Nevin Manimala

J Neurooncol. 2022 Jun 25. doi: 10.1007/s11060-022-03986-w. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION: Sacral and presacral schwannomas are rare, accounting for a minority of spinal schwannomas. We present our institution’s experience surgically treating spinal schwannomas and compare it to the literature.

METHODS: Data were collected for 27 patients treated surgically for sacral or presacral schwannoma between 1997 and 2018 at all Mayo Clinic locations and 93 patients in the literature. Kaplan-Meier disease-free survival analysis was conducted. Unpaired two-sample t tests and Fisher’s exact tests assessed statistical significance between groups.

RESULTS: Our patients and those in the literature experienced a similar age at diagnosis (49.9 y/o. vs 43.4 y/o., respectively). Most of our patients (59.3%) reported full recovery from symptoms, while a minority reported partial recovery (33.3%) and no recovery (11.1%). A smaller percentage in the literature experienced full recovery (31.9%) and partial recovery (29.8%) but also no recovery (1.1%). Our patients experienced fewer complications (14.8% versus 25.5%). Disease-free survival curves for all patients showed no significant variation in progression by extent of resection of schwannoma (log-rank P = 0.26). No lesion progression was associated with full or partial symptom improvement (p = 0.044), and female patients were more likely to undergo resection via a posterior approach (p = 0.042).

CONCLUSION: Outcomes of patients with sacral or presacral schwannomas vary based on patient demographics, tumor characteristics, symptoms, and surgical treatment. Among the range of symptoms experienced by these patients, the most common is pain. Prognosis improves and overall survival is high when the surgical approach towards sacral schwannomas is prepared and executed appropriately.

PMID:35752722 | DOI:10.1007/s11060-022-03986-w

Eye (Lond). 2022 Jun 25. doi: 10.1038/s41433-022-02152-w. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVE: Management of concomitant cataract and glaucoma depends on the stage of glaucoma and the patient’s situation. There are different surgical options for handling visually significant cataract and mild-to-moderate open-angle glaucoma (OAG). We aimed to compare the one-year results of phacoemulsification alone versus phacoviscocanalostomy in these patients.

SUBJECTS/METHODS: This was a parallel-arm, single-masked, randomized-controlled trial, conducted at Farabi Eye Hospital, Tehran, Iran between January 2016 and January 2018. We enrolled 89 eyes from 89 patients with mild-to-moderate primary OAG or pseudoexfoliative glaucoma (PEXG) with visually significant age-related cataract. They randomly underwent phacoemulsification alone (n = 44) or combined phaco-viscocanalostomy (n = 45). All patients had a 12-month follow-up period, and the mean intraocular pressure (IOP), the number of antiglaucoma medications, and complete and qualified success rates were compared.

RESULTS: After the 1st and 3rd months, the mean IOP showed significantly decreased in the phaco-visco group compared to the phaco group (P < 0001 and P = 0.004, respectively), but it was not statistically significant at 6th and 12th months (P = 0.540 and P = 0.530). The need for antiglaucoma medication and the complete and qualified success rates were significantly in favour of the phaco-visco group in all postoperative visits (P < 0.05).

CONCLUSIONS: Although both phacoemulsification alone and phacoviscocanalostomy procedures can be considered for patients with mild-to-moderate OAG, we found better success rates using phacoviscocanalostomy. Therefore, if the surgeon is an expert in performing this technique, this non-penetrating procedure can be applied in patients with visually significant cataract and earlier stages of OAG, especially in patients with PEXG.

PMID:35752716 | DOI:10.1038/s41433-022-02152-w

Altern Ther Health Med. 2022 Jun 24:AT7524. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Dementia, a degenerative disease, requires alternative treatment to maintain function, but previous studies suggest only the therapeutic effect of a temporary program.

PRIMARY STUDY OBJECTIVE: The current study aimed to examine the effects of assistive technologies on cognitive function, daily living ability, and psychosocial symptoms in elderlies with mild cognitive impairment, elderlies with mild dementia and their caregivers.

DESIGN: The research team designed an experimental study that used application as the intervention.

SETTING: To recruit participants living in the local community, research participation was supported through local public health centers, welfare centers, and social welfare organizations. Evaluation and intervention were conducted by visiting the participant’s home.

PARTICIPANT: The study participants were 29 Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) and 16 mild Alzheimer type dementia (AD) patients over the age of 75 with a total of 45 patients, 10 MCI caregivers and 11 AD caregivers with a total of 21 caregivers.

INTERVENTION: The assistive technologies used for intervention are 3 area (8 daily living assistive devices, 7 safety assistive technologies, and 7 cognitive assistive technologies). Up to 5 assistive technologies were provided to one subject, and they were instructed to use them every day for 8 weeks.

OUTCOME MEASURE: Participants were evaluated at baseline and postintervention using specific scales appropriate to an area: cognitive function, activities of daily living, depression, anxiety, quality of life, satisfaction.

RESULTS: Cognitive function showed statistically significant changes in the MCI group. Basic activities of daily living, depression, anxiety, quality of life, satisfaction showed statistically significant positive effects in both MCI and AD groups. Instrumental activities of daily living did not show any statistically significant differences.

CONCLUSION: As an alternative to dementia care in the future, the application and management of assistive technologies for each area should be provided at the government level.

PMID:35751894

Health Econ. 2022 Jun 25. doi: 10.1002/hec.4536. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

While psychological distress is a common sequelae of job loss, how that relationship continued during the COVID-19 pandemic is unclear, for example, given higher health risk to working due to disease exposure. This paper examines changes in psychological distress depending on job loss among a cohort of randomly selected residents living in nine predominantly African American low-income neighborhoods in Pittsburgh PA across four waves between 2013 and 2020. Between 2013 and 2016, we found an increase in psychological distress after job loss in line with the literature. In contrast, between 2018 and 2020 we found change in psychological distress did not differ by employment loss. However, residents who had financial concerns and lost their jobs had the largest increases in psychological distress, while residents who did not have serious financial concerns-potentially due to public assistance-but experienced job loss had no increase in distress, a better outcome even than those that retained their jobs. Using partial identification, we find job loss during the pandemic decreased psychological distress for those without serious financial concerns. This has important policy implications for how high-risk persons within low-income communities are identified and supported, as well as what type of public assistance may help.

PMID:35751857 | DOI:10.1002/hec.4536

Rev Environ Health. 2022 Jun 27. doi: 10.1515/reveh-2022-0042. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

Hazardous organic compounds such as benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, o-xylene, m-xylene, and p-xylene (known as BTEX) found at work and at home can cause adverse health effects of human beings throughout their lives. Biological monitoring, an exposure assessment method, considers all exposed organic and non-organic compounds. Our goal was to perform a systematic review and a statistical analysis (meta-analysis) of peer-reviewed publications to assess urinary concentrations of BTEX biomarkers in both occupationally-exposed population and the general population. Several major electronic databases, including Scopus, Embase, Medline, Web of Science, and Google scholar (grey literature), were searched for biomonitoring studies of BTEX. Overall, 33 studies met the eligible criteria for the systematic review and six met the full inclusion criteria for meta-analysis. For meta-analysis, we included studies in which unmetabolized BTEX compounds were measured in urine samples. Due to insufficient data, studies that measured BTEX metabolites in urine samples and unmetabolized BTEX compounds in blood samples were excluded from the meta-analysis but were analyzed in the qualitative synthesis. Most studies showed increased urinary concentrations of BTEX in exposed individuals (mainly workers) compared to unexposed individuals. The results showed that the highest total BTEX concentrations were recorded in painters and policemen. This study showed that the undoubted associations between lifestyle and environmental factors and urinary levels of BTEX or its metabolites have not yet been confirmed in current biomonitoring studies. This is attributed to the few studies reported in this research area, the lack of homogeneous information, and the disagreement in the published results of the studies.

PMID:35751850 | DOI:10.1515/reveh-2022-0042

Hum Brain Mapp. 2022 Jun 25. doi: 10.1002/hbm.25994. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

Functional connectivity of the human brain, representing statistical dependence of information flow between cortical regions, significantly contributes to the study of the intrinsic brain network and its functional mechanism. To fully explore its potential in the early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) using electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings, this article introduces a novel dynamical spatial-temporal graph convolutional neural network (ST-GCN) for better classification performance. Different from existing studies that are based on either topological brain function characteristics or temporal features of EEG, the proposed ST-GCN considers both the adjacency matrix of functional connectivity from multiple EEG channels and corresponding dynamics of signal EEG channel simultaneously. Different from the traditional graph convolutional neural networks, the proposed ST-GCN makes full use of the constrained spatial topology of functional connectivity and the discriminative dynamic temporal information represented by the 1D convolution. We conducted extensive experiments on the clinical EEG data set of AD patients and Healthy Controls. The results demonstrate that the proposed method achieves better classification performance (92.3%) than the state-of-the-art methods. This approach can not only help diagnose AD but also better understand the effect of normal ageing on brain network characteristics before we can accurately diagnose the condition based on resting-state EEG.

PMID:35751844 | DOI:10.1002/hbm.25994

Transbound Emerg Dis. 2022 Jun 25. doi: 10.1111/tbed.14623. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

The transmission of COVID-19 epidemic is a global emergency which is worsened by the genetic mutations of SARS-CoV-2. However, till date, few statistical studies have researched the COVID-19 spread patterns in terms of the variant cases. Hence, this paper aims to explore the associated risk factors of Delta variant, the most contagious strain of COVID-19. The study collected the state-level COVID-19 Delta variant cases in the United States during a 12-week period and included potential environmental, socioeconomic and public prevention factors as independent variables. Instead of regarding the covariate effects as constant, this paper proposes a flexible Bayesian hierarchical model with spatio-temporally varying coefficients to account for data heterogeneity. The method enables us to cluster the states into distinctive groups based on the temporal trends of the coefficients and simultaneously identify significant risk factors for each cluster. The findings contribute novel insight into the dynamics of covariate effects on the COVID-19 Delta variant over space and time, which could help the government develop targeted prevention measures for vulnerable regions based on the selected risk factors. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

PMID:35751843 | DOI:10.1111/tbed.14623

Methods Mol Biol. 2022;2493:267-277. doi: 10.1007/978-1-0716-2293-3_17.

ABSTRACT

SCAN-SNV is a recent computational tool for somatic single-nucleotide variant (SNV) identification from the single-cell DNA sequencing data. The workflow of the SCAN-SNV package is as follows. First, candidate somatic SNVs and credible heterozygous single-nucleotide polymorphisms (hSNP) are obtained by analyzing single-cell and matched bulk sequencing data, respectively. Subsequently, SCAN-SNV estimates genome-wide allele-specific amplification balance (AB) at any position of DNA sequencing data using a probabilistic spatial statistical model. Finally, candidate somatic SNVs that are likely artifacts according to the AB predictions are further removed to obtain putative mutations. This chapter provides a step-by-step practical guide of the package by explaining how to install and use the variance caller in a real-world example.

PMID:35751821 | DOI:10.1007/978-1-0716-2293-3_17

J Fluoresc. 2022 Jun 25. doi: 10.1007/s10895-022-02942-1. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

Vancomycin hydrochloride (VANH) is a glycopeptide antibiotic commonly employed in the prophylaxis and therapy of various gram-positive bacterial life-threatening infections. Due to the narrow therapeutic window of VANH, its serum levels should be well-monitored to avoid its toxicity and to optimize its therapy. Herein, an innovative silver-nanoparticles enhanced fluorescence technique was designed for VANH rapid analysis in its pharmaceutical formulation and biological fluids. This technique is based on reinforcement of VANH fluorescence intensity with silver-nanoparticles that were synthesized by a redox reaction between VANH and silver nitrate in NaOH alkaline medium using polyvinylpyrrolidone as a stabilizer. The produced silver-nanoparticles were characterized by using UV-visible spectroscopy where they have an intense absorption maximum at 415 nm and transmission electron microscope (TEM) micrograph where they are spherical in shape with smooth surface morphology and size of 10.74 ± 2.44 nm. The fluorescence intensity was measured at 394 nm after excitation at 259 nm. Under optimum conditions, a good linear relationship was accomplished between the VANH concentration and the fluorescence intensity in a range of (1-36) ng/mL with a limit of detection of 0.29 ng/mL. Greenness assessment was performed using two assessment tools namely; eco-scale scoring and green analytical procedure index revealing excellent greenness of the proposed technique. The proposed technique was validated according to the International Conference on Harmonisation (ICH) recommendations and statistically compared with the reported HPLC method revealing no significant difference concerning accuracy and precision at p = 0.05. The proposed technique depended primarily on water as a cheap and eco-friendly solvent.

PMID:35751750 | DOI:10.1007/s10895-022-02942-1

Eur Arch Paediatr Dent. 2022 Jun 25. doi: 10.1007/s40368-022-00722-w. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

PURPOSE: To evaluate clinical and radiographic outcomes of vital pulp therapy (VPT) in deeply carious young permanent first molars (PFM) affected with MIH over 24 months.

METHODS: In this prospective randomized clinical trial, n = 50 children with deeply carious young PFM affected with MIH, and diagnosed with reversible or irreversible pulpitis were randomized into 2 groups: indirect pulp treatment (IPT) and pulpotomy (partial or complete). Teeth were followed up clinically and radiographically for 24 months. Statistical analysis was done using Chi-square test; P ≤ 0.05 was considered significant.

RESULTS: A total of n = 50 teeth/patients (n = 26 females (52%), n = 24 males (48%)) were included, and 14 upper and 36 lower PFM were treated. Mean age was 11 ± 3.2 years. Clinical and radiographic success rates were: 96% for IPT, 90% for PP and 82% for CP (and 86% for both types of pulpotomy combined) over 24 months. There were no significant differences in outcomes between treatment groups. Age, gender and tooth location/jaw were found to have no statistically significant difference in outcomes among treatment groups, nor did pulpal status or root maturity, regardless of type of VPT and follow up period.

CONCLUSIONS: VPT is a valid treatment option in deeply carious young permanent first molars affected with MIH over 24 months. IPT had a higher clinical and radiographic success rate (96%) than partial or cervical pulpotomy (total 86%), but the difference was not statistically significant. Future randomized clinical trials on VPT for teeth affected with MIH are recommended with larger sample size and longer follow-up.

PMID:35751744 | DOI:10.1007/s40368-022-00722-w