Category: Statistics

Eur Arch Otorhinolaryngol. 2025 Sep 18. doi: 10.1007/s00405-025-09649-6. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

PURPOSE: This study aimed to compare short-term language outcomes following hearing aid rehabilitation in pediatric patients with severe bilateral hearing loss (70-90 dB), with a particular focus on differences according to etiology. We hypothesized that children with enlarged vestibular aqueduct (EVA) exhibit more favorable speech development compared to those with other genetic or structural causes of hearing loss, and explored the potential presence of a “hidden” air-bone gap associated with EVA.

METHODS: We retrospectively reviewed 36 children under five years of age diagnosed with bilateral severe sensorineural hearing loss and ascertained before age two at Seoul National University Bundang Hospital. Patients were classified into EVA (n = 16) and non-EVA (n = 20) groups based on radiologic and genetic data. All participants underwent one year of bilateral hearing aid rehabilitation. Speech and language outcomes were assessed using the Categories of Auditory Perception (CAP), Sequenced Language Scale for Infants (SELSI), and Receptive and Expressive Vocabulary Test (REVT), and were compared pre- and post-treatment.

RESULTS: Both groups showed improved CAP scores after one year. However, the EVA group exhibited significantly better expressive language percentile scores (mean 41.8 ± 30.9) compared to the non-EVA group, despite progressive threshold deterioration. Receptive language also improved more in the EVA group, although not statistically significant.

CONCLUSION: Children with EVA may achieve superior short-term language outcomes with hearing aids, potentially due to a third window-related hidden air-bone gap. However, given the progressive nature of EVA, long-term follow-up is required to assess articulation development and determine optimal timing for cochlear implantation.

PMID:40968201 | DOI:10.1007/s00405-025-09649-6

Eur Arch Otorhinolaryngol. 2025 Sep 18. doi: 10.1007/s00405-025-09626-z. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

PURPOSE: This study investigates differences in meta-emotional beliefs and meta-emotional intelligence between preadolescents and adolescents with cochlear implants (CIs) and their typically hearing (TH) peers.

METHODS: The sample included 86 participants aged 10-18 years, evenly divided between those with CIs and TH individuals. The IE-ACCME test, a multi-method tool, was used to assess meta-emotional intelligence. Statistical analyses were carried out to compare meta-emotional intelligence dimensions between CIs and TH groups.

RESULTS: The findings reveal that the CIs group had significantly higher overall meta-emotional belief scores, suggesting that individuals with CIs perceive emotions as playing a more significant role in their lives. Despite this, no significant differences were found in subscales related to emotion perception, comprehension, and management, indicating similar beliefs across both groups. However, the CIs group scored higher on the facilitation subscale, reflecting stronger beliefs about using emotions to enhance thinking. Additionally, the CIs group tended to overestimate their emotional abilities, both in everyday life and in emotional ability tests.

CONCLUSION: CIs group exhibited heightened meta-emotional beliefs and a tendency to overestimate their emotional abilities, reflecting a distinct meta-emotional intelligence profile linked to hearing loss and cochlear implantation. These findings suggest a distinct emotional profile for individuals with CIs, highlighting the need for targeted emotional and meta-emotional skills training.

PMID:40968200 | DOI:10.1007/s00405-025-09626-z

Hepatol Int. 2025 Sep 19. doi: 10.1007/s12072-025-10903-6. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Several studies have shown similar efficacy between nonselective beta-blockers (NSBBs) and endoscopic variceal ligation (EVL) in preventing esophageal variceal bleeding in cirrhosis. However, the comparative effectiveness between propranolol (PPL) and EVL remains uncertain. This meta-analysis evaluated both strategies.

METHODS: PubMed, Embase, and Cochrane Central were searched for randomized-controlled trials (RCTs) comparing PPL and EVL for primary prophylaxis of esophageal variceal bleeding in cirrhotic patients. Outcomes were evaluated using risk ratios (RR) with 95% confidence intervals (CI), and heterogeneity was assessed by the I² statistic. Meta-regressions were conducted based on Child-Pugh classification and presence of ascites. All statistical analyses were performed using RStudio version 4.4.2.

RESULTS: Fourteen RCTs were included, comprising 1345 patients: 664 (49.4%) received EVL and 681 (50.6%) PPL. EVL was more effective in preventing esophageal variceal hemorrhage (RR: 1.40; 95% CI: 1.02-1.91; p = 0.035; I² = 8.5%). No differences were found in variceal bleeding-related deaths (RR: 1.28; 95% CI: 0.76-2.15; p = 0.351; I² = 0%), all-cause mortality (RR: 0.93; 95% CI: 0.76-1.14; p = 0.503; I² = 0%), or in the incidence of adverse events (RR: 1.20; 95% CI: 0.59-2.46; p = 0.612; I² = 84.7%).

CONCLUSION: EVL was superior in preventing esophageal variceal bleeding. Such results suggest that not all NSBBs provide equivalent efficacy in primary prophylaxis, reinforcing the need for further studies to confirm these findings.

PMID:40968192 | DOI:10.1007/s12072-025-10903-6

Diabetologia. 2025 Sep 18. doi: 10.1007/s00125-025-06534-z. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

AIMS/HYPOTHESIS: Previous studies have indicated that 29-amino-acid glucagon (i.e. ‘pancreatic’ glucagon) circulates in totally pancreatectomised individuals and that a postprandial glucagon response can be detected. Using a glucagon receptor antagonist (GRA), we investigated the possible role of extrapancreatic glucagon on glucose, lipid and amino acid metabolism in totally pancreatectomised individuals.

METHOD: In a randomised, crossover study, nine totally pancreatectomised individuals and nine matched healthy control individuals were given, in randomised order (planned on the website www.random.org ), 300 mg GRA (LY2409021; Eli Lilly) or placebo 10 h before two 3 h OGTTs. The experiment was double-masked (i.e. both participants and investigator were masked for the type of the experimental day [day A vs day B]). The key inclusion criteria for the healthy control participants were age >18 years, normal fasting plasma glucose and HbA_1c 31-44 mmol/mol (6.0-7.2%), haemoglobin >7.0 mmol/l (men) / >6.5 mmol/l (women) and informed consent. Key inclusion criteria for the pancreatectomised individuals were age >18 years, haemoglobin in the normal range and informed consent. The primary endpoint was the difference in plasma glucose excursions between study days.

RESULTS: Glucagon concentrations remained unchanged from fasting concentrations during the OGTT in the totally pancreatectomised individuals on both study days and circulating glucose, lipids and amino acid levels were unaffected by treatment with LY2409021 compared with placebo. In the control group, LY2409021 resulted in relevant pharmacodynamic effects, including lower fasting plasma glucose (4.7 [0.1] vs 5.2 [0.1] mmol/l, p=0.001) and augmented concentrations of amino acids in plasma, compared with placebo.

CONCLUSIONS/INTERPRETATION: We conclude that inhibition of the glucagon receptor using LY2409021 during OGTT in totally pancreatectomised individuals does not produce detectable effects on glucose, lipid or amino acid metabolism, ruling out metabolic effects of extrapancreatic glucagon.

TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT02944110).

FUNDING: This study was supported by grants from the Aase and Ejnar Danielsen’s Foundation and the Novo Nordisk Foundation.

PMID:40968190 | DOI:10.1007/s00125-025-06534-z

Nat Commun. 2025 Sep 18;16(1):8313. doi: 10.1038/s41467-025-64122-6.

NO ABSTRACT

PMID:40968170 | DOI:10.1038/s41467-025-64122-6

J Perinatol. 2025 Sep 18. doi: 10.1038/s41372-025-02431-w. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE: To analyse trends of outcomes of very low birth weight (VLBW) infants born after 27 weeks of gestation over 15 years in South Wales, UK.

STUDY DESIGN: Trends of clinical outcomes were analysed by deriving multivariable logistic regression models and presented as odds ratios (aOR) with 95% confidence intervals (95% CI). A p-value of <0.05 was considered to be statistically significant.

RESULTS: Between 2007 and 2021, 2321 infants were included in the cohort. There was a decline in the incidence of mortality (aOR 0.941; 95% CI 0.895, 0.988), severe brain injury (0.937; 0.893, 0.982), necrotising enterocolitis (0.911; 0.862, 0.964) and sepsis (0.949; 0.920, 0.978). At birth, odds of mechanical ventilation (0.909; 0.888, 0.930) & receipt of surfactant (0.920; 0.899, 0.942), and mechanical ventilation after admission (0.940; 0.919, 0.961) were significantly reduced. Analysis of a subgroup of 1797 preterm infants born before 32 weeks suggested significant improvement in all major outcomes studied.

DISCUSSION: Trends of care patterns and outcomes improved over time in this cohort of VLBW infants in South Wales, especially preterm infants below 32 weeks of gestation.

PMID:40968140 | DOI:10.1038/s41372-025-02431-w

Eur J Surg Oncol. 2025 Sep 2;51(11):110426. doi: 10.1016/j.ejso.2025.110426. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: The Toumai® surgical robot, a cutting-edge medical assistance robot, was developed and launched in China.

OBJECTIVE: Compare the effectiveness and safety of the da Vinci robotic surgical system and the Toumai® surgical robot in RARP and RAPN surgeries(the Toumai® -RARP versus the DV-RARP, the Toumai®-RAPN versus the DV-RAPN).

DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS: One randomized controlled trials were conducted among patients aged 18-77 years suspected of having T1a N0M0 renal cancer, and another randomized controlled trial was conducted among patients aged 55-79 years suspected of having T2 N0M0 prostate cancer.

REASULTS: The clinical characteristics of the two groups of patients undergoing the same surgical procedure showed no significant differences. All surgeries were successfully completed without the need for conversion from laparoscopic to open surgery. The operative time in the Toumai® group was significantly longer. Additionally, there were no significant differences between the two groups in key indicators such as blood loss, length of hospital stay, complication rates, and functional outcomes.

CONCLUSIONS: This comparative study on the efficacy and safety between the Toumai® system and the da Vinci system demonstrates that the Toumai® surgical robot and the da Vinci robotic system achieve comparable safety profiles, surgical outcomes, and postoperative expectations when performing RAPN and RARP procedures, with no statistically significant differences observed.

PMID:40966817 | DOI:10.1016/j.ejso.2025.110426

Sci Total Environ. 2025 Sep 17;1001:180509. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2025.180509. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

Pollinators are critical contributors to the natural world as well as to humans. However, their population numbers have been rapidly declining, in part due to pesticide exposure. Using the systemic pesticide thiamethoxam and the ornamental species Bloomify™ rose lantana (Lantana strigocamara R. W. Sanders ‘UF-1011-2’), this study investigated the influence of application method (drench vs. spray), rate (control, low, medium, high), bud stage timing (pre-bud, immature, mature), and pruning (non-pruned or pruned) on the contamination of nectar in container-grown plants. A subset of plants was later transplanted into landscape conditions to determine how long it takes for the pesticides levels in nectar to drop to non-detectable levels. Results showed significant effects of application timing, rate, and method on the concentration of thiamethoxam (and its metabolite clothianidin) in nectar. While spray applied thiamethoxam was not observed at quantifiable concentrations in nectar, drench-applied thiamethoxam surpassed published LC50’s for several bee species. Overall, as the application times approached flower bud maturity and as higher application rates were used, concentrations of thiamethoxam and clothianidin in nectar increased. Additionally, the practice of pruning or non-pruning drenched plants did not affect thiamethoxam or clothianidin concentrations found in nectar. When container-treated plants were transferred to landscape plots, pesticide concentrations in nectar were nominal after 10 days and close to non-detectable after 29 days. These results provide insight into the development of nursery guidelines to help limit pesticide risk to pollinators before plants go to market.

PMID:40966811 | DOI:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2025.180509

J Mol Graph Model. 2025 Sep 13;142:109170. doi: 10.1016/j.jmgm.2025.109170. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

Drug-target affinity (DTA) prediction facilitates accelerated drug screening and reduces development costs. To enhance prediction performance and generalization capability, this paper proposes a DTA prediction model based on discrete curvature, named Ricci-GraphDTA, which integrates molecular graph and protein sequence modeling for efficient and accurate DTA prediction. The model consists of three parts: feature encoding, input representation learning, and affinity prediction. In the feature encoding stage, drug molecules are modeled as graphs, where Forman curvature is introduced to adjust the weights of neighbor information aggregation. A GIN residual network is then used to capture the local geometric and topological features of molecules. Protein sequences are modeled using BiLSTM to extract global dependency features, enhanced by an attention mechanism to capture long-range dependencies and key residue interactions-overcoming the limitations of traditional CNNs in handling long-range dependencies. In the input representation learning stage, the high-level representations of drugs and proteins are concatenated and passed through multiple nonlinear transformations to extract cross-modal interaction features, which are then used for affinity prediction. Experimental results demonstrate that Ricci-GraphDTA exhibits significant performance across various evaluation metrics on the Davis and KIBA datasets. Further cold-start experiments demonstrate the strong generalization ability of Ricci-GraphDTA in scenarios involving unseen drugs or targets, highlighting its potential in real-world drug discovery applications. On average, it achieves a 22.5% reduction in MSE across three cold-start tasks, with over 42% reduction in the dual cold-start setting, showcasing excellent structural modeling capability and robustness.

PMID:40966797 | DOI:10.1016/j.jmgm.2025.109170

Pediatr Infect Dis J. 2025 Sep 17. doi: 10.1097/INF.0000000000005006. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Vancomycin therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) is essential for optimizing efficacy and minimizing toxicity, particularly in acute kidney injury (AKI). However, recent guidelines favor area under the curve (AUC)-guided dosing over traditional trough monitoring to improve dosing. This study aimed to compare vancomycin TDM strategies in pediatric patients, examine the agreement between 1-point and 2-point sampling methods for AUC estimation, and explore the association between vancomycin exposure and clinical outcomes.

METHODS: This retrospective cohort study included pediatric patients (aged 2 months to 18 years) who underwent vancomycin TDM between 2017 and 2019 (trough-based dosing) and 2020 and 2022 (AUC-based dosing). The pharmacokinetic parameters were estimated using Bayesian software. AKI was defined according to the Kidney Disease: Improving Global Outcomes criteria. Receiver operating characteristic curve analysis was performed to identify the threshold values of AUC and trough concentrations for predicting AKI.

RESULTS: A total of 288 patients were included in the study: 164 were from 2017 to 2019 and 124 were from 2020 to 2022, respectively. A comparison of the 1-point and 2-point sampling methods for estimating the AUC showed no significant differences. The incidence of AKI was slightly lower in the 2020-2022 cohort (2.4%) than in the 2017-2019 cohort (6.7%), though the difference was not statistically significant. The AUC threshold for predicting AKI was similar between 1-point and 2-point sampling methods (588-621 mg h/L).

CONCLUSIONS: AUC-based vancomycin dosing was associated with a reduced incidence of AKI in pediatric patients, without compromising efficacy. Further studies are warranted to refine the exposure targets for bacteremia resolution.

PMID:40966765 | DOI:10.1097/INF.0000000000005006