B lymphocytes and play a key role in humoral immunity. Igs are classified into five isotypes (IgG, IgA, IgM, IgE, and IgD). Their primary function is to recognize and bind to foreign antigens.

Urinary biomarkers for diagnosing acute kidney injury in sepsis in the emergency department.

Background: Development of acute kidney injury (AKI) in patients with sepsis is associated with increased mortality, highlighting the importance of early detection and management. However, baseline creatinine or urine output measurements are required for AKI diagnosis, which can be challenging in emergency departments (EDs). We aimed to evaluate the association between urinary biomarkers and the AKI diagnosis or 30-day survival status in patients with sepsis in the ED.

Synthesis and Biological Evaluation of 5'-Deoxy-adenosine Derivatives as A Adenosine Receptor Ligands.

The A Adenosine Receptor (AAR) is an important therapeutic target due to its role in inflammation and immune response regulation. Herein, we synthesized and evaluated 5'-deoxy-adenosine derivatives with oxygen at the 4'-position, comparing them to previously studied 4'-thionucleosides. Compound exhibited the highest binding affinity ( = 5.

Neurocognitive Profiles of Early Adulthood Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder.

Objectives: This study examined the neurocognitive profiles of early adulthood attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) patients using the Korean version of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, 4th Edition (K-WAIS-IV) and Continuous Performance Test 3rd Edition (CPT-3) assessment results.

Methods: A total of 105 individuals underwent the K-WAIS-IV assessment, and 68 participants completed the CPT-3. We examined the differences between intelligence subindex scores using paired t-tests and applied Pearson's correlation analysis to determine the correlation between the K-WAIS-IV and CPT-3 scores.