Prone Transpsoas Lumbar Interbody Fusion for Degenerative Disc Disease.

Background: Prone transpsoas lumbar interbody fusion (PTP) is a newer technique to treat various spinal disc pathologies. PTP is a variation of lateral lumbar interbody fusion (LLIF) that is performed with the patient prone rather than in the lateral decubitus position. This approach offers similar benefits of lateral spinal surgery, which include less blood loss, shorter hospital stay, and quicker recovery compared with traditional open spine surgery.

Neuropsychiatric Manifestations of Syphilis.

Neurosyphilis is a condition characterized by insidious onset of encephalopathy and delirium. The infrequency with which it is encountered makes neurosyphilis a formidable diagnostic challenge. We present a rare case of a 71-year-old male with ischemic cardiomyopathy, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), undifferentiated arthritis and alcohol use disorder who was brought to the emergency department after he was found altered, confused, and paranoid.

Hidradenitis Suppurativa and Peripheral Ulcerative Keratitis.

The co-occurrence of inflammatory eye disease and hidradenitis suppurativa (HS) is uncommon; ocular involvement typically manifests as anterior uveitis. In this report, we present a unique case of peripheral ulcerative keratitis (PUK) where both infectious and rheumatological workup was negative, leading us to consider the possibility of an association between this condition and severe HS. As far as we are aware, there have only been six documented cases of PUK associated with HS.

Beneath the Surface: Diagnosing Gastric Linitis Plastica.

Gastric Linitis plastica is characterized by extensive infiltration of gastric wall by poorly differentiated tumor cells, creating a "leather-bottle stomach" appearance. We describe a case involving a 71-year-old male presenting with globus sensation, early satiety and weight loss. Recent EGD had revealed chronic gastritis with polypoid mucosa at the GE junction, and subsequent FDG-PET indicated asymmetric FDG localization.

Interfacial Properties of Gold and Cobalt Oxyhydroxide in Plasmon-Mediated Oxygen Evolution Reaction.

Water electrolysis is a green method of storing electrical energy in the chemical bonds of high-energy hydrogen gas (H). However, the anodic oxygen evolution reaction (OER) requires a significant kinetic overpotential, limiting the electrolysis rate. Recently, plasmonic gold nanoparticles (Au NPs) have been introduced to improve charge transfer at the interface between the OER electrocatalysts and the electrolyte under light illumination.

Clinical Sensitivity and Specificity of the PROSTest in an American Cohort.

Introduction: Prostate cancer (PCa) is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in men in the United States, following skin cancer, with an incidence rate of 112.7 per 100,000 men per year. The need for a reliable, non-invasive diagnostic tool for early PCa detection (screening, biochemical residual disease) remains unmet due to the limitations of PSA testing, which often leads to overdiagnosis and overtreatment.

Review and meta-analysis of gene expression biomarkers predictive of chemical-induced genotoxicity in vivo.

There is growing recognition across broad sectors of the toxicology community that gene expression biomarkers have the potential to identify genotoxic and nongenotoxic carcinogens through a weight-of-evidence approach, providing opportunities to reduce reliance on the 2-year bioassay to identify carcinogens. In August 2022, a workshop within the International Workshops on Genotoxicity Testing (IWGT) was held to critically review current methods to identify genotoxicants using various 'omics profiling methods. Here, we describe the findings of a workshop subgroup focused on the state of the science regarding the use of biomarkers to identify chemicals that act as genotoxicants in vivo.

MaveDB 2024: a curated community database with over seven million variant effects from multiplexed functional assays.

Multiplexed assays of variant effect (MAVEs) are a critical tool for researchers and clinicians to understand genetic variants. Here we describe the 2024 update to MaveDB ( https://www.mavedb.

Endothelial cells under disturbed flow release extracellular vesicles to promote inflammatory polarization of macrophages and accelerate atherosclerosis.

Background: Extracellular vesicles (EVs) derived from endothelial cells (ECs) are increasingly recognized for their role in the initiation and progression of atherosclerosis. ECs experience varying degrees and types of blood flow depending on their specific arterial locations. In regions of disturbed flow, which are predominant sites for atherosclerotic plaque formation, the impact of disturbed flow on the secretion and function of ECs-derived EVs remains unclear.

Perceived Discrimination in the Healthcare Setting and Medical Mistrust: Findings from the Health Information National Trends Survey, 2022.

Background: Perceived discrimination and medical mistrust are barriers to care that impact both individual and population health.

Objective: This study aims to characterize the prevalence of perceived racial or ethnic discrimination in healthcare as well as mistrust in the medical system and explore their associations with race and ethnicity.

Design: Cross-sectional study of nationally representative data from the Health Information National Trends Survey (fielded March-November 2022).

Wellbeing and quality of life among parents of individuals with Fontan physiology.

Purpose: To examine global and health-related quality of life (QOL) among parents of individuals with Fontan physiology and determine associations with sociodemographic, parent and child-related health, psychological, and relational factors.

Methods: Parents participating in the Australian and New Zealand Fontan Registry (ANZFR) QOL Study (N = 151, Parent Mean age = 47.9 ± 10.

Interactive and unimodal relationships between plant biomass, abiotic factors, and plant diversity in global grasslands.

Grasslands cover approximately a third of the Earth's land surface and account for about a third of terrestrial carbon storage. Yet, we lack strong predictive models of grassland plant biomass, the primary source of carbon in grasslands. This lack of predictive ability may arise from the assumption of linear relationships between plant biomass and the environment and an underestimation of interactions of environmental variables.

Performance and reliability comparison: original vs. revised bone reporting and data system (Bone-RADS).

Objective: To propose a revised bone reporting and data system (Bone-RADS) and evaluate its diagnostic performance and inter-reader reliability compared to the original Bone-RADS for solitary bone lesions on CT.

Materials And Methods: This retrospective study included 159 adult patients (mean age: 56 ± 19 years; 88 men) who underwent bone biopsy for solitary bone lesions between March 2005 and September 2021. Two radiologists (R1/2) independently categorized the lesions twice, once using the original Bone-RADS and once using the revised version.

Thiamine deficiency in US veterans with obesity.

Introduction: Thiamine deficiency is common after bariatric surgery, but patients with obesity may be deficient in thiamine even before surgery. The purpose of this research was to determine the prevalence of thiamine deficiency in patients with obesity at a medical weight-management clinic and assess the relationship between recent weight loss and thiamine deficiency.

Methods: For this observational study, medical records were reviewed for patients (n = 146) at the nonsurgical obesity medicine and preoperative bariatric surgery clinic at a Veterans Affairs Medical Center between January 1, 2012, and January 31, 2019.

Opioid use in treated and untreated obstructive sleep apnoea: remifentanil pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics in adult volunteers.

Background: Patients with obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) are considered more sensitive to opioids and at increased risk of opioid-induced respiratory depression. Nonetheless, whether OSA treatment (continuous positive airway pressure, CPAP; or bilevel positive airway pressure, BIPAP) modifies this risk remains unknown. Greater opioid sensitivity can arise from altered pharmacokinetics or pharmacodynamics.

Navigating Limited Resources-Outpatient Pediatric Cholecystectomies at Rural Hospitals.

Background: Rural facilities that provide pediatric surgical services are a critical resource to local communities. Our aim was to characterize differences in outpatient pediatric cholecystectomy outcomes performed at rural and urban hospitals with the hypothesis that rural hospitals would have similar outcomes.

Methods: The Nationwide Ambulatory Surgery Sample (NASS), which contains ambulatory surgery encounters at hospital-owned facilities, was used to perform a retrospective cohort analysis of pediatric patients age 18-years and younger who had a cholecystectomy (n = 15,449) between 2016 and 2018.

Rigorous Analysis of Multimodal HDX-MS Spectra.

An inherent strength of hydrogen/deuterium exchange coupled to mass spectrometry (HDX-MS) is its ability to detect the presence of multiple conformational states of a protein, which often manifest as multimodal isotopic envelopes. However, the statistical considerations for accurate analysis of multimodal spectra have yet to be established. Here we outline an unrestrained binomial distribution fitting approach with the corresponding statistical tests to accurately detect and, when possible, deconvolute isotopic distributions that contain multiple subpopulations.

The Prevalence of Septo-Optic Dysplasia in Neonates with Absent Cavum Septi Pellucidi Identified During Routine Prenatal Imaging.

Objective: To determine the prevalence of septo-optic-dysplasia (SOD) in patients with prenatally identified absent cavum septi pellucidi (CSP), agenesis of the corpus callosum (ACC) or dysgenesis of the corpus callosum (DCC).

Study Design: This retrospective chart review investigated neonates prenatally diagnosed with an absent CSP, ACC, or DCC who were admitted to a single quaternary academic medical center in the Pacific Northwest between 2016-2023. This prenatal diagnosis prompted a routine and protocolized postnatal workup for SOD including laboratory evaluation, imaging, and specialty consultation.

The use of premedication for intubating very low birth weight infants in the neonatal intensive care unit: Results of a national survey.

Objective: To explore barriers and perspectives of premedication use for non-emergent intubations of very low birth weight (VLBW) infants (less than 1,500 g).

Study Design: A cross-sectional, online survey was distributed from January to April 2023 to members of the American Academy of Pediatrics Section on Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine. Data was analyzed using descriptive statistics and chi-square tests.

Early prenatal but not postnatal glucocorticoid exposure is associated with enhanced HPA axis activity into adulthood in a wild primate.

The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis plays a dual role in the biology of developmental plasticity in mammals, including humans-HPA axis activity not only provides the input for, but is also a target of, offspring developmental plasticity. To investigate the understudied effects of exposure timing, this study quantified maternal HPA axis activity during each half of gestation as well as during early lactation and assessed its effect on offspring HPA axis activity in a cross-sectional sample of infant, juvenile and adult Assamese macaques (). To add ecological validity to experimental studies under laboratory conditions, macaques were studied in the wild.

Dating the origin of a viral domestication event in parasitoid wasps attacking Diptera.

Over the course of evolution, hymenopteran parasitoids have developed a close relationship with heritable viruses, sometimes integrating viral genes into their chromosomes. For example, in parasitoids belonging to the genus, 13 viral genes from the family have been domesticated to deliver immunosuppressive factors to host immune cells, thereby protecting parasitoid offspring from the host immune response. The present study aims to comprehensively characterize this domestication event in terms of the viral genes involved, the wasp diversity affected by this event and its chronology.

Thirty-day stroke/mortality of carotid revascularization in asymptomatic patients with newly diagnosed and/or decompensated heart failure exceeds the Society for Vascular Society guideline risks.

Background: According to the latest Society for Vascular Surgery (SVS) guidelines, carotid revascularization for asymptomatic individuals should be offered if the perioperative stroke/death rate does not exceed 3%. Heart failure (HF) has been associated with reduced survival rates following carotid revascularization, which may significantly impact the risk-benefit decision of treating asymptomatic patients with HF. This study aimed to evaluate the 30-day postoperative risks in asymptomatic patients with newly diagnosed and/or decompensated HF undergoing carotid endarterectomy (CEA) and carotid artery stenting (CAS).

Closed-loop modulation of remote hippocampal representations with neurofeedback.

Humans can remember specific remote events without acting on them and influence which memories are retrieved based on internal goals. However, animal models typically present sensory cues to trigger memory retrieval and then assess retrieval based on action. Thus, it is difficult to determine whether measured neural activity patterns relate to the cue(s), the memory, or the behavior.

Training of Administrative Chief Residents: Report of The Association of Program Directors in Surgery Chief Resident Workshop.

Objective: Surgical administrative chief residents (ACRs) play essential roles in residency training programs, including resident advocates, conflict negotiators, and scheduling managers. Despite their varied and important jobs, surgical ACRs receive very little training or introduction to the role.

Design: We describe here the creation and implementation of an Administrative Chief Resident Workshop developed for the Association of Program Directors in Surgery (APDS) to familiarize chief residents with their roles in scheduling and conflict negotiation.