The necessity of validity diagnostics when drawing causal inferences from observational data: lessons from a multi-database evaluation of the risk of non-infectious uveitis among patients exposed to Remicade.

Background: Autoimmune disorders have primary manifestations such as joint pain and bowel inflammation but can also have secondary manifestations such as non-infectious uveitis (NIU). A regulatory health authority raised concerns after receiving spontaneous reports for NIU following exposure to Remicade, a biologic therapy with multiple indications for which alternative therapies are available. In assessment of this clinical question, we applied validity diagnostics to support observational data causal inferences.

Stomach and duodenal ulcer as a cause of death in patients with cancer: a cohort study.

Introduction: Non-cancer deaths are now becoming a significant threat to the health of cancer patients. Death from stomach and duodenal ulcer is linked to cancer due to the side effects of treatment and its pathogenesis. However, guidelines for identifying cancer patients at the highest risk of death from stomach and duodenal ulcer remain unclear.

Dapagliflozin in acute heart failure management: a systematic review and meta-analysis of safety and effectiveness.

Background: Acute Heart Failure (AHF) presents as a serious pathophysiological disease with significant morbidity and mortality rates, requiring immediate medical intervention. Traditional treatment involves diuretics and vasodilators, but a subset of patients develop resistance due to acute cardiorenal syndrome. Dapagliflozin, categorized as a sodium-glucose cotransporter-2 inhibitor (SGLT2i), has emerged as a promising therapy for AHF, demonstrating substantial benefits in reducing both mortality and morbidity among patients.

The interplay of factors in metabolic syndrome: understanding its roots and complexity.

Metabolic syndrome (MetS) is an indicator and diverse endocrine syndrome that combines different metabolic defects with clinical, physiological, biochemical, and metabolic factors. Obesity, visceral adiposity and abdominal obesity, dyslipidemia, insulin resistance (IR), elevated blood pressure, endothelial dysfunction, and acute or chronic inflammation are the risk factors associated with MetS. Abdominal obesity, a hallmark of MetS, highlights dysfunctional fat tissue and increased risk for cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

Investigating the influence of working status changes on physical activity and non-communicable diseases in Korean middle-aged and older adults: insights from a longitudinal panel study.

Background: Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are a major global health challenge and occupational status is a critical determinant influencing NCD development, yet many cross-sectional studies have only linked current occupational status with specific diseases, overlooking broader temporal factors. The primary aim of the present study was to comprehensively elucidate the intricate interplay between alterations in working status, NCDs, and physical activity (PA) among Korean middle-aged and older adults, employing a longitudinal panel study design.

Methods: This study utilized longitudinal data from the Korean Longitudinal Study of Aging, covering the period from 2006 to 2020, with a median follow-up duration of 10 years.

The songbird connectome (OSCINE-NET.ORG): structure-function organization beyond the canonical vocal control network.

Background: Understanding the neural basis of behavior requires insight into how different brain systems coordinate with each other. Existing connectomes for various species have highlighted brain systems essential to various aspects of behavior, yet their application to complex learned behaviors remains limited. Research on vocal learning in songbirds has extensively focused on the vocal control network, though recent work implicates a variety of circuits in contributing to important aspects of vocal behavior.

Molecular profiles of blood from numerous species that differ in sensitivity to acute inflammation.

Vertebrates differ over 100,000-fold in responses to pro-inflammatory agonists such as bacterial lipopolysaccharide (LPS), complicating use of animal models to study human sepsis or inflammatory disorders. We compared transcriptomes of resting and LPS-exposed blood from six LPS-sensitive species (rabbit, pig, sheep, cow, chimpanzee, human) and four LPS-resilient species (mice, rats, baboon, rhesus), as well as plasma proteomes and lipidomes. Unexpectedly, at baseline, sensitive species already had enhanced expression of LPS-responsive genes relative to resilient species.

Adaptive or non-adaptive? Cranial evolution in a radiation of miniaturized day geckos.

Lygodactylus geckos represent a well-documented radiation of miniaturized lizards with diverse life-history traits that are widely distributed in Africa, Madagascar, and South America. The group has diversified into numerous species with high levels of morphological similarity. The evolutionary processes underlying such diversification remain enigmatic, because species live in different ecological biomes, ecoregions and microhabitats, while suggesting strikingly high levels of homoplasy.

Developing a Charlson Comorbidity Index for the American Indian Population Using the Epidemiologic Data from the Strong Heart Study.

Background: The Charlson Comorbidity Index (CCI) is a frequently used mortality predictor based on a scoring system for the number and type of patient comorbidities health researchers have used since the late 1980s. The initial purpose of the CCI was to classify comorbid conditions, which could alter the risk of patient mortality within a 1-year time frame. However, the CCI may not accurately reflect risk among American Indians because they are a small proportion of the US population and possibly lack representation in the original patient cohort.

Close relationship partners of impartial altruists do not report diminished relationship quality and are similarly altruistic.

Impartial altruism is often considered a moral ideal but is rare in practice. Instead, generosity typically decreases as social distance increases, a phenomenon termed social discounting. Most people prefer this partiality in their close relationships and view impartial altruists as poorer relationship partners.

Risk of glaucoma with bisphosphonate use in patients with osteoporosis: a case-control study.

Purpose: Bisphosphonates (BPs) are first line agents commonly used in the management of osteoporosis. There have been two case reports that have suggested a possible link between BPs and acute angle closure (AAC). In the absence of any large epidemiologic studies, we sought to determine the risk of AAC and OAG with bisphosphonate use in patients with osteoporosis.

Human brain aging is associated with dysregulation of cell type epigenetic identity.

Significant links between aging and DNA methylation are emerging from recent studies. On the one hand, DNA methylation undergoes changes with age, a process termed as epigenetic drift. On the other hand, DNA methylation serves as a readily accessible and accurate biomarker for aging.

Perioperative Changes in Serum Transaminases Levels Predicts Long-Term Survival Following Liver Resection of Hepatocellular Carcinoma.

Background: We sought to define whether and how hepatic ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) as manifested by perioperative aspartate aminotransferase (AST) and alanine aminotransaminase (ALT) levels impact long-term outcomes after curative-intent resection of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).

Patients And Methods: Intrasplenic injection of HCC cells was used to establish a murine model of HCC recurrence with versus without I/R injury. Patients who underwent curative resection for HCC were identified from a multi-institutional derivative cohort (DC) and separate external validation (VC) cohort.

Peritoneal Cancer Index Correlates with Radiographic Assessment of Colorectal Carcinomatosis.

Background: The Peritoneal Cancer Index (PCI), calculated intraoperatively, has previously yielded mixed results when correlated with computed tomography. This study aimed to quantify variation in this scoring method comparing radiologists' and surgeons' radiologic PCI (rPCI) assessment.

Methods: The rPCI of 104 patients treated at a single institution for peritoneal carcinomatosis was calculated by an abdominal radiologist and a surgeon.

Prognostic Impact of Primary Tumor Size in Thymic Epithelial Tumor: An NCDB-Based Study.

Background: Thymic epithelial tumor (TET) staging has been based on Masaoka-Koga systems or the 8th edition of the TNM classification, which do not use tumor size as a T descriptor. The 9th edition of the TNM classification incorporates tumor size; however, the study on which this classification is based included only 4.4% of patients from North America.

Accelerating antiviral drug discovery: early hazard detection with a dual zebrafish and cell culture screen of a 403 compound library.

The constant emergence of new viral pathogens underscores the need for continually evolving, effective antiviral drugs. A key challenge is identifying compounds that are both efficacious and safe, as many candidates fail during development due to unforeseen toxicity. To address this, the embryonic zebrafish morphology, mortality, and behavior (ZBE) screen and the SYSTEMETRIC® Cell Health Screen (CHS) were employed to evaluate the safety of 403 compounds from the Cayman Antiviral Screening Library.

Chatbots for breast cancer education: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

Background: Effective education and awareness regarding breast cancer are critical. Traditional educational methods often fail to meet the diverse information needs of patients. Patients should be provided with tailored, accessible information to improve their retention and understanding of disease-related information.

Challenges and opportunities of acquiring cortical recordings for chronic adaptive deep brain stimulation.

Deep brain stimulation (DBS), a proven treatment for movement disorders, also holds promise for the treatment of psychiatric and cognitive conditions. However, for DBS to be clinically effective, it may require DBS technology that can alter or trigger stimulation in response to changes in biomarkers sensed from the patient's brain. A growing body of evidence suggests that such adaptive DBS is feasible, it might achieve clinical effects that are not possible with standard continuous DBS and that some of the best biomarkers are signals from the cerebral cortex.

Rare variants in cardiomyopathy genes predispose to cardiac injury in severe COVID-19 patients of African or Hispanic ancestry.

In one of the earliest reports from China during COVID-19, it was noted that over 20% of patients hospitalized with the disease had significant elevations of troponin, a marker of myocardial tissue damage, that put them at a higher risk. In a hypothesis-independent whole exome sequencing (WES) study in hospitalized COVID-19 patients of diverse ancestry, we observed putative enrichment in pathogenic variants in genes known to be involved in the pathogenesis of cardiomyopathy. This observation led us to hypothesize that the observed high morbidity and mortality in these patients might be due to the presence of rare genetic factors that had previously been silent but became relevant as a consequence of the severe stress inflicted by an infection with SARS-CoV-2.

Genome-scale modeling identifies dynamic metabolic vulnerabilities during the epithelial to mesenchymal transition.

Epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) is a conserved cellular process critical for embryogenesis, wound healing, and cancer metastasis. During EMT, cells undergo large-scale metabolic reprogramming that supports multiple functional phenotypes including migration, invasion, survival, chemo-resistance and stemness. However, the extent of metabolic network rewiring during EMT is unclear.

A novel scoring protocol reveals age-related differences in abstract compared to concrete thinking in cued autobiographical remembering.

Human imagination has garnered growing interest in many fields. However, it remains unclear how to characterize different forms of imaginative thinking and how imagination differs between young and older adults. Here, we introduce a novel scoring protocol based on recent theoretical developments in the cognitive neuroscience of imagination to provide a broad tool with which to characterize imaginative thinking.

Plasma-aided direct printing of silver nanoparticle conductive structures on polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) surfaces.

We report a controlled deposition process using atmospheric plasma to fabricate silver nanoparticle (AgNP) structures on polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) substrates, essential for stretchable electronic circuits in wearable devices. This technique ensures precise printing of conductive structures using nanoparticles as precursors, while the relationship between crystallinity and plasma treatment is established through X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis. The XRD studies provide insights into the effects of plasma parameters on the structural integrity and adhesion of AgNP patterns, enhancing our understanding of substrate stretchability and bendability.