The physiological toll of arrests: An examination of arrest history on midlife allostatic load.

Purpose: To understand how allostatic load - cumulative physiologic burden of stress - varies by amount and timing of arrests stratified by race/ethnicity and by sex.

Methods: Using The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, we calculated descriptive statistics and mean differences in bio-marker measured allostatic load by arrest history stratified by race/ethnicity and sex.

Results: One-third of participants experienced at least one arrest, and most experienced arrests only as adults.

A machine learning evaluation of patient characteristics associated with prescribing of guideline-directed medical therapy for heart failure.

Introduction/background: Patients with heart failure and reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF) are consistently underprescribed guideline-directed medications. Although many barriers to prescribing are known, identification of these barriers has relied on traditional hypotheses or qualitative methods. Machine learning can overcome many limitations of traditional methods to capture complex relationships in data and lead to a more comprehensive understanding of the underpinnings driving underprescribing.

Addressing leadership communication, parenting demands and mental health challenges: a mixed-methods case study of clinical and translational scientists during COVID-19.

Background: In March 2020, academic research centres in Colorado were closed to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Scientists and research staff were required to continue their work remotely with little time to prepare for the transition.

Methods: This survey study used an explanatory sequential mixed-method design to explore clinical and translational researcher and staff experiences of the transition to remote work during the first 6 weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Informing Use of Telehealth for Managing Chronic Conditions: Mixed-Methods Evaluation of Telehealth Use to Manage Heart Failure During COVID-19.

Background The COVID-19 pandemic forced Veterans Health Administration facilities to rapidly adopt and deploy telehealth alternatives to provide continuity of care to veterans while minimizing physical contact. The impact of moving to virtual visits on patients with congestive heart failure (HF) is unknown. The goal of this study was to understand how patients with HF and their providers experienced the shift to telehealth for managing a chronic condition, and to inform best practices for continued telehealth use.

Technology-based Health Education Resources for Indigenous Adults: A Scoping Review.

Indigenous peoples experience a disparate burden of chronic diseases and lower access to health education resources compared with other populations. Technology can increase access to health education resources, potentially reducing health inequities in these vulnerable populations. Although many Indigenous communities have limited access to the Internet, this barrier is decreasing as tribes and Indigenous-serving organizations work to improve TechQuity.

Glucocorticoid-immune response to acute stress in women and men living with HIV.

Despite high risk for serious non-AIDS events (SNAEs) and accelerated age-related increases in inflammatory markers relative to HIV+ men, HIV+ women have been understudied, particularly in terms of stress impacts on immune parameters. The purpose of this study was to examine sex differences in glucocorticoid-immune stress response in mid-life HIV+ individuals, as poor glucocorticoid control of stress-induced inflammation may contribute to health risk in HIV+ women. Male and female participants completed a threat of shock laboratory stressor.

Neural Circuits: Introducing Different Scales of Temporal Processing.

A new study describes a novel passive integration mechanism of inhibition in auditory neurons in the dorsal nucleus of the lateral lemniscus that turns extremely well-timed synaptic events into a signal code that is three orders of magnitude slower.

Ambulatory-treated Clostridium difficile infection: a comparison of community-acquired vs. nosocomial infection.

The purpose of this study was to identify the clinical outcomes of ambulatory-treated Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) and risk factors associated with community-associated CDI (CA-CDI). Adult patients diagnosed with CDI in the institutional or ambulatory-care setting between 1 April 2005 and 30 April 2011, with no other CDI diagnosis in the previous 180 days, and who purchased an ambulatory, anti-CDI agent within 7 days of CDI diagnosis were included. A total of 1201 patients were included with 914 (76%) and 287 (24%) identified with CA-CDI and nosocomial CDI (N-CDI), respectively.

Manufacturing and using piggy-back multibarrel electrodes for in vivo pharmacological manipulations of neural responses.

In vivo recordings from single neurons allow an investigator to examine the firing properties of neurons, for example in response to sensory stimuli. Neurons typically receive multiple excitatory and inhibitory afferent and/or efferent inputs that integrate with each other, and the ultimate measured response properties of the neuron are driven by the neural integrations of these inputs. To study information processing in neural systems, it is necessary to understand the various inputs to a neuron or neural system, and the specific properties of these inputs.