Evaluation of cytomegalovirus cell-mediated immunity assays in the healthy Singapore cohort and challenges of test validation.

Background: Cytomegalovirus (CMV) is a major cause of morbidity and mortality for transplant and immunocompromised patients. While cell-mediated immunity (CMI) is crucial for control of CMV and can influence the management of patients, commercial kits to measure CMI responses have only recently become available. In this study, we evaluated 2 different test kit platforms to determine their performance with the aim of implementing CMV-CMI testing to serve local needs.

Global Consensus Statement on the Management of Pregnancy in Inflammatory Bowel Disease.

Background & Aims: Pregnancy can be a complex and risk-filled event for women with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). High-quality studies in this population are lacking, with limited data on medications approved to treat IBD during pregnancy. For patients, limited knowledge surrounding pregnancy impacts pregnancy rates, medication adherence, and outcomes.

Working towards affordable healthy diets: a review on innovations in food price monitoring, policy and research in Australia and beyond.

Healthy diets are unaffordable for billions of people worldwide, with food prices rising in high-, middle- and low-income nations in recent times. Despite widespread attention to this issue, recent actions taken to inform policy prioritisation and government responses to high food inflation have not been comprehensively synthesised. Our review summarises (i) innovative efforts to monitor national food and healthy diet price, ii) new policy responses adopted by governments to address food inflation and (iii) future research directions to inform new evidence.

Ubiquitinated hepatitis D antigen-induced CD8 T-cell responses inhibit HDV replication in HDV-infected liver organoids.

Background: Hepatitis D virus (HDV) infection is the most severe form of human viral hepatitis. A poor virus-specific CD8T cell response may result in persistent HDV infection. We investigated anti-viral effect and mechanisms of ubiquitinated small hepatitis D antigen (Ub-S-HDAg) in HBV/HDV superinfected liver organoids.

Assessing the relationship between anthropometric indices and visceral adipose tissue: A cross-sectional study in a Qatari population.

ObjectiveTo evaluate how body mass index, waist circumference, waist-to-hip ratio, and waist-to-height ratio reflect visceral adipose tissue as measured by dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry and how these associations differ by sex and age in a Qatari adult population.MethodsIn this cross-sectional study of 5897 Qatari adults aged 18-88 years from the Qatar BioBank, we assessed the correlation between anthropometric indices and dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry-derived visceral adipose tissue percentage. Analyses included sex-stratified Spearman's correlations and linear regression models adjusted for age.