NTHi killing activity is reduced in COPD patients and is associated with a differential microbiome.

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a chronic lung disease characterized by airway obstruction and inflammation. Non-typeable Haemophilus influenzae (NTHi) lung infections are common in COPD, promoting frequent exacerbations and accelerated lung function decline. The relationship with immune responses and NTHi are poorly understood.

Discriminatory power of trabeculectomy bleb internal reflectivity and morphology in surgical success using anterior segment optical coherence tomography.

Background: The post-operative evaluation of trabeculectomy blebs has traditionally relied on subjective clinical grading systems performed at the slit-lamp. This study explores the use of swept source anterior-segment optical coherence tomography (AS-OCT) to objectively measure bleb internal reflectivity and morphology, and to distinguish blebs with surgical success vs. failure.

Women and birth partners' experiences of cervical ripening at home and in hospital.

Background: In the United Kingdom, induction of labour rates are rapidly rising, and around a third of pregnant women undergo the procedure. The first stage, cervical ripening, traditionally carried out in hospital, is increasingly offered outpatient - or 'at home'. The current induction of labour rates place considerable demand on maternity services and impact women's experiences of care, and at home cervical ripening has been suggested as potential solution for alleviating these.

Towards person-centred maternal and newborn care in Ethiopia: a mixed method study of satisfaction and experiences of care.

Background: Person-centred maternal care is associated with positive experiences in high-income countries. Little is known about the transferability of this concept to non-Western, low-income settings. We aimed to explore women's experiences of care and investigate satisfaction with antenatal care (ANC) in relation to person-centred care and unmet psychosocial needs in rural Ethiopia.

Cohort retention in a pandemic response study: lessons from the SARS-CoV2 Immunity & Reinfection Evaluation (SIREN) study.

Background: SIREN is a healthcare worker cohort study aiming to determine COVID-19 incidence, duration of immunity and vaccine effectiveness across 135 NHS organisations in four UK nations. Conducting an intensive prospective cohort study during a pandemic was challenging. We designed an evolving retention programme, informed by emerging evidence on best practice.

Is maternal diabetes during pregnancy associated with neurodevelopmental, cognitive and behavioural outcomes in children? Insights from individual participant data meta-analysis in ten birth cohorts.

Background: Growing evidence shows that dysregulated metabolic intrauterine environments can affect offspring's neurodevelopment and behaviour. However, the results of individual cohort studies have been inconsistent. We aimed to investigate the association between maternal diabetes before pregnancy and gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) with neurodevelopmental, cognitive and behavioural outcomes in children.

Corneal nerve abnormalities in early-stage diabetic retinopathy evaluated by corneal confocal microscopy.

Objective: This study aims to investigate the correlation between the development of diabetic retinopathy (DR) and the changes in corneal sub-basal nerve plexus (SNP) and corneal dendritic cells (DCs).

Methods: 58 patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and 30 age- and sex-matched healthy participants underwent assessment of the corneal nerve. The DR group was divided into no diabetic retinopathy (NDR) and 29 eyes with mild to moderate non-proliferative diabetic retinopathy (NPDR).

Distinct Circle of Willis anatomical configurations in healthy preterm born adults: a 3D time-of-flight magnetic resonance angiography study.

Background: Preterm birth (< 37 weeks' gestation) alters cerebrovascular development due to the premature transition from a foetal to postnatal circulatory system, with potential implications for future cerebrovascular health. This study aims to explore potential differences in the Circle of Willis (CoW), a key arterial ring that perfuses the brain, of healthy adults born preterm.

Methods: A total of 255 participants (108 preterm, 147 full-term) were included in the analysis.

Unanchored simulated treatment comparison on survival outcomes using parametric and Royston-Parmar models with application to lenvatinib plus pembrolizumab in renal cell carcinoma.

Background: Population-adjusted indirect comparison using parametric Simulated Treatment Comparison (STC) has had limited application to survival outcomes in unanchored settings. Matching-Adjusted Indirect Comparison (MAIC) is commonly used but does not account for violation of proportional hazards or enable extrapolations of survival. We developed and applied a novel methodology for STC in unanchored settings.

Identifying Digital Markers of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in a Remote Monitoring Setting: Prospective Observational Study.

Background: The symptoms and associated characteristics of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are typically assessed in person at a clinic or in a research lab. Mobile health offers a new approach to obtaining additional passively and continuously measured real-world behavioral data. Using our new ADHD remote technology (ART) system, based on the Remote Assessment of Disease and Relapses (RADAR)-base platform, we explore novel digital markers for their potential to identify behavioral patterns associated with ADHD.

Decoding pan-cancer treatment outcomes using multimodal real-world data and explainable artificial intelligence.

Despite advances in precision oncology, clinical decision-making still relies on limited variables and expert knowledge. To address this limitation, we combined multimodal real-world data and explainable artificial intelligence (xAI) to introduce AI-derived (AID) markers for clinical decision support. We used xAI to decode the outcome of 15,726 patients across 38 solid cancer entities based on 350 markers, including clinical records, image-derived body compositions, and mutational tumor profiles.

Plasma proteomic evidence for increased β-amyloid pathology after SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Previous studies have suggested that systemic viral infections may increase risks of dementia. Whether this holds true for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) virus infections is unknown. Determining this is important for anticipating the potential future incidence of dementia.

Sensorimotor adaptation reveals systematic biases in 3D perception.

The existence of biases in visual perception and their impact on visually guided actions has long been a fundamental yet unresolved question. Evidence revealing perceptual or visuomotor biases has typically been disregarded because such biases in spatial judgments can often be attributed to experimental measurement confounds. To resolve this controversy, we leveraged the visuomotor system's adaptation mechanism - triggered only by a discrepancy between visual estimates and sensory feedback - to directly indicate whether systematic errors in perceptual and visuomotor spatial judgments exist.

Loss of ARID1A accelerates prostate tumourigenesis with a proliferative collagen-poor phenotype through co-operation with AP1 subunit cFos.

Background: Prostate cancer (PC) is the commonest male visceral cancer, and second leading cause of cancer mortality in men in the Western world.

Methods: Using a forward-mutagenesis Sleeping Beauty (SB) transposon-based screen in a Probasin Cre-Recombinase (Pb-Cre) Pten-deficient mouse model of PC, we identified Arid1a loss as a driver in the development of metastatic disease.

Results: The insertion of transposon in the Arid1a gene resulted in a 60% reduction of Arid1a expression, and reduced tumour free survival (SB:Pten Arid1a median 226 days vs SB:Pten Arid1a 293 days, p = 0.

A machine learning decision support tool optimizes WGS utilization in a neonatal intensive care unit.

The Mendelian Phenotype Search Engine (MPSE), a clinical decision support tool using Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning, helped neonatologists expedite decisions to whole genome sequencing (WGS) to diagnose patients in the neonatal intensive care unit. After the MPSE was introduced, utilization of WGS increased, time to ordering WGS decreased, and WGS diagnostic yield increased.

Versatile waste sorting in small batch and flexible manufacturing industries using deep learning techniques.

The expansion of LEAN and small batch manufacturing demands flexible automated workstations capable of switching between sorting various wastes over time. To address this challenge, our study is focused on assessing the ability of the Segment Anything Model (SAM) family of deep learning architectures to separate highly variable objects during robotic waste sorting. The proposed two-step procedure for generic versatile visual waste sorting is based on the SAM architectures (original SAM, FastSAM, MobileSAMv2, and EfficientSAM) for waste object extraction from raw images, and the use of classification architecture (MobileNetV2, VGG19, Dense-Net, Squeeze-Net, ResNet, and Inception-v3) for accurate waste sorting.

Zika virus modulates human fibroblasts to enhance transmission success in a controlled lab-setting.

Transmission of Zika virus (ZIKV) has been reported in 92 countries and the geographical spread of invasive virus-borne vectors has increased in recent years. Arboviruses naturally survive between vertebrate hosts and arthropod vectors. Transmission success requires the mosquito to feed on viraemic hosts.

Patterns of physical activity in hunter-gatherer children compared with US and UK children.

Contemporary hunter-gatherers are highly active, but little is known about physical activity levels in hunter-gatherer children. We analysed 150 days of accelerometer data from 51 BaYaka hunter-gatherer children (aged 3-18) in the Republic of Congo, comparing it with British and American children using samples from Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) and National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). BaYaka children were highly active, engaging in over 3 h of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) daily, surpassing British adolescents by over 70 min.

Exploring the role of circulating proteins in multiple myeloma risk: a Mendelian randomization study.

Multiple myeloma (MM) is an incurable blood cancer with unclear aetiology. Proteomics is a valuable tool in exploring mechanisms of disease. We investigated the causal relationship between circulating proteins and MM risk, using two of the largest cohorts with proteomics data to-date.

A comprehensive evaluation of histopathology foundation models for ovarian cancer subtype classification.

Histopathology foundation models show great promise across many tasks, but analyses have been limited by arbitrary hyperparameters. We report the most rigorous single-task validation study to date, specifically in the context of ovarian carcinoma morphological subtyping. Attention-based multiple instance learning classifiers were compared using three ImageNet-pretrained encoders and fourteen foundation models, each trained with 1864 whole slide images and validated through hold-out testing and two external validations (the Transcanadian Study and OCEAN Challenge).

Improving UK data on avoidable perinatal brain injury: review of data dictionaries and consultation.

Background: High quality data is important to understanding epidemiology and supporting improvement efforts in perinatal brain injury. It is not clear which data items relevant to brain injury are captured across UK sources of routinely collected data, nor what needs to be done to ensure that those sources are fit for purpose in improving care.

Methods: We reviewed data dictionaries of four main UK perinatal data sources and consulted a multi-professional group (N = 27) with expertise in neonatal/maternity care, statistics, and clinical negligence.

Effectiveness of iNTS vaccination in sub-Saharan Africa.

Invasive non-Typhoidal Salmonella (iNTS) is one of the leading causes of blood stream infections in Sub-Saharan Africa, especially among children. iNTS can be difficult to diagnose, particularly in areas where malaria is endemic, and difficult to treat, partly because of the emergence of antibiotic resistance. We developed a mathematical model to evaluate the impact of a vaccine for iNTS in 49 countries of sub-Saharan Africa.