Benchmarking antimicrobial use to antimicrobial resistance: a comparative study of two hospitals using current National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN) metrics.

Objective: We aimed to determine whether benchmarking antimicrobial use (AU) to antimicrobial resistance (AR) using select AU/AR ratios is more informative than AU metrics in isolation.

Design: We retrospectively measured AU (antimicrobial therapy days per 1,000 days present) and AU/AR ratios (specific antimicrobial therapy days per corresponding AR event) in two hospitals during 2020 through 2022. We then had antimicrobial stewardship committee members evaluate each AU and corresponding AU/AR value and indicate whether they believed it represented potential overuse, appropriate use, or potential underuse of the antimicrobials, or whether they could not provide an assessment.

Prevalence of female hirsutism and PCOS in the United States: A cross-sectional study.

Background: Current research on hirsutism reveals disparities and knowledge deficiencies, particularly in underrepresented cohorts. Our objective is to scrutinize demographic variances in hirsutism rates.

Patients And Methods: Using the All of Us database, we conducted a cross-sectional analysis encompassing 172,401 women.

Heterogeneity in preoperative screening and decolonization strategies among healthcare institutions.

We surveyed 111 institutions' practices for screening and decolonization of in presurgical patients. Institutions commonly utilize universal, targeted, or no decolonization strategies. Frequently reported products were nasal mupirocin, chlorhexidine gluconate bathing, and nasal povidone-iodine.

Dispersion-based cognitive intra-individual variability in former American football players: Association with traumatic encephalopathy syndrome, repetitive head impacts, and biomarkers.

Exposure to repetitive head impacts (RHI), such as those experienced in American football, is linked to cognitive dysfunction later in life. Traumatic encephalopathy syndrome (TES) is a proposed clinical syndrome thought to be linked to neuropath-ology of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a condition associated with RHI from football. Cognitive intra-individual variability (d-CIIV) measures test-score dispersion, indicating cognitive dysfunction.

A bridge over troubled water: reverse osmosis to maintain patient care in a boil water notice.

A citywide boil water notice necessitated an alternative solution for treating contaminated water. We report our experience using portable reverse osmosis machines to treat the municipal water to provide purified water to patient care areas where non-sterile water was needed, preventing interruptions in services like elective surgeries.

Using a novel Reliable Letter-Number Span from the Wechsler Letter-Number Sequencing as an embedded validity indicator in baseline concussion testing for youth athletes.

Few performance validity tests exist for youth undergoing baseline testing for the management of sport-related concussion. This study provides an initial validation of a reliable span calculation from the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Fourth Edition Letter-Number Sequencing (LNS) subtest as a performance validity indicator for youth baseline testing (Reliable Letter-Number Span; RLNS). Youth athletes ( = 173) underwent baseline concussion testing for the management of sport-related concussion.

Intergenerational impacts of racial discrimination on child executive functioning problems.

The proposed study sought to investigate whether maternal experiences of racial discrimination and gendered racial stress are associated with offspring executive functioning. Total 266 Black mother-child pairs in the United States were assessed from pregnancy through child age of 4 years. We hypothesized that children whose mothers reported higher rates of perceived gendered racial stress during pregnancy and racial discrimination throughout their lifetime would have lower scores on executive functioning assessments.

Facilitators of antibiotic decision-making in home-based primary care: a qualitative investigation.

Interviews with 22 home-based primary care (HBPC) clinicians revealed that infectious disease physicians and clinical pharmacists facilitate infection management and antibiotic selection, respectively, and that local initiatives within programs support antibiotic prescribing decisions. Interventions that facilitate specialist engagement and tailored approaches that address the unique challenges of HBPC are needed.

Multiomic analyses direct hypotheses for Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease risk genes.

Prions are assemblies of misfolded prion protein that cause several fatal and transmissible neurodegenerative diseases, with the most common phenotype in humans being sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (sCJD). Aside from variation of the prion protein itself, molecular risk factors are not well understood. Prion and prion-like mechanisms are thought to underpin common neurodegenerative disorders meaning that the elucidation of mechanisms could have broad relevance.

Systematic Review: Effectiveness of Carbon Dioxide Lasers for Treatment of Adult Laryngeal Hemangioma.

Importance: Adult laryngeal hemangiomas are rare and may cause symptoms such as dysphonia, dysphagia, and dyspnea. Carbon dioxide (CO2) lasers offer an alternative approach to managing this rare condition.

Objective: The objective of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of CO2 lasers in treating adult hemangioma and to identify potential side effects associated with this treatment modality.

Primary Visceral Ewing Sarcoma (Gastric and Bladder) with KIT Expression: A Report of Two Patients and a Differential Diagnostic Approach.

Extra-skeletal Ewing sarcoma is a rare tumor, most commonly occurring in the paravertebral region, extremities, retroperitoneum, and very rarely in visceral locations. We present two primary visceral Ewing sarcomas confirmed at the molecular level: one located in the stomach and the other in the bladder. Both tumors demonstrated strong and diffuse membranous CD99 expression, accompanied by variable KIT immunoreactivity.

Navigating the Post-Pandemic Landscape: The Challenges and Opportunities of Community-Based Networks in Substance Prevention.

The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly influenced substance prevention work, exacerbating existing challenges and providing new opportunities for community-based substance prevention networks (CSPNs). CSPNs are interorganizational networks that include various providers, such as nonprofits and government agencies, that collaborate to provide substance prevention services and are embedded in local communities. This study analyzes the post-pandemic adaptation of a CSPN in the United States.

Erenumab in a patient with persistent headaches after subarachnoid hemorrhage: A case report of an effective treatment.

A patient with persistent refractory headaches from aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage was treated with monthly erenumab injections, a monoclonal antibody to the calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP) receptor. These injections decreased the frequency and severity of the patient's debilitating headaches from daily to once or twice per month with positive improvement in function and quality of life. To our knowledge, this is the first reported case in the literature of a patient with persistent post-subarachnoid hemorrhage headache that was successfully treated with an antibody against the CGRP receptor.

Bayesian design of clinical trials with multiple time-to-event outcomes subject to functional cure.

With the continuous advancement of medical treatments, there is an increasing demand for clinical trial designs and analyses using cure rate models to accommodate a plateau in the survival curve. This is especially pertinent in oncology, where high proportions of patients, such as those with melanoma, lung cancer, and endometrial cancer, exhibit usual life spans post-cancer detection. A Bayesian clinical trial design methodology for multivariate time-to-event outcomes with cured fractions is developed.

Social support among women with infertility: Associations with psychiatric symptoms, disordered eating, and substance use.

Though social support in the broader population is related to better psychosocial outcomes, little work has examined the relationship between social support and patient-reported outcomes among women with infertility. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether perceived social support was associated with psychiatric symptoms, disordered eating, and substance use among women with an infertility diagnosis. Individuals who received a diagnosis of female-factor infertility ( = 188) completed measures of perceived social support, psychiatric symptoms, disordered eating, and substance use.

The VA Million Veteran Program, Alzheimer's disease, and genetics: Important steps forward but many steps still to go on the march to control dementia and Alzheimer's disease.

The VA Million Veteran Program (MVP) is a nationwide initiative that seeks to examine how genes influence health and behaviors in military veterans. An article by Merritt et al. analyzing data from the MVP, developing and testing algorithms to query dementia and Alzheimer's disease (AD) diagnoses from the VA's electronic health record system and examining genetic factors, provides an extraordinarily important contribution to the dementia and AD fields.

Survival disparities among Alzheimer's disease patients in Hawaii.

Background: Survival after an Alzheimer's disease (AD) diagnosis is vital for patients, their families, caregivers, and healthcare providers. Hawaii, known for its diverse ethnic population, exhibits significant racial health disparities.

Objective: This study examined racial/ethnic and socioeconomic disparities in AD survival in Hawaii and developed machine learning models to predict overall survival using Hawaii Medicare data.

Cognivue characterizes amyloid status and preclinical Alzheimer's disease in biomarker confirmed cohorts in the Bio-Hermes Study.

Background: Cognivue is an FDA-cleared computerized cognitive test to screen for cognitive impairment included in the Bio-Hermes Study to test blood-based and digital biomarkers' ability to screen for mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer's disease (AD). A subset of cognitively normal individuals have amyloid deposition (Preclinical AD) but no current assessment can identify these individuals in the absence of expensive biomarkers.

Objective: We examined differences in Cognivue performance between amyloid positive and amyloid negative individuals and whether Cognivue could differentiate True Controls (cognitively normal/amyloid negative), Preclinical AD (cognitively normal/amyloid positive), and MCI due to AD (MCI-AD, cognitively impaired/amyloid positive).

Digital detector PET/CT increases Centiloid measures of amyloid in Alzheimer's disease: A head-to-head comparison of cameras.

Background: The introduction of therapeutics for Alzheimer's disease has led to increased interest in precisely quantifying amyloid-β (Aβ) burden for diagnosis, treatment monitoring, and further clinical research. Recent positron emission tomography (PET) hardware innovations including digital detectors have led to superior resolution and sensitivity, improving quantitative accuracy. However, the effect of PET scanner on Centiloid remains relatively unexplored and is assumed to be minimized by harmonizing PET resolutions.

Gait, balance, and physical performance as markers of early Alzheimer's disease and related dementia risk.

Background: Declining physical functionality is an indicator of cognitive impairment, distinguishing normal cognition (NC) from dementia. Whether this extends to pre-dementia stages is unclear.

Objective: Assess physical performance patterns, evaluate relationships with imaging biomarkers, and identify specific measures distinguishing NC, subjective cognitive decline (SCD) and mild cognitive impairment (MCI).