Sudden Sensorineural Hearing Loss in an Immunocompetent Patient With West Nile Encephalitis.

Objective: Sudden sensorineural hearing loss (SSNHL) is a frequently encountered condition that is often idiopathic but may be precipitated by infection. Neuroinvasive disease resulting from West Nile virus (WNV) is a rare cause of SSNHL, typically affecting immunocompromised patients and generally associated with minimal hearing recovery. We present a case of an immunocompetent woman who was diagnosed with SSNHL in the setting of a WNV infection and showed significant hearing improvement.

Hepatocellular carcinoma national burden across different geographical regions in the United States between 2001 and 2020.

Background: While prior data showed an increasing incidence of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) in the United States, there are limited comprehensive and comparative data on the geographical variations of HCC trends in different demographic-specific populations.

Aim: To evaluate sex and age-specific incidence rates and time trends in different geographical regions in the United States.

Methods: Age-adjusted HCC incidence rates were collected from the United States Cancer Statistics (USCS) database which covers approximately 98% of the population in the United States.

Diagnosis and Management of Retrograde Cricopharyngeal Dysfunction: A Systematic Review.

Objective: Retrograde cricopharyngeal dysfunction (R-CPD) is a syndrome with rapidly increasing awareness since being first described in March 2019. As such, few cases of R-CPD are currently reported in the literature. The goal of this study is to provide a comprehensive systematic review of the available literature on R-CPD, including patient characteristics, diagnosis, and management.

Acute myeloid leukemia: An unusual manifestation of the trachea.

Objectives: Hematologic malignancy involving the trachea is rare. It is even less common for tracheal involvement to be the initial manifestation of this disease. We present a case report highlighting an unusual diagnosis of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) that first presented with prominent tracheal manifestations.

Evaluating antibiotic therapy for ventilator-associated pneumonia caused by gram-negative bacilli.

Introduction: Ventilator-associated pneumonias (VAPs) are a complication of mechanical ventilation in the intensive care unit (ICU) that increase length of stay, morbidity, and mortality. While identifying and treating infections early is paramount to improving patient outcomes, more and more data demonstrate limited courses of antibiotics improve outcomes. Prolonged (10-14 day) courses of antibiotics have remained the standard of care for pneumonia due to gram-negative bacilli (GNR).

An Expanded Framework for Situation Control.

There is an extensive body of literature on the topic of estimating situational states, in applications ranging from cyber-defense to military operations to traffic situations and autonomous cars. In the military/defense/intelligence literature, situation assessment seems to be the for any research on surveillance and reconnaissance, command and control, and intelligence analysis. Virtually all of this work focuses on assessing the situation-at-the-moment; many if not most of the estimation techniques are based on Data and Information Fusion (DIF) approaches, with some recent schemes employing Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) methods.

Situational Understanding in the Human and the Machine.

The Air Force research programs envision developing AI technologies that will ensure battlespace dominance, by radical increases in the speed of battlespace understanding and decision-making. In the last half century, advances in AI have been concentrated in the area of machine learning. Recent experimental findings and insights in systems neuroscience, the biophysics of cognition, and other disciplines provide converging results that set the stage for technologies of machine understanding and machine-augmented Situational Understanding.

The nuclear receptor HNF4 drives a brush border gene program conserved across murine intestine, kidney, and embryonic yolk sac.

The brush border is comprised of microvilli surface protrusions on the apical surface of epithelia. This specialized structure greatly increases absorptive surface area and plays crucial roles in human health. However, transcriptional regulatory networks controlling brush border genes are not fully understood.

Loss of CD4+ T cell IL-6R expression during inflammation underlines a role for IL-6 trans signaling in the local maintenance of Th17 cells.

IL-6 responses are classically orchestrated via a membrane-bound IL-6R (CD126) alpha subunit (classical IL-6R signaling) or through a soluble form of this cognate receptor (IL-6 trans signaling). Appraisal of IL-6R expression on human and mouse T cells emphasized that IL-6R expression is closely linked with that of CCR7 and CD62L. In this regard, infiltrating effector T cells from clinical and experimental peritonitis episodes lose IL-6R expression, and anti-CD3/CD28 Ab costimulation of peripheral T cells in vitro leads to a downregulation in IL-6R expression.