Category: Nevin Manimala

Development. 2021 Mar 12;148(18):dev192773. doi: 10.1242/dev.192773.

ABSTRACT

Recognizing the crucial role of mechanical regulation and forces in tissue development and homeostasis has stirred a demand for in situ measurement of forces and stresses. Among emerging techniques, the use of cell geometry to infer cell junction tensions, cell pressures and tissue stress has gained popularity owing to the development of computational analyses. This approach is non-destructive and fast, and statistically validated based on comparisons with other techniques. However, its qualitative and quantitative limitations, in theory as well as in practice, should be examined with care. In this Primer, we summarize the underlying principles and assumptions behind stress inference, discuss its validity criteria and provide guidance to help beginners make the appropriate choice of its variants. We extend our discussion from two-dimensional stress inference to three dimensional, using the early mouse embryo as an example, and list a few possible extensions. We hope to make stress inference more accessible to the scientific community and trigger a broader interest in using this technique to study mechanics in development.

PMID:33712442 | DOI:10.1242/dev.192773

J Voice. 2021 Mar 9:S0892-1997(21)00070-9. doi: 10.1016/j.jvoice.2021.01.026. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of our study was to investigate the impact of surgical mask on some vocal parameters such as F0, vocal intensity, jitter, shimmer and harmonics-to-noise ratio in order to understand how surgical mask can affect voice and verbal communication in adults.

METHODS: The study was carried out on a selected group of 60 healthy subjects. All subjects were trained to voice a vocal sample of a sustained /a/, at a conversational voice intensity for the Maximum Phonation Time (MPT), wearing the surgical mask and then without wearing the surgical mask. Voice samples were recorded directly in Praat.

RESULTS: There were no statistically significant differences in any acoustic parameter between the masked and unmasked condition. There was a non-significant decrease in vocal intensity in 65% of the subjects while wearing a surgical mask.

CONCLUSIONS: The statistical comparison carried out between all the acoustic voice parameters observed, extracted wearing and not wearing a surgical mask did not reveal any significant statistical difference. Most of the subjects, after wearing the surgical mask, presented a decrease in vocal intensity measured. Our conclusion was that wearing a mask is likely to induce the unconscious need to increase the vocal effort, resulting over time in a greater risk of developing functional dysphonia. The reduction of intensity can affect also social interaction and speech audibility, especially for individuals with hearing loss.

PMID:33712355 | DOI:10.1016/j.jvoice.2021.01.026

Clin Breast Cancer. 2021 Jan 23:S1526-8209(21)00024-0. doi: 10.1016/j.clbc.2021.01.012. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

AIMS: To determine if there is any correlation between the number of positive non-sentinel lymph nodes (NSLN) and the mRNA copy numbers of cytokeratin 19 receptor on one step nucleic acid amplification (OSNA) in the sentinel lymph node (SLN).

METHODS: An 8-year retrospective study of consecutive patients who had primary surgery and sentinel node biopsy for breast cancer from January 2011 to December 2018 was carried out. All these patients had intra-operative analysis of sentinel lymph nodes by OSNA. Patients who had neoadjuvant chemotherapy or neoadjuvant endocrine therapy were excluded.

RESULTS: There were 1159 patients with an age range of 24 to 90 years and a mean age of 63 years in this study. A total of 1324 SLNs were analyzed by OSNA. Macrometastasis was found in 120 patients and they underwent axillary lymph node dissection (ALND). A total of 2405 NSLNs were analyzed. Of the patients who had ALND, 51 (43%) patients had negative NSLNs and 69 (57%) had positive NSLNs. The mean mRNA copy numbers respectively for the 2 groups were 853,665 and 609,855. The difference between the means is not statistically significant (P = 0.82). Also the Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) Curve of the total CK-19 mRNA copy number for both groups-negative and positive NSLN were almost identical (Figure 3) indicating mRNA copy numbers cannot be used to discriminate between positive and negative non-sentinel lymph nodes.

CONCLUSION: It is clear from our study that in patients who have ALND due to macromets on OSNA, there is no correlation between the total tumor load as represented by mRNA copy numbers and the likelihood of positive non-sentinel lymph nodes. We therefore cannot rely solely on the mRNA copy numbers to decide on ALND.

PMID:33712365 | DOI:10.1016/j.clbc.2021.01.012

J Adolesc Health. 2021 Mar 9:S1054-139X(21)00060-4. doi: 10.1016/j.jadohealth.2021.01.028. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

PURPOSE: Medically ill youth are at increased risk for suicide. For convenience, hospitals may screen for suicide risk using depression screening instruments, though this practice might not be adequate to detect those at risk for suicide. This study aims to determine whether depression screening can detect suicide risk in pediatric medical inpatients who screen positive on suicide-specific measures.

METHODS: A convenience sample of medical inpatients ages 10-21 years were recruited as part of a larger instrument validation study. Participants completed the Ask Suicide-Screening Questions, the Suicidal Ideation Questionnaire/Suicidal Ideation Questionnaire-Junior, and the Patient Health Questionnaire-Adolescent Version (PHQ-A). Univariate and multivariate statistics were calculated to examine the relationship between screening positive for depression and suicide risk.

RESULTS: The sample consisted of 600 medical inpatients (59.2% female; 55.2% white; mean age 15.2 ± 2.84 years). Of participants who screened positive for suicide risk (13.5%; 81/600), 39.5% (32/81) did not screen positive for depression, and more than half (45/81) did not endorse PHQ-A item 9, which queries for thoughts of harming oneself or being better off dead. Twenty-six participants (32%) who screened negative for depression and on PHQ-A item nine were at risk for suicide.

CONCLUSIONS: In this sample, depression screening alone failed to detect nearly a third of youth at risk for suicide. Although depression and suicide risk are strongly related, a significant portion of pediatric medical inpatients at risk for suicide may pass through the healthcare system unrecognized if depression screening is used as a proxy for identifying suicide risk.

PMID:33712380 | DOI:10.1016/j.jadohealth.2021.01.028

J Voice. 2021 Mar 9:S0892-1997(21)00086-2. doi: 10.1016/j.jvoice.2021.02.026. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVES: Following endotracheal intubation (ETI), voice changes can be observed quite frequently. Considering that the pressure that occurs increases as the duration of anesthesia with ETI increases, with the aim to contribute to literature, we realized objective acoustic analysis by grouping patients according to the length of surgical periods. We wanted to investigate both the impact of endotracheal intubation on the voice and how long this impact lasted by performing voice analyzes on the preoperative, postoperative first day and postoperative fifth day.

MATERIAL AND METHODS: Patients were examined in three groups comprised of operations lasting less than 60 minutes depending on the operation time (1st group, n = 21), operations lasting between 60-120 minutes (2nd group, n = 21) and operations lasting longer than 120 minutes (3rd group, n = 18). For patients in all three groups, preoperative, postoperative first day and postoperative fifth day voice analyzes have been performed and compared statistically.

RESULTS: With the evaluation made on the postoperative first day, it was found that the jitter%, shimmer% and shimmer dB values increased significantly as the operation time increased and it was observed that the HNR values decreased significantly (for jitter% P = 0,008, for shimmer% P = 0,027, for shimmer dB P = 0,025, for HNR P = 0,028). There was no significant difference between the postoperative first day F0 values and postoperative fifth day F0, jitter%, shimmer%, shimmer dB and HNR values in all three groups.

CONCLUSION: It is possible to state that ETI makes changes in the voice in the early period, but the changes are normalized in the long term. However, multidisciplinary studies with larger patient groups are needed for more precise and clear judgments.

PMID:33712353 | DOI:10.1016/j.jvoice.2021.02.026

Health Econ. 2021 Mar 12. doi: 10.1002/hec.4240. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates the impact of delaying retirement on mortality among the French population. We take advantage of the 1993 pension reform in the private sector to identify the causal effect of an increase in claiming age on mortality. We use administrative data which provide detailed information on career characteristics, dates of birth and death. Our results, precisely estimated, show that an exogenous increase of one year in the claiming age has no significant impact on the probability to die, measured between age 61 and 79, even when we allow for nonlinear effects of treatment intensity. To test the power of our sample to detect statistically significant effects for rare events like death, we compute minimum detectable effects (MDEs). Our MDE estimates suggest that, if an impact of later retirement on mortality would be detectable, it would remain very small in magnitude.

PMID:33711207 | DOI:10.1002/hec.4240

ACR Open Rheumatol. 2021 Mar 12. doi: 10.1002/acr2.11237. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE: The transition from pediatric to adult rheumatology care represents a particularly vulnerable time for patients with juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) and childhood-onset systemic lupus erythematosus (cSLE). Improving self-management skills is important in optimizing health care transition. The study’s objectives were to 1) examine variability in transition readiness of adolescents and young adults within and between different ages, sexes, and disease types; 2) determine the association between age and transition readiness; and 3) identify specific challenges to transition readiness for adolescents.

METHODS: Over 1 year, patients 14 to 20 years of age with JIA or cSLE were recruited from pediatric transition and young adult clinics at a single academic institution. Participants completed the 14-item Transition-Q at a single time point. Total scores range from 0 to 100; higher scores indicate greater health care self-management skills as a proxy for transition readiness. Descriptive statistics summarized patient characteristics and Transition-Q scores for the population. Regression analyses determined the association between age, sex, and disease type and Transition-Q score.

RESULTS: Among 70 participants, 61 had JIA and 9 cSLE (mean disease duration 4.6 years). The mean (SD) total Transition-Q score was 59.8 (14.9). Age was significantly associated with Transition-Q score (standardized β = 0.372l P = 0.002). The most commonly reported challenges were seeing the physician alone (without parents), making one’s own appointments, picking up prescriptions, and independent transportation for appointments.

CONCLUSION: Transition readiness appears to increase with patient age. There is significant variability in Transition-Q scores between patients of the same age, suggesting that an individualized approach to improving self-management skills is necessary.

PMID:33711192 | DOI:10.1002/acr2.11237

Int Endod J. 2021 Mar 12. doi: 10.1111/iej.13513. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

AIM: To explore the proliferation, adhesion and differentiation response and the underlying mechanisms that occur in LPS-induced inflamed dental pulp cells in contact with Biodentine and MTA.

METHODOLOGY: The dental pulp cells (DPCs) were isolated from three healthy donors and named DPC-H1 to DPC-H3. The DPCs were pre-cultured with 2 or 5 ug/mL lipopolysaccharide (LPS) for 24 h to induce inflammation. The expression of inflammation marker-miR-146a was detected by q-PCR. The normal and LPS-induced DPCs were further treated with 0.14 mg/mL Biodentine or 0.13mg/mL MTA for 24 h. MTT assay and adhesion assay were used to analyze the changes of cell phenotypes. DSPP, AKT and ERK expression were detected by western blotting. The data were analyzed by Mann-Whitney test or two-way ANOVA. Differences were considered statistically significant when p < 0.05.

RESULTS: In LPS-induced DPCs, Biodentine and MTA treatment neither induced nor aggravated LPS-induced inflammation, but their presence did increase the expression of the odontogenic differentiation marker DSPP. Under 2or 5 μg/mL LPS-induced inflammation, Biodentine and MTA promoted the proliferation of DPC cells, and significantly in DPC-H2 (p < 0.0001 for both reagents). With the treatment of 2 μg/mL LPS, the cell adhesion of DPCs on the fibronectin-coated culture plates was increased significantly by Biodentine (p = 0.0413) and MTA (p < 0.0001). Biodentine and MTA regulated cell adhesion on the fibronectin-coated culture plates (p < 0.0001 for both reagents) and proliferation (p < 0.0001 for both reagents) via the AKT pathway. However, the AKT pathway was not involved in the expression of DSPP induced by Biodentine and MTA.

CONCLUSION: Biodentine and MTA enhanced the proliferation, adhesion and differentiation of LPS-induced dental pulp cells. The proliferation and adhesion process induced by Biodentine and MTA is via the AKT pathway. However, the cellular differentiation process might not use the same pathway, and this needs to be explored in future studies.

PMID:33711171 | DOI:10.1111/iej.13513

Aliment Pharmacol Ther. 2021 Mar 12. doi: 10.1111/apt.16304. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Gastroparesis is defined by delayed gastric emptying with associated symptoms in the absence of mechanical obstruction.

AIM: To evaluate pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of felcisetrag, a highly selective 5-HT₄ receptor agonist, on total gut transit in patients with documented delayed gastric emptying of solids.

METHODS: Single-centre, placebo-controlled study of 36 participants receiving placebo, 0.1mg, 0.3mg or 1.0mg of felcisetrag I.V. infusion, daily, for 3 days. At baseline, each participant completed a 4h, ^99m Tc-egg meal (300 kcal, 30% fat) gastric emptying test. Following infusion (Day 2), gastric, small bowel and colonic transit of solids were measured over 48h (same meal plus ¹¹¹ In-charcoal delivered in methacrylate-coated capsule). Samples were collected for pharmacokinetics. The primary endpoint was gastric emptying T_1/2 . Statistical analysis used baseline parameters as covariates (ANCOVA).

RESULTS: Patients (22 idiopathic, 14 diabetic gastroparesis) were randomised to felcisetrag (0.1 mg, n = 10; 0.3 mg, n = 9; 1.0 mg, n = 7) or placebo (n = 10). Compared to placebo, felcisetrag significantly accelerated gastric emptying T_1/2 , colonic filling at 6h, and 10% small bowel transit time (overall P < 0.01; all three doses individually Bonferroni corrected P < 0.05) for all three measurements. Ascending colon emptying (T_1/2 ) was significantly accelerated (all doses), and colonic transit at 48 hours was accelerated with 0.1 mg and 0.3 mg felcisetrag compared to placebo. Pharmacokinetic results were dose proportional. Felcisetrag was well tolerated with no clinically significant findings from clinical laboratory, vital signs or ECG.

CONCLUSION: I.V. felcisetrag significantly accelerated gastric, small bowel and colonic transit in patients with gastroparesis, and should be further evaluated for short-term treatment of gastric and intestinal motility disorders. ClinicalTrials.gov #NCT03281577.

PMID:33711180 | DOI:10.1111/apt.16304