Branched chain amino acid metabolism and microbiome in adolescents with obesity during weight loss therapy.

Background: Obesity and weight loss in adults have been associated with distinct metabolome and gut microbiome features, but the extent to which those associations apply to adolescent stages remain unclear.

Methods: The Pediatric Obesity Microbiome and Metabolism Study (POMMS) enrolled 220 adolescents aged 10-18 with severe obesity (OB) and 67 healthy weight controls (HWC). Blood, stool, and clinical measures were collected at baseline and after a 6-month obesity intervention for the OB group.

Grocery intervention and DNA-based assessment to improve diet quality in pediatric obesity: a pilot randomized controlled study.

Objective: We assessed the impact of a food-provisioning intervention on diet quality in children with obesity.

Methods: Participants (n = 33, aged 6-11 years) were randomly assigned to either usual care (intensive health behavior and lifestyle treatment) or intervention (usual care + food provisioning; high-fiber, low-dairy diet) for 4 weeks. The primary outcome was a change in child diet quality at Week 4.

Incidence of opportunistic viral infections in hepatitis C virus nucleic acid test negative recipients of kidneys from hepatitis C virus nucleic acid test positive donors.

Background: In kidney transplantation, concerns have been raised regarding increased incidence of viral opportunistic infections in hepatitis C virus (HCV) nucleic acid test (NAT)-negative (-) recipients who received HCV NAT-positive (+) donor kidneys, specifically BK polyomavirus (BKPyV), cytomegalovirus (CMV), and Epstein-Barr virus (EBV). The purpose of this study was to determine the incidence of these three viral opportunistic infections in HCV NAT- recipients who have undergone kidney transplantation with HCV NAT+ donor kidneys at our institution.

Methods: This was an Institutional Review Board-approved, single-center, retrospective case-control study of HCV NAT- kidney transplant recipients with HCV NAT+ donors from 2018 to 2021.

Assessment of embedded versus remote pharmacist versus remote student pharmacist outreach on statin prescribing.

Background: The Statin Use in Persons with Diabetes (SUPD) measure is a Star measure by the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services. The Duke Population Health Management Office has a team of pharmacists and pharmacy students who conduct targeted outreach to patients at risk of failing statin quality measures. Pharmacy services are embedded in select primary care clinics and other clinics are supported remotely.

Assessment of efficacy and safety of dose-dense doxorubicin and cyclophosphamide (ddAC) in combination with immunotherapy in early-stage triple-negative breast cancer.

Purpose: This study aimed to assess safety and efficacy of a modified KEYNOTE 522 protocol, which incorporated pembrolizumab every 6 weeks, allowing for concomitant dose-dense (14 day) doxorubicin and cyclophosphamide (ddAC). By optimizing this dosing, the intention of this modified protocol was to improve pathologic complete response (pCR) rates in a population associated with a poorer prognosis.

Methods: This was a retrospective, single-center, cohort study.

MDT: semi-supervised medical image segmentation with mixup-decoupling training.

. In the field of medicine, semi-supervised segmentation algorithms hold crucial research significance while also facing substantial challenges, primarily due to the extreme scarcity of expert-level annotated medical image data. However, many existing semi-supervised methods still process labeled and unlabeled data in inconsistent ways, which can lead to knowledge learned from labeled data being discarded to some extent.

Semi-supervised medical image segmentation via feature similarity and reliable-region enhancement.

Semantic segmentation is a crucial task in the field of computer vision, and medical image segmentation, as its downstream task, has made significant breakthroughs in recent years. However, the issue of requiring a large number of annotations in medical image segmentation has remained a major challenge. Semi-supervised semantic segmentation has provided a powerful approach to address the annotation problem.

Effectiveness of Negative Pressure Wound Therapy of Diabetic Foot Ulcers Using Periplaneta Americana (Kangfuxin Liquid) Irrigation.

This study was to evaluate the efficacy of (Kangfuxin Liquid) relative to normal saline when applied in negative-pressure wound therapy (NPWT) with instillation for facilitating diabetic foot ulcers (DFUs) healing. Eighty patients with Wagner grades 3 or 4 DFUs were enrolled in this retrospective study. Based on the treatment type, patients were equally assigned to either (i) an NPWT with Kangfuxin liquid instillation group (NPWT-K) or (ii) an NPWT with normal saline instillation group (NPWT-I).

The impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on activation of the massive transfusion protocol in the emergency department.

Background And Objectives: An outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) occurred in mid-May of 2021 in Taiwan. After 2 months of hard work, transmissions were successfully prevented and the number of newly confirmed COVID-19 cases fell remarkably. We evaluated the impact of this outbreak on the massive transfusion protocol (MTP) in the emergency department (ED) of a trauma centre.

Comparative DFT dual gas adsorption model of ZnO and Ag/ZnO with experimental applications as gas detection at ppb level.

By experimental and density functional theory calculations, the toxic gases (Oand NO) sensing capability and mechanism of ZnO NRs and Ag/ZnO NRs have been comparatively studied in this work. Ag NPs arrays were employed for the growth of ZnO NRs. The experimental results show that when ZnO NRs are grown on Ag NPs, the response and adsorption rate towards the gases change significantly.

Health study of 11,800 workers under occupational noise in Xinjiang.

Background: We investigated the health status of some workers exposed to occupational noise in Xinjiang, and explored the influencing factors of their health level. We aimed to determine the key protection groups of occupational noise hazards, which might provide the basis for the development of targeted noise prevention measures.

Methods: We used descriptive analysis to investigate a total of 11,800 participants who underwent occupational health examination in Xinjiang Occupational Disease Prevention Hospital.

Blood Lead, Systemic Inflammation, and Blood Pressure: Exploring Associations and Mediation Effects in Workers Exposed to Lead.

Relationships of lead exposure with blood pressure and blood lead with inflammation have been previously established yet, but the conclusions are still controversial. The objective of our study was to investigate the role of systemic inflammation in the relationships between blood lead concentration and blood pressure. We quantified the levels of blood lead and white blood cell count in 505 lead-exposed workers with 842 observations.

How intestinal bacteria can promote HIV replication.

Since the 1950s, researchers have gradually realized that the body's bacteria help fight infection by crowding out potential pathogens. In the past decades, scientists have even begun to see our microbiota as thick‑and‑thin allies. However, the influence of gut bacteria on HIV is largely unknown.

[Effect of pH value and fluoride ions on corrosion resistance of pure Ti and Ni-Cr-Ti alloy in artificial saliva].

Objective: To investigate the effect of pH value and fluoride ions on the corrosion resistance of pure Ti and Ni-Cr-Ti alloy in the artificial saliva.

Methods: Electrochemical technique was used to measure the electric potential of corrosion (Ecorr), current density of corrosion (Icorr) and polarization resistance (Rp) of pure titanium and Ti-Ni-Cr alloy in the artificial saliva with different pH value and fluoride concentrations. After electrochemical analysis, microstructure and phase diffraction were examined by FSEM.

Dexamethasone treatment improves sarcoplasmic reticulum function and contractile performance in aged myocardium.

Corticosteroids are thought to be involved in the maintenance of normal myocardial function by mechanisms incompletely understood. This study investigated the potential therapeutic benefit of the synthetic glucocorticoid, dexamethasone, in reversing age-associated deterioration in cardiac contractile performance and Ca2+ sequestration function of the sarcoplasmic reticulum. Dexamethasone was administered to senescent (26-28-month old), male Fischer 344 rats at a rate of 4 microg/h for 5 days via subcutaneously implanted osmotic mini pumps.