DMTs and Covid-19 severity in MS: a pooled analysis from Italy and France

We evaluated the effect of DMTs on Covid-19 severity in patients with MS, with a pooled-analysis of two large cohorts from Italy and France. The association of baseline characteristics and DMTs with Covid-19 severity was assessed by multivariate ordinal-logistic models and pooled by a fixed-effect meta-analysis. 1066 patients with MS from Italy and 721 from France were included. In the multivariate model, anti-CD20 therapies were significantly associated (OR = 2.05, 95%CI = 1.39–3.02, p < 0.001) with Covid-19 severity, whereas interferon indicated a decreased risk (OR = 0.42, 95%CI = 0.18–0.99, p = 0.047). This pooled-analysis confirms an increased risk of severe Covid-19 in patients on anti-CD20 therapies and supports the protective role of interferon

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Multi-Temporal DInSAR to Characterise Landslide Ground Deformations in a Tropical Urban Environment: Focus on Bukavu (DR Congo)

Landslides can lead to high impacts in less developed countries, particularly in tropical environments where a combination of intense rainfall, active tectonics, steep topography, and high population density can be found. However, the processes controlling landslide initiation and their evolution through time remains poorly understood. Here we show the relevance of the use of the multi-temporal differential radar interferometric (DInSAR) technique to characterise ground deformations associated with landslides in the rapidly-expanding city of Bukavu (DR Congo). We use 70 COSMO-SkyMed synthetic aperture radar images acquired between March 2015 and April 2016 with a mean revisiting time of eight days to produce ground deformation rate maps and displacement time series using the small baseline subset approach. We find that various landslide processes of different ages, mechanisms, and states of activity can be identified. Ground deformations revealed by DInSAR are found consistent with field observations and differential GPS measurements. Our analysis highlights the ability of DInSAR to grasp landslide deformation patterns affecting the complex tropical-urban environment of the city of Bukavu. However, longer time series will be needed to infer landside responses to climate, seismic, and anthropogenic drivers

InSAR time series to characterize landslide ground deformations in a tropical urban environment: focus on Bukavu, East African Rift System (DR Congo)

The western branch of the East African Rift System, in Central Africa, is a region naturally prone to landslides due to the geomorphology of the area and to the occurrence of earthquakes and heavy rainfall events. The city of Bukavu (DR Congo) is located within the Rift, on the southern shore of Lake Kivu, in a tropical environment. Little is yet known about the current kinematics and the processes that drive large slow-moving landslides that continuously affect highly populated slopes of the city. Here we use InSAR time series to monitor ground deformations associated to the largest landslide in Bukavu (1.5 km2) that mostly moves in the E-W and vertical directions with displacement rate up to 25 cm/yr as highlighted by DGPS measurements taken at benchmarks in the area. Using 80 Cosmo SkyMed SAR images acquired between March 2015 and April 2016 with a mean revisiting time of 8 days in both ascending and descending orbits, we produced displacement rate maps and ground deformation time series with the Small Baseline Subset (SBAS) technique implemented in StamPS software. Results show that the landslide is divided into blocks that move with different velocities which is consistent with field observations and DGPS measurements. Despite a short revisiting time offered by CSK constellation, we lose the coherence within the fastest moving regions of the landslide. To constrain these results we are now processing ~40 Sentinel-1A images acquired in the same period in ascending and descending orbit. Probably the longer Sentinel-1 wavelength (5.6 cm) compared to the Cosmo SkyMed one (3.1 cm) will allow us to measure fastest displacements observed with DGPS data

Hematuria in a 12-year-old child, a rare case of urothelial papilloma of the urinary bladder

We describe a case of a 12-year-old boy with an isolated macroscopic hematuria. A urinary ultrasound revealed a bladder tumor next to the right ureteric orifice. A biopsy revealed a urothelial papilloma. He underwent a successful resection by cystostomy. This benign tumor is extremely rare in children and its management remains controversial

French Society for Biological Psychiatry and Neuropsychopharmacology (AFPBN) guidelines for the management of patients with partially responsive depression and treatment-resistant depression: Update 2024

International audienceIntroduction: The purpose of this update is to add newly approved nomenclatures and treatments as well as treatments yet to be approved in major depressive disorder, thus expanding the discussions on the integration of resistance factors into the clinical approach.Methods: Unlike the first consensus guidelines based on the RAND/UCLA Appropriateness Method, the French Association for Biological Psychiatry and Neuropsychopharmacology (AFPBN) developed an update of these guidelines for the management of partially responsive depression (PRD) and treatment-resistant depression (TRD). The expert guidelines combine scientific evidence and expert clinicians' opinions to produce recommendations for PRD and TRD.Results: The recommendations addressed three areas judged as essential for updating the previous 2019 AFPBN guidelines for the management of patients with TRD: (1) the identification of risk factors associated with TRD, (2) the therapeutic management of patients with PRD and TRD, and (3) the indications, the modalities of use and the monitoring of recent glutamate receptor modulating agents (esketamine and ketamine).Conclusion: These consensus-based guidelines make it possible to build bridges between the available empirical literature and clinical practice, with a highlight on the 'real world' of the clinical practice, supported by a pragmatic approach centred on the experience of specialised prescribers in TRD

Landslide hazard assessment in an urgan-sprawling context: a geomorphological approach in Bukavu (DR Congo)

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