Medical applicant general practice experience and career aspirations: a questionnaire study

Background: Increasing access to general practice work experience placements for school students is a strategy for improving general practice recruitment, despite limited evidence and concerns surrounding equity of access to general practice experiences. Aims: To examine the association between undertaking general practice experience and the perceptions of general practice as an appealing future career among prospective medical applicants. To identify socioeconomic factors associated with obtaining general practice experience. Design & setting: Cross-sectional questionnaire study in the UK. Method: Participants were UK residents aged ≥16 years and seriously considering applying to study medicine in 2019/2020. They were invited to take part via the University Clinical Aptitude Test (UCAT). Questionnaire data were analysed using a linear regression of general practice appeal on general practice experience, adjusting for career motivations and demographics, and a logistic regression of general practice experience on measures of social capital and demographics. Results: Of 6391 responders, 4031 were in their last year of school. General practice experience predicted general practice appeal after adjusting for career motivation and demographics (b = 0.37, standard error [SE] = 0.06, P<0.00001). General practice experience was more common among students at private (odds ratio [OR] = 1.65, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.31 to 2.08, P<0.0001) or grammar schools (OR = 1.33, 95% CI = 1.02 to 1.72, P = 0.03) and in the highest socioeconomic group (OR = 1.62, 95% CI = 1.28 to 2.05, P<0.0001), and less likely among students of ‘other’ ethnicity (OR = 0.37, 95% CI = 0.20 to 0.67, P = 0.0011). Conclusion: Having general practice experience prior to medical school was associated with finding general practice appealing, which supports its utility in recruitment. Applicants from more deprived backgrounds were less likely to have had a general practice experience, possibly through lack of accessible opportunities

The minimum information required for a glycomics experiment (MIRAGE) project: improving the standards for reporting glycan microarray-based data

MIRAGE (Minimum Information Required for A Glycomics Experiment) is an initiative that was created by experts in the fields of glycobiology, glycoanalytics and glycoinformatics to produce guidelines for reporting results from the diverse types of experiments and analyses used in structural and functional studies of glycans in the scientific literature. As a sequel to the guidelines for sample preparation (Struwe et al. 2016, Glycobiology, 26:907–910) and mass spectrometry  data (Kolarich et al. 2013, Mol. Cell Proteomics, 12:991–995), here we present the first version of guidelines intended to improve the standards for reporting data from glycan microarray analyses. For each of eight areas in the workflow of a glycan microarray experiment, we provide guidelines for the minimal information that should be provided in reporting results. We hope that the MIRAGE glycan microarray guidelines proposed here will gain broad acceptance by the community, and will facilitate interpretation and reproducibility of the glycan microarray results with implications in comparison of data from different laboratories and eventual deposition of glycan microarray data in international databases

Paediatric, maternal, and congenital mpox: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Background Although mpox has been detected in paediatric populations in central and west Africa for decades, evidence synthesis on paediatric, maternal, and congenital mpox, and the use of vaccines and therapeutics in these groups, is lacking. A systematic review is therefore indicated to set the research agenda. Methods We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis, searching articles in Embase, Global Health, MEDLINE, CINAHL, Web of Science, Scopus, SciELO, and WHO databases from inception to April 17, 2023. We included studies reporting primary data on at least one case of confirmed, suspected, or probable paediatric, maternal, or congenital mpox in humans or the use of third-generation smallpox or mpox vaccines, targeted antivirals, or immune therapies in at least one case in our population of interest. We included clinical trials and observational studies in humans and excluded reviews, commentaries, and grey literature. A pooled estimate of the paediatric case fatality ratio was obtained using random-effects meta-analysis. This study is registered with PROSPERO (CRD420223336648). Findings Of the 61 studies, 53 reported paediatric outcomes (n=2123 cases), seven reported maternal or congenital outcomes (n=32 cases), two reported vaccine safety (n=28 recipients), and three reported transmission during breastfeeding (n=4 cases). While a subset of seven observational studies (21 children and 12 pregnant individuals) reported uneventful treatment with tecovirimat, there were no randomised trials reporting safety or efficacy for any therapeutic agent. Among children, the commonest clinical features included rash (86 [100%] of 86), fever (63 [73%] of 86), and lymphadenopathy (40 [47%] of 86). Among pregnant individuals, rash was reported in 23 (100%) of 23; fever and lymphadenopathy were less common (six [26%] and three [13%] of 23, respectively). Most paediatric complications (12 [60%] of 20) arose from secondary bacterial infections. The pooled paediatric case fatality ratio was 11% (95% CI 4–20), I2=75%. Data from 12 pregnancies showed half resulted in fetal death. Research on vaccine and immune globulin safety remains scarce for children and absent for pregnant individuals. Interpretation Our review highlights critical knowledge gaps in the epidemiology, prevention, and treatment of mpox in children and pregnant individuals, especially those residing in endemic countries. Increased funding, international collaboration, and equitable research is needed to inform mpox control strategies tailored for at-risk communities in endemic countries

"You just know something's not right" - what makes primary healthcare professionals suspect child abuse? A qualitative study

This is a qualitative study with the aim of developing an understanding of how primary healthcare professionals define child abuse and to identify triggers and barriers to reporting their suspicions. Primary healthcare professionals, the majority of whom were based in a general practice in Haringey, North London, were recruited purposefully to participate in interviews. Eight semi-structured interviews were conducted with two GPs, one nurse, two receptionists, two health visitors and one social worker

The Minimum information required for a glycomics experiment (MIRAGE) project : improving the standards for reporting mass-spectrometry-based glycoanalytic data

The MIRAGE guidelines are being developed in response to a critical need in the glycobiology community to clarify glycoanalytic results so that they are more readily evaluated (in terms of their scope and depth) and to facilitate the reproduction of important results in the laboratory. The molecular and biological complexity of the glycosylation process makes thorough reporting of the results of a glycomics experiment a highly challenging endeavor. The resulting data specify the identity and quantity of complex structures, the precise molecular features of which are sometimes inferred using prior knowledge, such as familiarity with a particular biosynthetic mechanism. Specifying the exact methods and assumptions that were used to assign and quantify reported structures allows the interested scientist to appreciate the scope and depth of the analysis. Mass spectrometry (MS) is the most widely used tool for glycomics experiments. The interpretation and reproducibility of MS-based glycomics data depend on comprehensive meta-data describing the instrumentation, instrument setup, and data acquisition protocols. The MIRAGE guidelines for MS-based glycomics have been designed to facilitate the collection and sharing of this critical information in order to assist the glycoanalyst in generating data sets with maximum information content and biological relevance.5 page(s

GlyTouCan 1.0 – The international glycan structure repository

Glycans are known as the third major class of biopolymers, next to DNA and proteins. They cover the surfaces of many cells, serving as the ‘face’ of cells, whereby other biomolecules and viruses interact. The structure of glycans, however, differs greatly from DNA and proteins in that they are branched, as opposed to linear sequences of amino acids or nucleotides. Therefore, the storage of glycan information in databases, let alone their curation, has been a difficult problem. This has caused many duplicated efforts when integration is attempted between different databases, making an international repository for glycan structures, where unique accession numbers are assigned to every identified glycan structure, necessary. As such, an international team of developers and glycobiologists have collaborated to develop this repository, called GlyTouCan and is available at http://glytoucan.org/, to provide a centralized resource for depositing glycan structures, compositions and topologies, and to retrieve accession numbers for each of these registered entries. This will thus enable researchers to reference glycan structures simply by accession number, as opposed to by chemical structure, which has been a burden to integrate glycomics databases in the past

MIRAGE : the minimum information required for a glycomics experiment

The MIRAGE (minimum information required for a glycomics experiment) initiative was founded in Seattle, WA, in November 2011 in order to develop guidelines for reporting the qualitative and quantitative results obtained by diverse types of glycomics analyses, including the conditions and techniques that were applied to prepare the glycans for analysis and generate the primary data along with the tools and parameters that were used to process and annotate this data. These guidelines must address a broad range of issues, as glycomics data are inherently complex and are generated using diverse methods, including mass spectrometry (MS), chromatography, glycan array-binding assays, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and other rapidly developing technologies. The acceptance of these guidelines by scientists conducting research on biological systems in which glycans have a significant role will facilitate the evaluation and reproduction of glycomics experiments and data that is reported in scientific journals and uploaded to glycomics databases. As a first step, MIRAGE guidelines for glycan analysis by MS have been recently published (Kolarich D, Rapp E, Struwe WB, Haslam SM, Zaia J., et al. 2013. The minimum information required for a glycomics experiment (MIRAGE) project-Improving the standards for reporting mass spectrometry-based glycoanalytic data. Mol. Cell Proteomics. 12:991-995), allowing them to be implemented and evaluated in the context of real-world glycobiology research. In this paper, we set out the historical context, organization structure and overarching objectives of the MIRAGE initiative.5 page(s

The minimum information required for a glycomics experiment (MIRAGE) project: improving the standards for reporting glycan microarray-based data

Abstract MIRAGE (Minimum Information Required for A Glycomics Experiment) is an initiative that was created by experts in the fields of glycobiology, glycoanalytics and glycoinformatics to produce guidelines for reporting results from the diverse types of experiments and analyses used in structural and functional studies of glycans in the scientific literature. As a sequel to the guidelines for sample preparation (Struwe et al. 2016, Glycobiology, 26:907–910) and mass spectrometry data (Kolarich et al. 2013, Mol. Cell Proteomics, 12:991–995), here we present the first version of guidelines intended to improve the standards for reporting data from glycan microarray analyses. For each of eight areas in the workflow of a glycan microarray experiment, we provide guidelines for the minimal information that should be provided in reporting results. We hope that the MIRAGE glycan microarray guidelines proposed here will gain broad acceptance by the community, and will facilitate interpretation and reproducibility of the glycan microarray results with implications in comparison of data from different laboratories and eventual deposition of glycan microarray data in international databases