Stereotactic body radiotherapy with carbon ions as local ablative treatment in patients with primary liver cancer

2025-02-19

CONCLUSION: In this retrospective analysis, patients who received CIRT presented excellent local tumor control and had better oncologic outcomes than patients who received photon-based SBRT. SBRT with carbon ions is a promising local ablative treatment option that needs further investigation in large prospective …

Evaluating interactions of patients with large language models for medical information

2025-02-19

OBJECTIVES: To explore the interaction of real-world patients with a chatbot in a clinical setting, investigating key aspects of medical information provided by large language models …

Growth Differentiation Factor-15: A Promising Biomarker and Target in Cancer Patients

2025-02-19

General design flow for waveguide Bragg gratings

2025-02-19

Bragg gratings are crucial components in passive photonic signal processing, with wide-ranging applications including biosensing, pulse compression, photonic computing, and addressing. However, the design of integrated waveguide Bragg gratings (WBGs) for arbitrary wavelengths presents significant challenges, especially when dealing with highly asymmetric layer stacks and large refractive index contrasts. Convenient approximations used for fiber Bragg gratings generally break down in these …

Entropy Scaling of Viscosity IV-Application to 124 Industrially Important Fluids

2025-02-19

In our previous work [Yang X.J. Chem. Eng. Data2021, 66, 1385-1398], a residual entropy scaling (RES) approach was developed to link viscosity to residual entropy using a 4-term power function for 39 refrigerants. In further research [Yang X.Int. J. Thermophys.2022, 43, 183], this RES approach was extended to 124 pure fluids containing fluids from light gases (hydrogen and helium) to dense fluids (e.g., heavy hydrocarbons) and fluids with strong association force (e.g., water). In these …

Model Architecture Analysis and Implementation of TENET for Cell-Cell Interaction Network Reconstruction Using Spatial Transcriptomics Data

2025-02-19

Cellular communication relies on the intricate interplay of signaling molecules, which come together to form the cell-cell interaction (CCI) network that orchestrates tissue behavior. Researchers have shown that shallow neural networks can effectively reconstruct the CCI from the abundant molecular data captured in spatial transcriptomics (ST). However, in scenarios characterized by sparse connections and excessive noise within the CCI, shallow networks are often susceptible to …

Head-to-head comparisons of risk discrimination by questionnaire-based lung cancer risk prediction models: a systematic review and meta-analysis

2025-02-19

BACKGROUND: While different lung cancer risk prediction models have been established as essential tools to identify high-risk participants for lung cancer screening programs, evaluations of their risk discriminatory performances have reported heterogenous findings in different research cohorts. We therefore aimed to summarise results of head-to-head comparisons of the predictive performance of various lung cancer risk models performed within the same study …

MONet: cancer driver gene identification algorithm based on integrated analysis of multi-omics data and network models

2025-02-19

Cancer progression is orchestrated by the accrual of mutations in driver genes, which endow malignant cells with a selective proliferative advantage. Identifying cancer driver genes is crucial for elucidating the molecular mechanisms of cancer, advancing targeted therapies, and uncovering novel biomarkers. Based on integrated analysis of Multi-Omics data and Network models, we present MONet, a novel cancer driver gene identification algorithm. Our method utilizes two graph neural …

Review of the foundations of time-dependent density-functional theory (TDDFT)

2025-02-19

Time-dependent density-functional theory (TDDFT) is deemed to be a formally rigorous way of dealing with the time-evolution of a many-electron system at the level of electron densities rather than the underlying wavefunctions, which in turn provides an, in principle, exact density-based approach to the treatment of electron excitations in atoms and molecules. This claim has not remained unchallenged, and a detailed account of the relevant criticism is given in this paper. In view of our …

Google infodemiology and temporal trends in benign prostatic hyperplasia surgery in Australia

2025-02-19

CONCLUSION: Differences were found between GT analysis and actual BPH procedures performed at a population level. This study highlights that clinicians need to adapt and provide better patient counselling to ensure a shared decision-making process when choosing the treatment procedure for BPH/male …

Native stem cell transcriptional circuits define cardinal features of high-risk leukemia

2025-02-19

While the mutational landscape across early T-cell precursor acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ETP-ALL) and ETP-like leukemia is known, establishing a unified framework that activates stem cell genes characteristic of these tumors remains elusive. Using complementary mouse and human models, chromatin mapping, and enhancer profiling, we show that the coactivator ZMIZ1 promotes normal and malignant ETP population growth by inducing the transcription factor MYB in feedforward circuits to …

Expression of SSTR2a, FAP, HER2 and HER3 as potential radionuclide therapy targets in higher-grade meningioma

2025-02-19

CONCLUSION: SSTR2a and FAP are expressed in high-grade meningioma samples to a variable extent, and differences across meningioma subtypes underscore the need for biomarkers to improve patient selection. Spatial heterogeneity of target expression should be considered in radioligand therapy …

Advantages in orthopaedic implant infection diagnostics by additional analysis of explants

2025-02-19

CONCLUSION: This study showed with a higher frequency of bacterial detection of orthopedic explant´s surface compared to tissue samples or punction fluid. This may reduce the number of samples and cost but enhances the quality of orthopaedic implant-related infection …

Glutaric aciduria type 1 - a rare treatable neurometabolic disorder of lysine metabolism

2025-02-19

Glutaric aciduria type 1 (OMIM #231670) is a rare inherited neurometabolic disorder of lysine and tryptophan metabolism. The deficiency of mitochondrial glutaryl-CoA dehydrogenase activity leads to an accumulation of neurotoxic metabolites such as glutaric acid and 3-hydroxyglutaric acid in the body. Most untreated patients develop a dystonic movement disorder due to striatal injury during the first years of life associated with increased morbidity and mortality. However, early diagnosis …

Combined inhibition of ribonucleotide reductase and WEE1 induces synergistic anticancer activity in Ewing's sarcoma cells

2025-02-18

CONCLUSION: Our findings show that combined inhibition of RNR and WEE1 was effective against Ewing’s sarcoma in vitro. They thus provide a rationale for the evaluation of the potential of combined targeting of RNR and WEE1 in Ewing’s sarcoma in …

The image of autism in the Polish press 2009-2020 and the role of first-person testimonies

2025-02-18

This study examines the representation of autism in Polish press discourse from 2009 to 2020 in five major Polish daily newspapers, specifically focusing on the influence of first-person testimonies of autistic individuals. Quantitative discourse analysis was conducted using deductive coding of 1352 press articles concerning ASC. In analyzed press reports, autism was primarily portrayed as a negative and deficit-laden phenomenon that should be addressed by bringing autistic people in line …

Comparative analysis of intestinal tumor segmentation in PET CT scans using organ based and whole body deep learning

2025-02-18

CONCLUSION: Given the variability in structure and metabolism across tissues in the body, our quantitative findings suggest organ-focused training enhances intestinal tumor segmentation by leveraging tissue homogeneity in the training data, contrasting with the whole-body training approach, which, by its very nature, is a more heterogeneous data …

Comparative analysis of intestinal tumor segmentation in PET CT scans using organ based and whole body deep learning

2025-02-18

CONCLUSION: Given the variability in structure and metabolism across tissues in the body, our quantitative findings suggest organ-focused training enhances intestinal tumor segmentation by leveraging tissue homogeneity in the training data, contrasting with the whole-body training approach, which, by its very nature, is a more heterogeneous data …

Determination of Tissue Potassium and Sodium Concentrations in Dystrophic Skeletal Muscle Tissue Using Combined Potassium (<sup>39</sup>K) and Sodium (<sup>23</sup>Na) MRI at 7 T

2025-02-18

Combined ^(23)Na/^(39)K MRI at 7 T can highlight ion disturbances in skeletal muscle tissue. In this work, we investigated if the apparent tissue potassium concentration (aTPC) can be determined in fatty replaced muscles of patients with facio-scapulo-humeral muscular dystrophy (FSHD) and if it can provide additional information to the fat replacement and the apparent tissue sodium concentration (aTSC). The lower leg of 14 patients (six females, eight males; mean age 47.7 ± 14.0 years) …

Amitriptyline use in individuals with KCNQ2/3 gain-of-function variants: A retrospective cohort study

2025-02-18

OBJECTIVE: Heterozygous gain-of-function (GOF) variants in KCNQ2 and KCNQ3, encoding the voltage-gated potassium channel subunits Kv7.2 and Kv7.3, lead to neurodevelopmental disorders for which no established treatments are available. Amitriptyline, an antidepressant, blocks Kv7.2/Kv7.3 and has previously been reported to be effective in a single individual with a KCNQ2 GOF variant. We designed a retrospective, single-arm, multicenter study to investigate the effects of amitriptyline in …

Bicarbonate-buffered solution versus Plasma-Lyte™ in orthotopic adult liver transplantation: a pilot open-label, randomized, non-inferiority trial

2025-02-18

CONCLUSIONS: A bicarbonate-buffered solution was non-inferior to Plasma-Lyte™ for maintaining acid-base homeostasis post-reperfusion in OLT …

White Matter Integrity Differences in 2-Year-Old Children Treated With ECMO: A Diffusion-Weighted Imaging Study

2025-02-18

School-aged and adolescent survivors of neonatal extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) treatment still suffer from neurodevelopmental delays such as verbal, visuo-spatial and working memory problems, motor dysfunction and sensorineural hearing loss, respectively, later in life, which is well-documented by neuropsychological testing within follow-up programs. In this study, we demonstrate that diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) in 2-year-old survivors of neonatal ECMO treatment reveals …

Homochiral Carboxylate-Anchored Truxene Tripods: Design, Synthesis, Monolayer Formation on Ag(111)

2025-02-18

The design of well-defined assemblies of chiral molecules is a prerequisite for numerous applications, such as chirality-induced spin selectivity (CISS). In this context, tripodal molecular films bear the advantage of better control of molecular orientation and alignment than analogous monopodal systems. To this end, we report on the synthesis and assembly property of C3 chiral syn-5,10,15-truxene triacetic acid. (S,S,S) and (R,R,R) enantiomers were isolated and adsorbed on …

Indocyanine Green Fluorescence Angiography as a Predictor of Distal Flap Necrosis in Latissimus Dorsi Free Flaps

2025-02-18

CONCLUSION: ICGFA is associated with increased success of large LD free flap reconstruction, allowing a more accurate and reliable assessment of perfusion. This highlights the immense potential of ICGFA as a clinical standard, surpassing its application solely in fasciocutaneous free flap surgery and, showcasing its efficacy in free muscle flap …

Sleep apnoea, cognition and aspirin's effects in healthy older people: an ASPREE substudy

2025-02-18

CONCLUSIONS: OSA was associated with a small decline in global cognition over 3 years in this healthy older cohort. This decline was not attenuated by …

Comparing GreenLight PVP and HoLEP beyond 5 years: A systematic review of long-term functional outcomes and reoperation rates

2025-02-18

CONCLUSIONS: Current evidence suggests that HoLEP provides significantly greater functional improvements and a lower reoperation rate when compared with the GLPVP 80-W/120-W model at 5-year follow-up. The 180-W model is comparable with HoLEP based on limited data at 5 years, but there is a lack of data beyond 10 years for longer-term functional …

Preparing for death: a survey on rituals in the dying phase in the Christian context in Germany

2025-02-18

CONCLUSIONS: As religious traditions are no longer practised by an increasing number of people; it may be reasonable to develop new rituals for the dying phase that can be adapted and used by palliative care staff to suit the respective context. These rituals could make a valuable contribution to the care of the dying, their relatives and the professional …

Guideline-Directed Medical Therapy for Heart Failure in Transthyretin Amyloid Cardiomyopathy

2025-02-18

Cardiac amyloidosis is an underdiagnosed cause of infiltrative cardiomyopathy, leading to heart failure across the spectrum of ejection fractions. Although there are approved disease-modulating therapies for the transthyretin subtype (transthyretin amyloid cardiomyopathy [ATTR-CM]), the role of heart failure medications remains uncertain and challenging in clinical practice. Their effects on clinical outcomes, such as mortality and hospitalization, are unknown for ATTR-CM. This review aims …

Towards the Next Generation of Data-Driven Therapeutics Using Spatially Resolved Single-Cell Technologies and Generative AI

2025-02-18

Recent advances in multi-omics and spatially resolved single-cell technologies have revolutionised our ability to profile millions of cellular states, offering unprecedented opportunities to understand the complex molecular landscapes of human tissues in both health and disease. These developments hold immense potential for precision medicine, particularly in the rational design of novel therapeutics for treating inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. However, the vast, high-dimensional …

Metabolic Dysfunction-Associated Steatotic Liver Disease (MASLD) Impacts Long-Term Outcomes After Curative-Intent Surgery for Hepatocellular Carcinoma

2025-02-18

CONCLUSIONS: Patients with HCC undergoing LR and meeting the new MASLD criteria have significantly shorter OS. This study provides empirical prognostic evidence for the novel MASLD/MetALD classification in a large European cohort of patients undergoing curative-intent HCC …

Resilience and the Fallacy of "One Size Fits All"

2025-02-18

Resilience and the Fallacy of "One Size Fits All"

2025-02-18

Out of Pocket Getting Out of Hand - Reducing the Financial Toxicity of Rapidly Approved Drugs

2025-02-18

Out of Pocket Getting Out of Hand - Reducing the Financial Toxicity of Rapidly Approved Drugs

2025-02-18

The Death of an Unlikable Man

2025-02-18

The Death of an Unlikable Man

2025-02-18

Lymphoid Interstitial Pneumonia

2025-02-18

Lymphoid Interstitial Pneumonia

2025-02-18

Perceived causal networks created using structured interviews: feasibility and reliability

2025-02-18

The network approach to psychopathology postulates that it is more helpful to think of psychiatric problems to be caused by each other, rather than by underlying diseases. Personalized networks can be created using questionnaires asking participants about their perceptions of the causal links between symptoms, which is time-efficient but has shown low test-retest reliability. The present study explores whether perceptions of causal links can instead be assessed using interviews. The …

TotalSegmentator MRI: Robust Sequence-independent Segmentation of Multiple Anatomic Structures in MRI

2025-02-18

Background Since the introduction of TotalSegmentator CT, there has been demand for a similar robust automated MRI segmentation tool that can be applied across all MRI sequences and anatomic structures. Purpose To develop and evaluate an automated MRI segmentation model for robust segmentation of major anatomic structures independent of MRI sequence. Materials and Methods In this retrospective study, an nnU-Net model (TotalSegmentator MRI) was trained on MRI and CT scans to segment 80 …

Direct-to-Consumer Testing: Benefits and Concerns of Commercially Accessed Laboratory Tests

2025-02-18

BACKGROUND: Promoting self-empowerment of patients and of healthy persons in contemporary health cultures shifts the imperative for initiating laboratory tests from the healthcare professionals (HCP) to the patients …

Evaluation of current indirect methods for measuring LDL-cholesterol

2025-02-18

CONCLUSIONS: LDL-C(FW) generally provided reliable estimates of LDL-C in most samples, showing non-inferiority to LDL-C(SN) or LDL-C(MH), thereby confirming its legitimacy for routine use. Since current treatment recommendations are based on studies employing LDL-C(FW), its replacement by alternatives is not …

Crossovers are regulated by a conserved and disordered synaptonemal complex domain

2025-02-18

During meiosis, the number and distribution of crossovers (COs) must be precisely regulated through CO assurance and interference to prevent chromosome missegregation and genomic instability in the progeny. Here we show that this regulation of COs depends on a disordered and conserved domain within the synaptonemal complex (SC). This domain is located at the C-terminus of the central element protein SYP-4 in Caenorhabditis elegans. While not necessary for synapsis, the C-terminus of SYP-4 …

Prior hospitalizations as a predictor of prognosis in heart failure with mildly reduced ejection fraction

2025-02-18

CONCLUSION: Prior hospitalizations within 12 months were independently associated with impaired long-term mortality in patients with HFmrEF, irrespective of the department or type of prior …

Comment on: Associations between loneliness, disease activity and disease impact in inflammatory arthritis: a nationwide cross-sectional study among more than 12 000 patients

2025-02-18

Co-Occurrence of Cytogenetic Abnormalities and High-Risk Disease in Newly Diagnosed and Relapsed/Refractory Multiple Myeloma

2025-02-18

CONCLUSION: The association of ≥two HRCAs with the poorest outcome in NDMM and RRMM, and across treatment modalities, as demonstrated here for the first time to our knowledge, allows for more focused development of novel approaches to these patients with high unmet …

Comparison of Standard-of-Care Idecabtagene Vicleucel and Ciltacabtagene Autoleucel in Relapsed/Refractory Multiple Myeloma

2025-02-18

CONCLUSION: Cilta-cel demonstrated superior efficacy and survival, with higher incidence of certain toxicities, compared with …

Effect of Behavior Change Intervention on Complementary Food Contamination in Rural Bangladesh: A Cluster-Randomized Controlled Trial

2025-02-18

Children in low-resource settings often consume microbially contaminated food, risking their health. We evaluated the impact of a food hygiene intervention on complementary food contamination in Bangladesh. A 3-year homestead food production intervention was complemented by an 8-month behavior change module to improve household food hygiene practices and evaluated in a cluster-randomized controlled trial, including a dedicated study measuring outcomes along the hygiene pathway to …

A longitudinal Analysis of the Association between Socioeconomic Position and Multimorbidity in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition Study

2025-02-18

The association between socioeconomic position (SEP) and non-communicable diseases (NCDs) is well established, but its role in driving multimorbidity remains unclear. Multimorbidity, defined as the co-occurrence of more than one chronic condition, is linked to higher mortality and reduced quality of life. This study investigates the association between SEP and multimorbidity using data from the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC). Incident cases of cancer, type …

Speech Range Profile Data in German-Speaking Adults With Vox Phonetography

2025-02-18

CONCLUSIONS: The SRP data are appropriate as reference data for the clinical measurement of the speaking voice in German using Vox Phonetography under consideration of age, gender, and vocal status. Further SRP parameters for combining the four intensity levels by slope were successfully …

High relevance of invasive fungal disease in chronic liver transplant failure: a comprehensive cross-sectional study

2025-02-18

Invasive fungal infection (IFI) is a severe complication in organ transplant patients and a major diagnostic and therapeutic challenge. The aim of this comprehensive retrospective study was the characterization of IFI in context of chronic liver transplant failure regarding prevalence, morphological changes, and inducing fungal species. All explanted liver transplants due to chronic transplant failure from Heidelberg University Hospital were extensively reexamined for the presence of …

Mapping the therapeutic landscape in emergency incisional hernia: a scoping review

2025-02-18

CONCLUSION: This review highlights a paucity of randomized studies guiding emergency incisional hernia management. Key issues identified include inconsistent definitions of emergency presentation, limited data on hernia characteristics, and a lack of standardized outcome reporting. Future research should focus on developing a unified classification system for emergency incisional hernias, evaluating the role of imaging in decision-making, and conducting comparative studies on various …

Physics of swimming and its fitness cost determine strategies of bacterial investment in flagellar motility

2025-02-18

Microorganisms must distribute their limited resources among different physiological functions, including those that do not directly contribute to growth. In this study, we investigate the allocation of resources to flagellar swimming, the most prominent and biosynthetically costly of such cellular functions in bacteria. Although the growth-dependence of flagellar gene expression in peritrichously flagellated Escherichia coli is well known, the underlying physiological limitations and …

Coupling of cell shape, matrix and tissue dynamics ensures embryonic patterning robustness

2025-02-18

Tissue patterning coordinates morphogenesis, cell dynamics and fate specification. Understanding how precision in patterning is robustly achieved despite inherent developmental variability during mammalian embryogenesis remains a challenge. Here, based on cell dynamics quantification and simulation, we show how salt-and-pepper epiblast and primitive endoderm (PrE) cells pattern the inner cell mass of mouse blastocysts. Coupling cell fate and dynamics, PrE cells form apical polarity-dependent… …