PD-L1 testing patterns in recurrent/metastatic head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (R/M HNSCC) in the U.S.

Background: Pembrolizumab with/without platinum + 5-FU is approved for the first-line (1L) treatment of R/M HNSCC, and its monotherapy use requires PD-L1 Combined Positive Score (CPS) ≥ 1. We aimed to understand PD-L1 testing patterns and associations with patient characteristics and treatment choice in R/M HNSCC.

Methods: Adults with R/M HNSCC initiating 1L systemic therapy were included from a U.

Development and validation of the BRief Eating Disorder Screener (BREDS) for US veterans in healthcare and community settings.

Objective: To develop a Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) eating disorder screener.

Method: Veterans enrolled in VA healthcare (N = 344) completed a survey of screening items and established measures. A validation subset (n = 166) participated in diagnostic interviews to confirm an eating disorder diagnosis.

Preventing disease progression in schizophrenia: What are we waiting for.

Despite research advances and progress in health care, schizophrenia remains a debilitating and costly disease. Onset occurs typically during youth and can lead to a relapsing and ultimately chronic course with persistent symptoms and functional impairment if not promptly and properly treated. Consequently, over time, schizophrenia causes substantial distress and disability for patients, their families and accrues to a collective burden to society.

The impact of race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status on early adolescent sleep disturbances for youth exposed to adverse childhood experiences.

Background: Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) may increase the risk for adolescent sleep disturbances, though the impact of race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status (SES) remains unclear.

Objective: We sought to determine the direct and moderating impact of race, ethnicity, family SES, and community SES on sleep disturbances across early adolescence for ACE-exposed youth.

Participants And Setting: This secondary analysis used longitudinal Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study® data (2016-2022) from youth who experienced ≥1 ACE by age 9-10 years.

Drug-drug interactions between palbociclib and proton pump inhibitors in early breast cancer: an exploratory analysis of PALLAS (ABCSG-42/AFT-05/BIG-14-13/PrE0109).

Background: Concomitant intake of proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) may create drug-drug interactions, potentially impacting efficacy of anticancer agents. In the phase III PALLAS trial, the addition of palbociclib capsules to standard adjuvant endocrine therapy in patients with hormone receptor-positive, human epidermal growth factor receptor 2-negative early breast cancer did not improve invasive disease-free survival (iDFS). We explored whether concomitant use of PPIs affected survival outcomes in patients treated with palbociclib in PALLAS.

Informative censoring in externally controlled clinical trials: a potential source of bias.

Background: Cancer researchers frequently consider the use of single-arm and randomized controlled clinical trial designs that leverage external data. The literature has reported extensively on how the use of external data can introduce bias through a variety of distortion mechanisms. In this article, we focus on a distortion mechanism that is often overlooked: informative censoring.

Comparative overall survival of CDK4/6 inhibitors plus an aromatase inhibitor in HR+/HER2- metastatic breast cancer in the US real-world setting.

Background: Randomized controlled trials have shown inconsistent overall survival (OS) benefit among the three cyclin-dependent kinase 4/6 inhibitors (CDK4/6i) as first-line (1L) treatment of patients with hormone receptor-positive (HR+)/human epidermal growth factor receptor 2-negative (HER2-) metastatic breast cancer (mBC). Several real-world studies compared CDK4/6i effectiveness, with inconsistent findings. This study compared overall survival (OS) of patients with HR+/HER2- mBC receiving 1L palbociclib, ribociclib, or abemaciclib, in combination with an aromatase inhibitor (AI), in US clinical practice.

Results of a patient-level pooled analysis of three studies of trastuzumab deruxtecan in HER2-positive breast cancer with active brain metastasis.

Background: Brain metastases (BMs) are common in human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2)-positive advanced breast cancer, increasing morbidity and mortality. Systemic therapy for BMs can be effective, with the triple combination of trastuzumab, capecitabine, and tucatinib being a potential standard. More recently, intracranial activity of antibody-drug conjugates has been reported, but the size of individual studies has been small.

Hydrogel injection molded complex macroencapsulation device geometry improves long-term cell therapy viability and function in the rat omentum transplant site.

Insulin-secreting allogeneic cell therapies are a promising treatment for type 1 diabetes, with the potential to eliminate hypoglycemia and long-term complications of the disease. However, chronic systemic immunosuppression is necessary to prevent graft rejection, and the acute risks associated with immunosuppression limit the number of patients who can be treated with allogeneic cell therapies. Islet macroencapsulation in a hydrogel biomaterial is one proposed method to reduce or eliminate immune suppression; however, macroencapsulation devices suffer from poor oxygen transport and limited efficacy as they scale to large animal model preclinical studies and clinical trials.

Measurement of the Ge(d,n)As cross section from 2.1 MeV to 10 MeV.

This work reports experimental Ge(d,n)As cross sections producing Arsenic-71 (t = 65.3 h, 28% β), a potentially useful diagnostic radionuclide. Target stacks containing two Ge foils, a Ni monitor foil, and an Al degrader were irradiated with 5.

Comparison of neuraminidase inhibiting antibody responses elicited by egg- and cell-derived influenza vaccines.

Unlabelled: Neuraminidase (NA)-specific antibodies contribute to immunity against influenza. While studies have demonstrated increased NA inhibiting (NAI) antibody titers after vaccination with egg-derived inactivated influenza vaccines (eIIV), the response to cell culture-derived (c) IIV has not been reported.

Methods: An immunogenicity sub-study was performed within a clinical trial comparing the effectiveness of egg, cell, and recombinant hemagglutinin (HA)-derived influenza vaccines during the 2018-2019 and 2019-2020 influenza seasons.

Effects of peroxidized soybean oil on growth and energy digestibility in broilers.

Peroxidized lipids have been shown to reduce broiler performance whereupon it was theorized that dietary peroxide value (PV) plus anisidine value (AnV) may be predictive of broiler performance. In experiment (EXP) 1, 64 pens (8 broilers/pen) were fed diets containing 8 levels of peroxidized soybean oil (SO). Broilers were fed diets from 7 to 35 d of age with 8 replications per dietary treatment.

Intraoperative FiO and risk of impaired postoperative oxygenation in lung resection: A propensity score-weighted analysis.

Study Objective: To assess whether, in a lung resection cohort with a low probability of confounding by indication, higher FiO is associated with an increased risk of impaired postoperative oxygenation - a clinical manifestation of lung injury/dysfunction.

Design: Pre-specified registry-based retrospective cohort study.

Setting: Two large academic hospitals in the United States.

Automatic and strategic components of bilingual lexical alignment.

Second-language speakers are more likely to strategically reuse the words of their conversation partners (Zhang & Nicol, 2022). This study investigates if this is also the case for lower-proficiency bilinguals from a bilingual community, who use language more implicitly, and if there is more alignment with lower than with higher proficiency, provided the words to be aligned to are all highly familiar. In two experiments, Spanish-English bilinguals took turns with a confederate to name and match pictures in Spanish.

Efficacy and safety of psilocybin in the treatment of Major Depressive Disorder (MDD): A dose-response network meta-analysis of randomized placebo-controlled clinical trials.

Selecting the optimal dose of psilocybin for treating Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) and Treatment-Resistant Depression (TRD) is crucial for clinical development and regulatory approval. This meta-analysis evaluates psilocybin's efficacy and safety in treating MDD to determine the optimal dose and timing for clinical trials. A systematic review and Dose-Response Network Meta-Analysis (NMA) of Randomized Placebo-Controlled Clinical Trials (RCTs) registered with PROSPERO was conducted.

Short-term clinical outcomes of subway-related amputations.

Introduction: In city hospitals, subway-related traumatic amputations are a frequent pattern of injury, however there is a paucity of literature on this specific injury pattern. The purpose of this study was to describe the epidemiology of subway-related traumatic amputations, as well as compare them to non-subway traumatic amputations.

Patients And Methods: Retrospective review was performed at a single Level-1 trauma center in a metropolitan area.

Analysis of nuclear receptor expression in head and neck cancer.

Objective: Studies of squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck (HNSCC) have demonstrated the importance of nuclear receptors and their associated coregulators in the development and treatment of HNSCC. We sought to characterize members of the nuclear receptor super family through interrogation of RNA-Seq and microarray data.

Materials And Methods: TCGA RNA-Seq data within the cBioportal platform comparing HNSCC samples (n = 515 patients with RNA-Seq data) to normal tissue (n = 82 patients) was interrogated for significant differences in nuclear receptor expression.

Detecting novel plant pathogen threats to food system security by integrating the Plant Reactome and remote sensing.

Plant diseases constantly threaten crops and food systems, while global connectivity further increases the risks of spreading existing and exotic pathogens. Here, we first explore how an integrative approach involving plant pathway knowledgegraphs, differential gene expression data, and biochemical data informing Raman spectroscopy could be used to detect plant pathways responding to pathogen attacks. The Plant Reactome (https://plantreactome.

Excitatory/Inhibitory imbalance as a mechanism linking autism and sleep problems.

Sleep problems occur more frequently in individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) than in typically developing individuals, and recent studies support a genetic link between ASD and sleep disturbances. However, it remains unclear how sleep problems may be mechanistically connected to ASD phenotypes. A longstanding hypothesis posits that an imbalance between excitatory and inhibitory (E/I) signaling in the brain underlies the behavioral characteristics of ASD.

Associations between vaping during pregnancy and perinatal outcomes: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

Despite numerous studies linking prenatal vaping to adverse perinatal outcomes, a systematic assessment for critical comparison remains absent. To investigate these associations, we conducted a systematic search of studies assessing perinatal outcomes in mothers and/or neonates exposed to vaping during pregnancy compared to those in women without prenatal vaping exposure through MEDLINE, EMBASE, Scopus, Web of Science, Cochrane Library, PROSPERO, and Google Scholar until July 5, 2024. We performed inverse-variance random-effects meta-analyses for maternal and neonatal outcomes of 23 studies with a total of 924,376 participants with 7552 reporting vaping-only use during pregnancy.

Examining structure-activity relationships of ManNAc analogs used in the metabolic glycoengineering of human neural stem cells.

This study defines biochemical mechanisms that contribute to novel neural-regenerative activities we recently demonstrated for thiol-modified ManNAc analogs in human neural stem cells (hNSCs) by comparing our lead drug candidate for brain repair, "TProp," to a "size-matched" N-alkyl control analog, "But." These analogs biosynthetically install non-natural sialic acids into cell surface glycans, altering cell surface receptor activity and adhesive properties of cells. In this study, TProp modulated sialic acid-related biology in hNSCs to promote neuronal differentiation through modulation of cell adhesion molecules (integrins α6, β1, E-cadherin, and PSGL-1) and stem cell markers.

Analyzing the TotalSegmentator for facial feature removal in head CT scans.

Background: Facial recognition technology in medical imaging, particularly with head scans, poses privacy risks due to identifiable facial features. This study evaluates the use of facial recognition software in identifying facial features from head CT scans and explores a defacing pipeline using TotalSegmentator to reduce re-identification risks while preserving data integrity for research.

Methods: 1404 high-quality renderings from the UCLH EIT Stroke dataset, both with and without defacing were analysed.

Multiple sphingolipid-metabolizing enzymes modulate influenza virus replication.

The sphingolipid network is sustained principally by the balance of bioactive sphingolipid molecules and their regulation by sphingolipid-metabolizing enzymes. The components in the lipid system display key functions in numerous cellular and disease conditions including virus infections. During the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a fruitful effort to use an inhibitor that blocks the activity of sphingosine kinase (SphK) 2 to cure the devastating disease.