Publications by authors named "Franz L Ricklefs"

Introduction: Quality monitoring and improvement are crucial in pediatric neurosurgery for effective risk assessment and surgical preparation. This study evaluates the reliability of the ClassIntra classification for intraoperative complications and its potential for predicting postoperative outcomes in pediatric patients.

Material And Methods: In this prospective cohort study at a tertiary care center, we analyzed 47 pediatric patients undergoing various neurosurgical procedures.

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Objective: Tiny intracranial aneurysms (tiAs) pose challenges in detection and management. Recent advances in neuroimaging have improved the detection rates of these diminutive lesions, yet the decision-making process regarding their treatment remains controversial. While larger aneurysm size is a relevant risk factor for a possible rupture in common risk scores, the rupture of tiAs leading to subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH) is also reported frequently.

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Immune evasion is a hallmark of gliomas, yet the genetic mechanisms by which tumors escape immune surveillance remain incompletely understood. In this study, we systematically examined the presence of somatic mutations in HLA genes and genes encoding proteins involved in antigen presentation across isocitrate dehydrogenase wild-type and mutant gliomas using targeted next-generation sequencing. To address the challenges associated with detecting somatic mutations in these highly polymorphic and complex regions of the genome, we applied a combination of short-read and long-read sequencing techniques, extended the genetic region of interest (exons and introns), and applied a tailored bioinformatics analysis pipeline, which enabled an accurate evaluation of comprehensive sequencing data.

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Extracellular vesicles (EVs) act as carriers of biological information from tumors to the bloodstream, enabling the detection of circulating tumor material and tracking of disease progression. This is particularly crucial in glioblastoma, a highly aggressive and heterogeneous tumor that is challenging to monitor. Using imaging flow cytometry (IFCM), we conducted an immunophenotyping analysis of eight glioma-associated antigens and tetraspanins in plasma EVs from 37 newly diagnosed glioblastoma patients (pre- and post-surgery), 11 matched individuals with recurrent glioblastoma, and 22 healthy donors (HD).

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Glioblastomas are known for their immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment, which may explain the failure of most clinical trials in the past decade. Recent studies have emphasized the significance of stratifying glioblastoma patients to predict better therapeutic responses and survival outcomes. This study aims to investigate the prognostic relevance of peripheral immune cell counts sampled prior to surgery, with a special focus on methylation-based subclassification.

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  • Glioblastomas are aggressive brain tumors that resist treatment and utilize neuron-tumor connections to promote their growth, with cholinergic neurons playing a key role in this invasion.
  • The study utilized rabies viruses for retrograde tracing to reveal how glioblastomas integrate into brain circuits, showing that radiotherapy can enhance neuron-tumor connectivity, complicating treatment efforts.
  • By disrupting neuron-tumor connections, researchers discovered a potential therapeutic approach that could halt glioblastoma progression, emphasizing the need to target these synapses for better treatment outcomes.
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  • Intracranial suppurative infections in kids, though rare, can lead to high mortality, making early diagnosis and treatment critical; nine severe cases requiring surgery were noted in a recent cluster.
  • The study employed statistical methods like Cramer's V effect size and Fisher's exact test to analyze clinical features, revealing significant associations among symptoms and pathogens.
  • Findings indicate notable connections, such as sinusitis linked to Streptococcus pyogenes, and aim to improve clinical management of pediatric intracranial abscesses by identifying specific patterns in these cases.
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The diagnosis of pituitary microprolactinomas is often obscured by relatively low levels of elevated prolactin compared to macroprolactinomas. This may lead to varying patterns of medical therapy versus observation. We sought to correlate prolactin levels in suspected microprolactinomas with tumor volumes and clinical outcomes.

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Background: Ependymoma (EPN) is not a uniform disease but represents different disease types with biological and clinical heterogeneity. However, the pattern of when and where different types of EPN relapse is not yet comprehensively described.

Methods: We assembled 269 relapsed intracranial EPN from pediatric (n = 233) and adult (n = 36) patients from European and Northern American cohorts and correlated DNA methylation patterns and copy-number alterations with clinical information.

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  • Infrared (IR) spectroscopy can be used during surgery to help diagnose aggressive types of meningiomas based on established grading systems and molecular characteristics.
  • The study analyzed samples from 47 meningiomas and found that IR spectral differences were more distinct between WHO grades 2 and 3, with aggressive tumors showing specific changes in carbohydrate and nucleic acid levels.
  • Neural network classifiers demonstrated better accuracy in identifying tumor malignancy compared to traditional methods, suggesting that IR spectroscopy could improve precision medicine for brain tumor diagnosis in the future.
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Proteolytic cell surface release ('shedding') of the prion protein (PrP), a broadly expressed GPI-anchored glycoprotein, by the metalloprotease ADAM10 impacts on neurodegenerative and other diseases in animal and in vitro models. Recent studies employing the latter also suggest shed PrP (sPrP) to be a ligand in intercellular communication and critically involved in PrP-associated physiological tasks. Although expectedly an evolutionary conserved event, and while soluble forms of PrP are present in human tissues and body fluids, for the human body neither proteolytic PrP shedding and its cleavage site nor involvement of ADAM10 or the biological relevance of this process have been demonstrated thus far.

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  • This study looked at how men and women are affected differently after surgery for unruptured brain aneurysms.
  • They found that more women were part of the study and that women were usually older but had fewer other health issues.
  • Although women had fewer lung problems after surgery, both men and women had similar overall health issues, survival rates, and brain function immediately after the operation.
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Neural-tumor interactions drive glioma growth as evidenced in preclinical models, but clinical validation is limited. We present an epigenetically defined neural signature of glioblastoma that independently predicts patients' survival. We use reference signatures of neural cells to deconvolve tumor DNA and classify samples into low- or high-neural tumors.

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Article Synopsis
  • - Meningiomas are the most common primary brain tumors in adults, with an increasing incidence linked to aging and better neuroimaging, and while many are benign, some are aggressive and treatment-resistant, leading to serious health impacts.
  • - Recent advancements in understanding meningioma biology have introduced molecular biomarkers for diagnosis and prognosis, but a standardized molecular classification for these tumors is still lacking.
  • - A comprehensive consensus review by the International Consortium on Meningiomas aims to guide clinicians and researchers by covering proposed classifications, novel treatment strategies, ongoing studies, and unique management approaches for different patient populations.
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  • Scientists studied tiny particles called extracellular vesicles (EVs) in the blood of glioblastoma patients to see if they could help doctors know more about the disease.
  • They found that glioblastoma patients had a lot more EVs in their blood than healthy people, and more EVs meant a shorter survival time for patients.
  • The amount of EVs changed after surgery and could even show when a patient's tumor was getting worse before doctors could see it on scans.
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  • The text indicates a correction to a previously published article.
  • The correction is associated with the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) 10.1055/s-0044-1779888.
  • Details about the extent or nature of the corrections may not be provided in the text itself.
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Objective: Benchmarking has been proposed to reflect surgical quality and represents the highest standard reference values for desirable results. We sought to determine benchmark outcomes in patients after surgery for drug-resistant mesial temporal lobe epilepsy (MTLE).

Methods: This retrospective multicenter study included patients who underwent MTLE surgery at 19 expert centers on five continents.

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Bioactive material concepts for targeted therapy have been an important research focus in regenerative medicine for years. The aim of this study was to investigate a proof-of-concept composite structure in the form of a membrane made of natural silk fibroin (SF) and extracellular vesicles (EVs) from gingival fibroblasts. EVs have multiple abilities to act on their target cell and can thus play crucial roles in both physiology and regeneration.

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The longitudinal transition of phenotypes is pivotal in glioblastoma treatment resistance and DNA methylation emerged as an important tool for classifying glioblastoma phenotypes. We aimed to characterize DNA methylation subclass heterogeneity during progression and assess its clinical impact. Matched tissues from 47 glioblastoma patients were subjected to DNA methylation profiling, including CpG-site alterations, tissue and serum deconvolution, mass spectrometry, and immunoassay.

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Background And Objectives: Microsurgical aneurysm repair by clipping continues to be highly important despite increasing endovascular treatment options, especially because of inferior occlusion rates. This study aimed to present current global microsurgical treatment practices and to identify risk factors for complications and neurological deterioration after clipping of unruptured anterior circulation aneurysms.

Methods: Fifteen centers from 4 continents participated in this retrospective cohort study.

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DNA methylation analysis has become a powerful tool in neuropathology. Although DNA methylation-based classification usually shows high accuracy, certain samples cannot be classified and remain clinically challenging. We aimed to gain insight into these cases from a clinical perspective.

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Pituitary neuroendocrine tumors (PitNETs) are classified according to cell lineage, which requires immunohistochemistry for adenohypophyseal hormones and the transcription factors (TFs) PIT1, SF1, and TPIT. According to the current WHO 2022 classification, PitNETs with co-expression of multiple TFs are termed "plurihormonal". Previously, PIT1/SF1 co-expression was prevailingly reported in PitNETs, which otherwise correspond to the somatotroph lineage.

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Machine learning (ML) has revolutionized data processing in recent years. This study presents the results of the first prediction models based on a long-term monocentric data registry of patients with microsurgically treated unruptured intracranial aneurysms (UIAs) using a temporal train-test split. Temporal train-test splits allow to simulate prospective validation, and therefore provide more accurate estimations of a model's predictive quality when applied to future patients.

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