Tag: nevin manimala

Rheumatol Ther. 2022 Mar 17. doi: 10.1007/s40744-022-00435-y. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION: To compare perceptions of disease control and treatment satisfaction between patients with psoriatic arthritis (PsA) in North America and Europe, and between participating countries within each region.

METHODS: Data were collected from patients with self-reported PsA diagnoses using an online survey. Results from questions on perceptions of overall health, disease severity, PsA symptoms, PsA impacts, and treatment satisfaction/preferences were reported using descriptive statistics and Chi-square tests.

RESULTS: A total of 456 patients from North America (Canada, n = 155; US, n = 301) and 417 patients from Europe (France, n = 123; Spain, n = 135; UK, n = 159) were included in this analysis. Patients in North America were more likely to rate their overall health as excellent/good compared with those in Europe (49 vs. 14%), but also rate their disease as severe (27 vs. 15%). Despite treatment, patients in North America and Europe still experienced musculoskeletal (92 vs. 91%) and skin/nail (62 vs. 58%) symptoms. Similar proportions of patients in North America vs. Europe experienced a social impact (81 vs. 85%); more patients in Europe vs. North America experienced PsA-related work impacts (83 vs. 74%). Satisfaction with PsA medication was more common in North America (89%) vs. Europe (79%), and more common in Spain (91%) vs. the UK (82%) or France (66%). Across all regions and countries, ≥ 75% of patients agreed that symptoms were controlled. However, ≥ 66% wished they had more medication choices, and ≥ 84% wanted to change something about their medication.

CONCLUSIONS: Although perception of overall health and disease severity varied, many patients from both regions still experienced symptoms despite receiving medications for PsA, wished they had greater choice of medications, and/or would like to change an aspect of their medications. While these survey findings are subject to selection bias, they do indicate there is scope to improve the treatment of PsA.

PMID:35299259 | DOI:10.1007/s40744-022-00435-y

J Natl Cancer Inst. 2022 Mar 17:djac054. doi: 10.1093/jnci/djac054. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: In the US, cancer disproportionately impacts Black and African American individuals. Identifying genetic factors underlying cancer disparities has been an important research focus and requires data that are equitable in both quantity and quality across racial groups. It is widely recognized that DNA databases quantitatively under-represent minorities. However, the differences in data quality between racial groups have not been well studied.

METHODS: We compared the qualities of germline and tumor exomes between ancestrally African and European patients in The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) of seven cancers with at least 50 self-reported Black patients in the context of sequencing depth, tumor purity, and qualities of germline variants and somatic mutations.

RESULTS: Germline and tumor exomes from ancestrally African patients were sequenced at statistically significantly lower depth in six out of the seven cancers. For three cancers, most ancestrally European exomes were sequenced in early sample batches at higher depth whereas ancestrally African exomes were concentrated in later batches and sequenced at much lower depth. For the other three cancers, the reasons of lower sequencing coverage of ancestrally African exomes remain unknown. Furthermore, even when the sequencing depths were comparable, African exomes had disproportionally higher percentages of positions with insufficient coverage, likely due to the known European bias in the human reference genome that impacted exome capture kit design.

CONCLUSIONS: Overall and positional lower sequencing depths of ancestrally African exomes in TCGA led to under-detection and lower quality of variants, highlighting the need to consider epidemiological factors for future genomics studies.

PMID:35299252 | DOI:10.1093/jnci/djac054

PLoS One. 2022 Mar 17;17(3):e0265593. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0265593. eCollection 2022.

ABSTRACT

Physalia physalis, the bluebottle in Australia, are colonial siphonophores that live at the surface of the ocean, mainly in tropical and subtropical waters. P. physalis are sometimes present in large swarms, and with tentacles capable of intense stings, they can negatively impact public health and commercial fisheries. P. physalis, which does not swim, is advected by ocean currents and winds acting on its gas-filled sail. While previous studies have attempted to model the drift of P. physalis, little is known about its sources, distribution, and the timing of its arrival to shore. In this study, we present a dataset with four years of daily P. physalis beachings and stings reports at three locations off Sydney’s coast in Australia. We investigate the spatial and temporal variability of P. physalis presence (beachings and stings) in relation to different environmental parameters. This dataset shows a clear seasonal pattern where more P. physalis beachings occur in the Austral summer and less in winter. Cold ocean temperatures do not hinder the presence of P. physalis and the temperature seasonal cycle and that observed in P. physalis presence/absence time-series are out of phase by 3-4 months. We identify wind direction as the major driver of the temporal variability of P. physalis arrival to the shore, both at daily and seasonal time-scales. The differences observed between sites of the occurrence of beaching events is consistent with the geomorphology of the coastline which influences the frequency and direction of favorable wind conditions. We also show that rip currents, a physical mechanism occurring at the scale of the beach, can be a predictor of beaching events. This study is a first step towards understanding the dynamics of P. physalis transport and ultimately being able to predict its arrival to the coast and mitigating the number of people who experience painful stings and require medical help.

PMID:35299230 | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0265593

Aesthet Surg J. 2022 Mar 17:sjac059. doi: 10.1093/asj/sjac059. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Breast reduction is a generally well-tolerated procedure with high patient satisfaction and low risk of surgical site infection and other complications. While age, obesity and comorbidities have historically been used as surgical risk proxies, recent literature suggests ‘frailty’ measures, such as the modified 5-item frailty index (mFI-5), may be a superior predictor.

OBJECTIVES: To investigate if mFI-5 can predict the likelihood and magnitude of 30-day complications resulting from breast reductions.

METHODS: A retrospective review was performed using the National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (NSQIP) database of patients who underwent breast reduction without other concurrent procedures, from 2013 to 2019. mFI-5 scores were calculated for each patient, and complication data were gathered. Age, BMI, number of major comorbidities, ASA class, smoking status, diabetes, steroid use and mFI-5 score were compared as predictors of all-cause 30-day complications, 30-day surgical site complications of any kind, length of stay, and aggregate Clavien-Dindo complication severity score. Univariate logistic, linear regressions and multivariate logistic regression analyses were performed to evaluate predictive value. Statistical significance was set at p < 0.05.

RESULTS: A total of 14,160 patients were analyzed. The overall complication rate was 5.6%. The mFI-5 score significantly predicted overall 30-day complications, surgical site complications, complication severity, overnight stay and likelihood of readmission (all p < 0.0001).

CONCLUSIONS: The mFI-5 is a statistically significant predictor for adverse outcomes in breast reduction surgery. The mFI-5 is a simple and reliable tool that can be efficiently used to conduct a preoperative evaluation of patients requesting breast reductions.

PMID:35299241 | DOI:10.1093/asj/sjac059

Nanotechnology. 2022 Mar 17. doi: 10.1088/1361-6528/ac5ee3. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

We have synthesized CdS(1.3 nm)/CdSe(1.7 nm)/CdS(3.4 nm) spherical quantum wells (SQWs) with a diameter of 13nm and demonstrated the first photon-antibunching from their emission, labelling them as single-photon sources. Antibunching survives even at high excitation intensities, ruling-out strong emission from the bi-exciton. For the largest intensities, antibunching coupled to spectral measurements reveal the signature of a blue-shifted emission, associated to an irreversible photo-aging effect. A statistical analysis over 26 SQWs demonstrates a moderate correlation between the energy of the main and the blue-shifted emission. Intensity-timetraces recorded on 28 single SQWs show weak blinking, with a median time spent in the bright state of 89 %. Their emission decay reveals a complex dynamic with either three or four exponential components. We assigned three of them to the neutral and singly-charged excitons and the slowest to defect emission. While SQWs have been initially designed for laser-oriented applications, we demonstrate that they can serve as efficient single-photon sources.

PMID:35299164 | DOI:10.1088/1361-6528/ac5ee3

J Environ Manage. 2022 Mar 14;311:114852. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2022.114852. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

Aotearoa New Zealand is highly vulnerable to extratropical cyclones because of its unique location in the midlatitude south pacific region. This study empirically investigates the impact of the extratropical cyclones on individual income, combining the data from Statistics New Zealand’s Integrated Data Infrastructure (IDI) and the weather-related insurance claims data from the Earthquake Commission. Our sample covers the administrative longitudinal panel data of all the IRD registered individual taxpayers between 2010 and 2019. We estimate a set of panel regressions with individual and time-fixed effects to assess the impact of extratropical cyclones on the affected individual’s annual income. We find that income from salaries and wages is negatively affected by the cyclones across various specifications. Extratropical cyclones also negatively affect the total individual income from wages and salaries, benefit and compensation, and sole tradership. However, we have limited success in identifying individual characteristics influencing the affected people’s income level in our study.

PMID:35299135 | DOI:10.1016/j.jenvman.2022.114852

Phys Med Biol. 2022 Mar 17. doi: 10.1088/1361-6560/ac5ed8. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

Accurate segmentation of glioma and its subregions plays an important role in radiotherapy treatment planning. Due to a very populated multiparameter magnetic resonance imaging (mpMRI) image, manual segmentation task can be very time-consuming, meticulous, and prone to subjective errors. Here, we propose a novel deep learning (DL) framework based on mutual enhancing networks (MENs) to automatically segment brain tumor subregions. Proposed framework is suitable for segmentation of brain tumor subregions owing to contribution of retina U-Net followed by implementation of mutual enhancing strategy between classification module and segmentation module. Retina U-Net is trained to accurately identify view-of-interest (VOIs) and feature maps of whole tumor (WT), which are then transferred to classification module and segmentation module. Subsequently, classification localization map (CLM) generated by classification module is integrated with segmentation module to bring forth mutual enhancing strategy. In this way, our proposed framework first focuses on WT through retina U-Net, and since WT consists subregions, mutual enhancing strategy then further aims to classify and segment subregions embedded within WT. We implemented and evaluated our proposed framework on brain tumor segmentation challenge (BraTS) 2020 dataset consisting of 369 cases. We performed 5-fold cross validation on 200 datasets and hold-out test on remaining 169 cases. To demonstrate the effectiveness of our network design, we compared our method against the networks without retina U-Net, mutual enhancing strategy, and a recently published Cascaded U-Net architecture. Results of all four methods were compared to the ground truth for segmentation and localization accuracies. Our method yielded significantly (P < 0.01) better values of dice-similarity-coefficient, center-of-mass-distance, and volume difference compared to all three competing methods across all tumor labels on both validation and hold-out dataset. Overall quantitative and statistical results of this work demonstrate ability of our method to both accurately and automatically segment brain tumor subregions.

PMID:35299156 | DOI:10.1088/1361-6560/ac5ed8

Res Vet Sci. 2022 Mar 8;145:248-254. doi: 10.1016/j.rvsc.2022.03.003. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

Interim analysis is the practice of performing a statistical analysis when the data have only been partially collected, for example, to save resources or to handle the uncertainty of the true effect size. Most statistical designs featuring interim analysis have been developed either in a general statistical setting or for application in clinical trials. As a result, most of them make assumptions and have conditions that in a preclinical setting are usually not met. In this paper, we present necessary changes to the most common forms of interim analysis enhanced for animal experiments, specifically for the t-test and the one-way ANOVA. Finally, we present software that allows freeware use to serve the research community to facilitate the design of experiments featuring interim analyses. The app can be found at icds.be/gsdesigner. It is in the public domain and its code can be found on github.com/ICDS-vubUZ/gsd-designer. In this GitHub folder, one can also find a tutorial for the app.

PMID:35299085 | DOI:10.1016/j.rvsc.2022.03.003

Ticks Tick Borne Dis. 2022 Mar 11;13(3):101938. doi: 10.1016/j.ttbdis.2022.101938. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

Ticks and tick-borne pathogens (TTBPs) pose a serious economic threat to ruminant production worldwide. Despite this, investigations focused on goats remain limited compared to those for pathogens infecting cattle. We carried out PCR-based surveys and phylogenetic analyses to examine TTBPs from 6 provinces in Thailand between January 2016 and June 2020. A total of 93 tick samples were collected as well as 969 blood samples from goats. All ticks were morphologically identified as Rhipicephalus microplus and confirmed for species based on 16S rRNA and cox1 gene sequences. The mitochondrial cox1 sequences in the present study were clustered into clades A and C. The overall infection rates of Anaplasma spp., piroplasmids, and co-infections of both parasites in goats were 13.5% (131/969), 2.7% (24/880), and 0.7% (7/969), respectively. We observed no statistically significant association between TTBP infections and age or sex. However, TTBP infections and the rainy season were linked (p < 0.05). Anaplasma bovis, Anaplasma marginale, and Anaplasma ovis were detected for the first time in goats in the country using primers targeting the chaperonin GroEL (groEL), major surface protein 2 (msp2), and major surface protein 4 (msp4) genes, while Anaplasma capra and Anaplasma phagocytophilum were not detected. Anaplasma bovis, A. marginale, and A. ovis isolates were clustered in a subclade that differed from the strains found in other countries. Among piroplasmids, only Theileria luwenshuni was detected in the current investigation. This work will add to the current understanding regarding the prevalence, genetic diversity, and genetic relationships of A. bovis, A. marginale, A. ovis, and T. luwenshuni among global isolates and those in Thailand.

PMID:35299078 | DOI:10.1016/j.ttbdis.2022.101938

Clin Nutr. 2022 Feb 24;41(4):937-947. doi: 10.1016/j.clnu.2022.02.014. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND & AIMS: Biofortification of staple crops with higher levels of micronutrients via traditional breeding methods is a sustainable strategy and can possibly complement fortification and other interventions to target micronutrient deficiencies in low resource settings, particularly among vulnerable populations such as children. We aimed to determine if iron- and zinc-biofortified pearl millet (FeZnPM, Dhanashakti, ICTP-8203Fe)-based complementary feeding improves nutritional status, including iron biomarkers and growth, in children living in urban slums of Mumbai.

METHODS: We conducted a randomized controlled trial of FeZnPM among 223 children aged 12-18 months who were not severely anemic at baseline (hemoglobin ≥9.0 g/dL). Children were randomized to receive either FeZnPM or conventional non-biofortified pearl millet (CPM) daily for 9 months. Iron status (hemoglobin, serum ferritin), plasma zinc, and anthropometric indicators (length, weight, mid-upper arm circumference, triceps and subscapular skinfolds) were evaluated at enrollment and throughout the trial. World Health Organization (WHO) anthropometric z-scores were calculated using WHO growth standards. Primary outcomes were hemoglobin and serum ferritin concentrations, and growth, defined as WHO z-scores. An intent to treat approach was used for analyses. We used the Hodges-Lehmann-Sen test to assess the change in primary outcomes between baseline and the last visit and report corresponding 95% confidence intervals.

RESULTS: At baseline, 67.7% of children were anemic (hemoglobin <11.0 g/dL) and 59.6% were iron deficient (serum ferritin <12.0 μg/L). FeZnPM did not significantly increase iron biomarkers or improve growth, compared to CPM. In subgroup analyses, FeZnPM improved hemoglobin concentrations in male children, and in children with iron deficiency or iron depletion (serum ferritin <25.0 μg/L) at baseline, relative to CPM.

CONCLUSIONS: Daily consumption of FeZnPM-based complementary foods did not significantly impact iron and zinc status or growth in children living in Mumbai’s urban slums. However, the intervention significantly improved hemoglobin concentrations among male children and among individuals who were iron-deficient or iron-depleted at baseline.

TRIAL REGISTRATION: This trial is registered with Clinicaltrials.gov (ID: NCT02233764), and Clinical Trials Registry of India (ID: REF/2014/10/007731).

PMID:35299084 | DOI:10.1016/j.clnu.2022.02.014