Tag: pubmed

Front Psychol. 2026 May 6;17:1694603. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1694603. eCollection 2026.

ABSTRACT

Understanding victimization in the context of parent abuse requires a comprehensive approach that considers the complex interplay of demographic, situational, and psychological factors. This study examines 3,834 administrative records from a victim support system, corresponding to 782 unique cases of parents who suffered violence, to identify distinct victim typologies and inform more effective, victim-centered interventions within the legal system. Drawing on variables such as age, gender, marital status, socioeconomic background, and harm types (physical, psychological, economic, and social), the dataset was analyzed using K-means clustering to uncover latent patterns. A two-cluster solution was selected based on statistical validation, offering both interpretability and strong group separation. Cluster 0, comprising 26.3% of the sample, was characterized by a slightly older average age (mean = 61.3 years) and exhibited a diverse set of vulnerability factors not primarily defined by psychological harm resulting from criminal acts. Members of this cluster showed elevated rates of widowhood (28.6% compared to 17.7% in Cluster 1), suggesting potentially different social support needs. In contrast, Cluster 1, labeled Psychological-Impact Victims, constituted the majority of the sample (73.7%), defined by the presence of psychological harm following criminal incidents, with a lower average age (mean = 58.0 years) and higher rates of separation or divorce (26.9% vs. 19.4%). This binary classification reveals a meaningful distinction in victim experiences of parent who suffered violence. Cluster 0 requires broad social support, while Cluster 1 needs trauma-informed psychological care. These findings emphasize the importance of tailored interventions over uniform approaches.

PMID:42170652 | PMC:PMC13188208 | DOI:10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1694603

IEEE EMBS Int Conf Biomed Health Inform. 2025 Oct;2025. doi: 10.1109/bhi67747.2025.11269508. Epub 2025 Dec 8.

ABSTRACT

Longitudinal patient-reported outcomes (PROs) provide crucial insights into symptom progression and treatment response in oncology, enabling more personalized and anticipatory care. Deep learning models such as Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory (Bi-LSTM) networks have recently been applied to forecast symptom trajectories from PRO data. While these models offer improved predictive performance over traditional statistical methods, they often fall short of capturing the evolving clinical relevance of individual symptoms or the varying influence of specific time points in the patient journey and lack clinical interpretability. In this work, we propose an attention-enhanced Bi-LSTM model that incorporates dual attention mechanisms at the item and temporal levels to selectively emphasize the most informative symptom-time interactions. This architecture addresses the limitation of uniform input weighting, enhancing both forecasting accuracy and interpretability. Evaluated on a longitudinal PRO dataset collected at a major cancer center, our model outperforms conventional Bi-LSTM approaches in predicting 12-month symptom severity and offers clinically meaningful insights into symptom evolution. These findings highlight the potential of attention-based temporal modeling to support personalized, timely decision-making in oncology care.

PMID:42170647 | PMC:PMC13189339 | DOI:10.1109/bhi67747.2025.11269508

Hortic Res. 2026 Feb 19;13(5):uhag038. doi: 10.1093/hr/uhag038. eCollection 2026 May.

ABSTRACT

Cannabis sativa is a wind-pollinated, predominantly dioecious, and outcrossing crop associated with high levels of genetic variability even within a single cultivar. As such, seed-grown crops are often constrained by variability issues, decreasing production efficiency and product consistency. F₁ hybrid seed technology offers great potential to address these limitations by generating genetically uniform populations from a cross of two inbred parental lines. In C. sativa, single-seed descent (SSD) is currently the most viable method to produce these homozygous parental lines necessary for F₁ hybrid seed production. This study exemplifies the potential of SSD coupled with chemically induced sex reversion to produce fully homozygous lines and its subsequent application in creating five F₁ hybrid accessions. Up to six rounds of SSD were performed in an 18-month period on 16 different lines, highlighting the speed of methodology. Inbreeding through XY males was most successful and offered the greatest advantages of the lines assessed. The F₁ hybrid lines were statistically more uniform than the inbred or original lines and more vigorous than the inbred lines, with F₁ lines increasing seed yield between 3.9% and 155% when compared to their midparents indicating the potential to exploit heterosis. Chemotype stability was achieved in some F₁ hybrid lines, showing that seed-grown cannabinoid crops would be possible in some contexts using F₁ hybrid methodology, paving the way for the validation of this breeding technique in field settings and highlighting a path toward commercial hybrid seed systems in C. sativa.

PMID:42170633 | PMC:PMC13188225 | DOI:10.1093/hr/uhag038

J Pain Res. 2026 May 16;19:594918. doi: 10.2147/JPR.S594918. eCollection 2026.

ABSTRACT

PURPOSE: Accurate identification of neuropathic pain (NeP) remains challenging in routine clinical practice. While PainDETECT is widely used, its sensitivity is limited by its focus on somatic symptoms. This study aimed to develop a high-sensitivity screening tool by integrating PainDETECT with the Brief Scale for Psychiatric Problems in Orthopaedic Patients (BS-POP) using machine learning.

PATIENTS AND METHODS: Neuropathic pain was diagnosed based on comprehensive clinical evaluation including medical history, neurological examination, and imaging findings when available. We analyzed clinical data from 1083 consecutive patients with pain. The study involved two phases: evaluation of conventional tools via statistical modeling and construction of a random forest-based classification model.

RESULTS: The proposed system achieved an overall accuracy of 75.6%. For NeP, the sensitivity was 70.3% and specificity was 86.0%, representing higher sensitivity compared with the conventional PainDETECT cutoff method (17.6%).

CONCLUSION: Integrating psychosocial factors via BS-POP and utilizing machine learning significantly enhances NeP screening performance. This system may support earlier and more appropriate pain management in clinical practice.

PMID:42170614 | PMC:PMC13189191 | DOI:10.2147/JPR.S594918

Metrologia. 2021 Jan;58(1). doi: 10.1088/1681-7575/abd040.

ABSTRACT

We perform absolute measurement of the ²⁷Al⁺ single-ion and ⁸⁷Sr neutral lattice clock frequencies at the National Institute of Standards and Technology and JILA at the University of Colorado against a global ensemble of primary frequency standards. Over an eight month period multiple measurements yielded the mean optical atomic transition frequencies ${\nu }_{\text{A}{\text{l}}^{+}}=\mathrm{1\; 121\; 015\; 393\; 207\; 859.50}\left(0.36\right)\text{Hz}$ and ${\nu }_{\text{Sr}}=\mathrm{429\; 228\; 004\; 229\; 873.19}\left(0.15\right)\text{Hz}$ , where the stated uncertainties are dominated by statistical noise and gaps in the observation interval (‘dead-time’ uncertainty).

PMID:42170611 | PMC:PMC13188837 | DOI:10.1088/1681-7575/abd040

Basic Clin Pharmacol Toxicol. 2026 Jun;138(6):e70249. doi: 10.1111/bcpt.70249.

ABSTRACT

A French signal detection study identified an association between sulfonamide diuretics use, particularly furosemide, and lower Parkinson’s disease (PD) risk. Our aim was to confirm this association in a Finnish nationwide nested case-control study (FINPARK), primarily in an indication-restricted case-control study of persons with heart or renal failure. Altogether 19 568 PD cases diagnosed in 1999-2015 and 130 156 age, sex and region-matched controls were included. The case-control study restricted to those with heart or renal failure included 1222 PD cases and 4766 matched controls. Furosemide use was identified from Prescription Register (1995-2015). The main analysis considered exposure at least 3 years before the matching date (3-year lag). Additional analyses with no lag, 5- and 8-year lags were conducted. Furosemide was not associated with PD risk (adjusted OR, 95% CI 1.00, 0.87-1.15 for user-non-user comparison with 3-year lag). A statistically significant borderline association between higher exposure levels and lower PD risk was observed in comparing risk across categories of cumulative furosemide exposure (adjusted OR, 95% CI 0.80, 0.64-1.00 with 3-year lag). Our nationwide indication-restricted case-control study of persons with PD found no robust evidence on the association between furosemide use and PD risk. However, there was suggestive evidence of reduced risk for participants in the highest exposure category.

PMID:42168783 | DOI:10.1111/bcpt.70249

Med Vet Entomol. 2026 May 21. doi: 10.1111/mve.70086. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

Sand flies are arthropod vectors responsible for transmitting Leishmania parasites to humans. Among them, Phlebotomus (P.) major, P. syriacus and P. neglectus are closely related sister species that play an important role in disease transmission in Türkiye. This study aimed to statistically analyse the morphological measurements of these three species and to identify reliable diagnostic characters. Seven morphometric traits were measured in both female and male specimens. Statistical analyses, including analysis of variance (ANOVA), discriminant function analysis (DFA) and principal component analysis (PCA), were performed to determine significant variables contributing to species differentiation. A total of 1729 sand flies were collected, comprising P. tobbi (44.58%), P. papatasi (21.26%), P. similis (20.30%), P. neglectus (8.50%), P. major (2.88%), P. syriacus (2.19%) and Sergentomyia (S.) fallax (0.27%). The female-to-male ratio was 1.42. ANOVA revealed significant interspecific differences (p < 0.001) in antennal, pharyngeal and genital characters. In females, P. neglectus exhibited shorter antennal segments A3 and A4 + A5, P. syriacus had the shortest pharynx (PHX), and P. major showed the longest epipharynx (EPI). In males, P. major had the longest coxite (CX), whereas P. neglectus displayed the shortest second style segment (S2) (p < 0.05). DFA confirmed clear species separation, with antennal and pharyngeal traits primarily driving differentiation in females, and genital characters being most informative in males. PCA explained 78.37% and 90.24% of the total morphometric variation in females and males, respectively, highlighting sex-specific patterns of morphological variation. Overall, these statistically supported morphometric differences provide robust diagnostic features that can complement molecular approaches, improving species identification and enhancing taxonomic resolution in sand fly vector studies.

PMID:42168762 | DOI:10.1111/mve.70086

J Ophthalmic Inflamm Infect. 2026 May 21. doi: 10.1186/s12348-026-00578-x. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Ocular toxoplasmosis is a leading cause of vision impairment and is burdened by the risk of recurrence. This study, conducted at the University Hospital of Verona, aimed to identify potential risk factors associated with disease recurrence.

MAIN BODY: A total of 86 patients were treated for ocular toxoplasmosis between 1996 and 2023, with 43 completing treatment and follow-up of at least 18 months after treatment. Patients were treated with one of two therapeutic options: either trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole or pyrimethamine-sulfametopyrazine. Over the study period, 21 patients experienced at least one recurrence, with a median time for the first recurrence of approximately six years. The average follow-up duration was eight years, and the probability of recurrence after seven years was 58%. Sleep duration emerged as a significant risk factor, as patients who slept between six and eight hours per night had a lower likelihood of recurrence. No significant associations were found with other factors, including gender, ethnicity, country of birth, education level, smoking, alcohol consumption, age at diagnosis, autoimmune diseases, vitamin deficiencies, vaccinations, cat ownership, consumption of raw or undercooked meat, place of residence, occupational soil exposure, primary infection (IgM positive), or the affected eye’s laterality. Moderate evidence suggested a potential link between recurrences and psychological factors, such as stressful life events, lesion location, and pregnancy following the first diagnosis. Notably, women who experienced pregnancy after diagnosis had a threefold increased risk of recurrence. Regarding visual outcomes, there was modest evidence indicating that patients treated with trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole achieved better final visual acuity compared to those treated with pyrimethamine. However, this difference was not statistically significant, and the underlying mechanism remains unclear.

CONCLUSION: The findings highlight the potential role of sleep duration in reducing recurrence risk and suggest a possible association between psychological stress, post-diagnosis pregnancy, and recurrence. Additionally, trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole treatment may contribute to better long-term visual acuity, although further research is needed to confirm these observations.

PMID:42168755 | DOI:10.1186/s12348-026-00578-x

Geroscience. 2026 May 21. doi: 10.1007/s11357-026-02324-6. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION: Physical activity may enhance cognition in older adults, yet evidence from randomized controlled trials (RCTs) on mechanistic pathways remains inconclusive.

METHODS: This single-blinded RCT examined the effects of an 8-week, online-guided, multicomponent physical activity intervention on cognitive function, resting-state functional brain connectivity (rsFC), and the gut microbiome in 92 healthy older adults (M age = 66.35). Participants were randomized to a physical activity group performing moderate-to-vigorous-intensity aerobic, coordination, and balance exercises, or to an active control group engaging in progressive muscle relaxation and listening to aging-related podcasts. The primary outcome was change in visual processing speed (items/s) from pre- to post-assessment. Secondary outcomes included changes in additional cognitive measures, rsFC, cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF), and the gut microbiome.

RESULTS: The primary outcome showed no significant between-group differences. However, exploratory analyses revealed potential improvements in inhibition (η2 = 0.061; p = 0.025) and visual memory (η2 = 0.047; p = 0.040) in the physical activity group. This group also showed a potential increase in rsFC between visual and dorsal attention networks (η2 = 0.101; p = 0.009). Visual memory gains correlated with improvements in rsFC (p = 0.013). No between-group differences were observed in CRF or gut microbiome composition.

DISCUSSION: While the primary outcome (visual processing speed) and predefined mechanistic pathways (e.g., gut microbiome composition) remained unaffected, this may partly reflect the sample’s high baseline fitness, which likely limited observable improvements. Exploratory findings suggest potential cognitive and associated rsFC benefits in memory and attention-related networks. The online format enabled a structured, scalable intervention while minimizing potential confounding from social interaction.

TRIAL REGISTRATION: https://drks.de/search/de/trial/DRKS00028022 (date of registration: 14.02.2022).

PMID:42168724 | DOI:10.1007/s11357-026-02324-6

Geroscience. 2026 May 21. doi: 10.1007/s11357-026-02280-1. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

Identifying physiological sweet spots (optimal ranges for homeostasis) is essential for precision medicine. However, traditional statistical methods often rely on globally linear or locally jagged models that struggle to capture the smooth, non-linear nature of biological regulation in high-dimensional data. We present the Quantile Feature Selection Network (Q‑FSNet), a neural network-based framework that integrates quantile regression, feature selection, and uncertainty estimation to identify biomarkers with sweet spots. Unlike traditional methods, Q-FSNet learns continuous response curves without requiring a pre-specified number of change points. We further introduce Quantile Dirichlet Network (Q-DirichNet), a fully Bayesian extension that utilizes Dirichlet priors to automate feature shrinkage. Using data from the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging, we identified 25 metabolites with distinct homeostatic ranges for which biological age acceleration is minimized. The metabolites with sweet spots for biological aging include some derived from diet or produced by the gut microbiome; this highlights their potential for knowledge translation and public health impact. Our results, corroborated by existing literature, demonstrate that these sparse neural network-based methods offer a scalable and interpretable tool for discovering metabolic signatures of healthy aging vs. dysregulation in large-scale omics research.

PMID:42168723 | DOI:10.1007/s11357-026-02280-1