Impact of a national dementia research consortium: The Canadian Consortium on Neurodegeneration in Aging (CCNA).

The Canadian Consortium on Neurodegeneration in Aging (CCNA) was created by the Canadian federal government through its health research funding agency, the Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR), in 2014, as a response to the G7 initiative to fight dementia. Two five-year funding cycles (2014-2019; 2019-2024) have occurred following peer review, and a third cycle (Phase 3) has just begun. A unique construct was mandated, consisting of 20 national teams in Phase I and 19 teams in Phase II (with research topics spanning from basic to clinical science to health resource systems) along with cross-cutting programs to support them.

Automatic Matching Algorithms to Identify Eligible Participants for Stroke Trials: A Proof-of-Concept Study.

Background: Clinical trials often struggle to recruit enough participants, with only 10% of eligible patients enrolling. This is concerning for conditions like stroke, where timely decision-making is crucial. Frontline clinicians typically screen patients manually, but this approach can be overwhelming and lead to many eligible patients being overlooked.

Evaluation of thermal parameters with geothermal energy recovery from a cold climate municipal solid waste landfill.

This study presents finite element method (FEM) modeling with COMSOL Multiphysics to estimate the thermal properties of a waste landfill through back-analysis of temperature responses from buried thermistors during a full-scale multi-week active thermal response test. Field tests were conducted at the Loraas MSW landfill in Saskatoon, Canada, using instrumented equipment, including a vertical borehole heat exchanger and thermistor strings. The test consisted of two phases: a heat injection test during the summer and a heat extraction test in the winter.

Plasma arginine as a predictive biomarker for outcomes with immune checkpoint inhibition in metastatic colorectal cancer: a correlative analysis of the CCTG CO.26 trial.

Background: Nutritional stress is a mechanism that allows tumor cells to evade the immune system. Arginine (ARG), an amino acid involved in immunomodulation, aids in regulating T-lymphocyte cell activity and the antitumor response. ARG deficiency in the tumor microenvironment can impair T-cell response while ARG supplementation may promote antitumor immune activity.

Rural physicians and social capital: the potential and promises of a rural health research capacity building program.

Background: Accessible and contextually relevant healthcare research programs and networks for rural physicians are exceedingly rare, which hinders the development of social capital in an already isolating profession. This study aims to examine the impact of the Rural Health Research Capacity Building (RRCB) Program on enhancing cognitive, structural, and relational social capital through comprehensive research skills training, supported by professional teams and resources.

Methods: This study uses a mixed-methods approach with utilization of qualitative and quantitative data and pre-post quasi-experimental design.

Preclinical safety and effectiveness of a long-acting somatostatin analogue [Ac]Ac-EBTATE against small cell lung cancer and pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors.

Purpose: We report the preclinical evaluation of potent long-acting [Ac]Ac-EBTATE against SSTR2-positive small cell lung cancer (SCLC) and pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (pan-NETs).

Methods: The pharmacokinetic, biodistribution, and safety studies were evaluated in healthy female and/or male BALB/c mice after intravenous injections of [Ac]Ac-EBTATE. Further biodistribution and radioligand therapy were investigated in female athymic BALB/c nude mice bearing high or low SSTR2-expressing subcutaneous SCLC models NCI-H524 or NCI-H727, respectively, and in a pan-NET model QGP1.

Tyrosine Hydroxylase-positive Nucleus Accumbens Neurons Influence Delay Discounting in a Mouse T-maze Task.

Delay discounting (DD) is a phenomenon where individuals devalue a reward associated with a temporal delay, with the rate of devaluation being representative of impulsive-like behavior. Here we first sought to develop and validate a mouse DD task to study brain circuits involved in DD decision-making within short developmental time windows, given widespread evidence of developmental regulation of impulse control and risk-taking. We optimized a T-maze DD task for mice that enables training and DD trials within two weeks.

The use of community treatment orders in people with substance induced psychosis.

The community treatment order (CTO) is a legally mandated approach to community based psychiatric care that has been in existence for over 20 years in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. Changes to legislation of CTOs implemented in 2015, has resulted in bolstered use of this approach to treat substance induced psychosis (SIP). Treatment plans implemented with the use of CTOs in the present study include pharmacotherapy, in the form of long-acting injectable antipsychotics (LAI-AP).

Long COVID: a consequence of chronic post-infectious inflammation!

Introduction: Long COVID defines persistence of symptoms in patients that recovered from acute COVID-19 infections. This manuscript is a brief update on current thinking on long COVID and potential causes and consequences.

Areas Covered: The extent of long COVID varies between patients with some 200 symptoms described and of different severities.

Adolescent reproductive health care services: knowledge, perspectives, and challenges among service providers in Makurdi, Benue State Nigeria.

Adolescence is a phase of life characterized by several reproductive health challenges that require support to navigate. However, access to adolescent and youth-friendly health service (AYFHS) centers to provide this support is limited. Perspective of healthcare workers (HCW) towards understanding the challenges to service provision has not been systematically documented.

Cross-sectional study evaluating the effectiveness of the Mozambique-Canada maternal health project abstraction tool for maternal near miss identification in Inhambane province, Mozambique.

Objectives: The objectives of this study are to determine whether the additional clinical criteria of the Mozambique maternal near miss abstraction tool enhance the effectiveness of the original WHO abstraction tool in identifying maternal near miss cases and also evaluate the impact of sociodemographic factors on maternal near miss identification.

Design: Cross-sectional study.

Setting: Two secondary referral hospitals in Inhambane province, Mozambique from 2021 to 2022.

An endpoint adjudication committee for the assessment of computed tomography scans in fracture healing.

Introduction: Endpoint Adjudication Committees (EACs) benefit the quality of randomized control trials (RCTs) where outcomes depend on subjective interpretations. However, assembling a committee to adjudicate large datasets is cumbersome. In a recent RCT, the primary outcome was time to union following operative fixation of scaphoid non-union, with real or placebo adjunctive ultrasound treatment.

The Use of Oral Phenobarbital Loading for the Management of Alcohol Withdrawal Syndrome in an Outpatient Setting: A Case Report.

Alcohol withdrawal syndrome is most frequently treated with benzodiazepines, but due to their short half-life, tapering prescriptions are frequently required for outpatients, which presents challenges to both clinicians and patients. Our local health system has had significant success treating alcohol withdrawal in the emergency department with phenobarbital loading doses. As patients also present in alcohol withdrawal to our outpatient addictions clinic, we have adapted our emergency department intravenous protocol to a staggered, oral loading protocol for the treatment of mild and moderate alcohol withdrawal syndrome in the community setting.

The Growth and Decay of Intense GNSS Amplitude and Phase Scintillation During Non-Storm Conditions.

A multi-instrument study is conducted at the dayside polar ionosphere to investigate the spatio-temporal evolution of scintillation in Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) signals during non-storm conditions. Bursts of intense amplitude and phase scintillation started to occur at 9 MLT and persisted for more than 1 hour implying the simultaneous existence of Fresnel and large-scale sized irregularities of significant strength in the pre-noon sector. Measurements from the EISCAT radar in Svalbard (ESR) revealed the presence of dense plasma structures with significant gradients in regions of strong Joule heating/fast flows and soft precipitation when scintillation was enhanced.

Creating an 11-year longitudinal substance use harm cohort from linked health and census data to analyse social drivers of health.

Introduction: Research on substance use harm in Canada has been hampered by an absence of linked data to analyse and report on the social drivers of substance use harm.

Objectives: This study aims to address this gap by providing a fully annotated Stata do-file that links sociodemographic data to 11 years of hospitalisation and death outcomes. This do-file will greatly facilitate the creation of provincial and national substance use cohorts using line-level data available through Statistics Canada's Research Data Centres (RDC) program.

Prescription for change: Unveiling burnout perspectives among pharmacy leaders.

Background: Burnout among pharmacists is increasingly pertinent, with growing demand for effective interventions. Burnout can lead to reduced productivity, increased job turnover, medical errors, poor patient satisfaction, and other negative outcomes for patients and providers. Growing attention to burnout in the pharmacy profession highlights the need for personal, organizational, and systemic solutions.

Accurate and Efficient Numerical Simulation of Land Models Using SUMMA With SUNDIALS.

Numerical simulation of land models without error control can be highly inaccurate. We present the incorporation of the Suite of Nonlinear and Differential-Algebraic Equation Solvers (SUNDIALS) package to solve the equations that simulate thermodynamics and hydrologic processes in the Structure for Unifying Multiple Modeling Alternatives (SUMMA) land model. The algorithmic features of SUNDIALS, such as error estimation and adaptive order and step-size control, result in a SUMMA-SUNDIALS model that delivers substantially improved accuracy and relative computational efficiency compared to integration with the previous SUMMA model, which uses the low-order backward Euler method with no rigorous error control.

Application of selenium isotopes to define selenium bioreduction in coal waste rock: Elk Valley, British Columbia.

Anthropogenic sources of selenium (Se), including coal mining, can release Se to the environment and raise Se concentrations in receiving waters above drinking water and aquatic limits. Selenium bioreduction can be an important control to reduce dissolved selenate concentrations. This extensive study investigated the application of Se stable isotope ratios (δSe) of dissolved selenate to identify Se bioreduction in saturated and unsaturated mine rock piles (MRPs) located in the Elk Valley, Canada.