Anti-Müllerian hormone as a diagnostic tool to identify queens with ovarian remnant syndrome

Objectives Ovarian remnant syndrome (ORS) is suspected when heat signs occur in spayed individuals, but further diagnostic procedures are necessary to exclude other possible oestrogen sources, such as the adrenal gland or exogenous supplementation. Anti-Müllerian hormone (AMH), secreted by granulosa cells or Sertoli cells, serves to differentiate sexually intact from gonadectomised animals and has been described in dogs as a tool for diagnosing ORS. The aim of this study was to evaluate if AMH determination can be used to diagnose ORS in cats. Methods AMH was measured with a chemiluminescence immunoassay in serum samples of 15 sexually intact, 9 spayed and 16 cats with a history of heat signs after spaying. Abdominal ultrasound (n = 13), vaginal smears (n = 7), progesterone measurement (n = 5) and laparotomy (n = 14) were used to determine the presence of ovarian tissue. After surgery, a histological examination of the obtained tissue was performed in the cats with suspected ORS. Results In 15 cats with ORS the AMH serum concentrations were significantly higher than in spayed cats (n = 10; P = 0.025) and significantly lower than in sexually intact cats (n = 15; P = 0.001). Among the cats with ORS, the highest AMH serum concentrations were measured in the queens with cystic ovarian alterations and in one cat from which a whole ovary was obtained. The cat with the lowest AMH serum concentration had a simultaneous high progesterone serum concentration. Cats with ORS did not show any heat signs after surgical removal of the ovarian tissue. Conclusions and relevance A single determination of AMH in blood serum is a useful diagnostic tool for the diagnosis of ORS in cats, regardless of the hormonal activity of the remnant ovarian tissue

Prenatal exposure to methadone or buprenorphine: Early childhood developmental outcomes.

BACKGROUND: Methadone and buprenorphine are recommended to treat opioid use disorders during pregnancy. However, the literature on the relationship between longer-term effects of prenatal exposure to these medications and childhood development is both spare and inconsistent. METHODS: Participants were 96 children and their mothers who participated in MOTHER, a randomized controlled trial of opioid-agonist pharmacotherapy during pregnancy. The present study examined child growth parameters, cognition, language abilities, sensory processing, and temperament from 0 to 36 months of the child\u27s life. Maternal perceptions of parenting stress, home environment, and addiction severity were also examined. RESULTS: Tests of mean differences between children prenatally exposed to methadone vs. buprenorphine over the three-year period yielded 2/37 significant findings for children. Similarly, tests of mean differences between children treated for NAS relative to those not treated for NAS yielded 1/37 significant finding. Changes over time occurred for 27/37 child outcomes including expected child increases in weight, head and height, and overall gains in cognitive development, language abilities, sensory processing, and temperament. For mothers, significant changes over time in parenting stress (9/17 scales) suggested increasing difficulties with their children, notably seen in increasing parenting stress, but also an increasingly enriched home environment (4/7 scales). CONCLUSIONS: Findings strongly suggest no deleterious effects of buprenorphine relative to methadone or of treatment for NAS severity relative to not-treated for NAS on growth, cognitive development, language abilities, sensory processing, and temperament. Moreover, findings suggest that prenatal opioid agonist exposure is not deleterious to normal physical and mental development

A Phase-Field Model of Spiral Dendritic Growth

Domains of condensed-phase monolayers of chiral molecules exhibit a variety of interesting nonequilibrium structures when formed via pressurization. To model these domain patterns, we add a complex field describing the tilt degree of freedom to an (anisotropic) complex-phase-field solidification model. The resulting formalism allows for the inclusion of (in general, non-reflection symmetric) interactions between the tilt, the solid-liquid interface, and the bond orientation. Simulations demonstrate the ability of the model to exhibit spiral dendritic growth.Comment: text plus Four postscript figure file

Connective tissue disease related interstitial lung diseases and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis: provisional core sets of domains and instruments for use in clinical trials

Rationale Clinical trial design in interstitial lung diseases (ILDs) has been hampered by lack of consensus on appropriate outcome measures for reliably assessing treatment response. In the setting of connective tissue diseases (CTDs), some measures of ILD disease activity and severity may be confounded by non-pulmonary comorbidities. Methods The Connective Tissue Disease associated Interstitial Lung Disease (CTD-ILD) working group of Outcome Measures in Rheumatology—a non-profit international organisation dedicated to consensus methodology in identification of outcome measures—conducted a series of investigations which included a Delphi process including >248 ILD medical experts as well as patient focus groups culminating in a nominal group panel of ILD experts and patients. The goal was to define and develop a consensus on the status of outcome measure candidates for use in randomised controlled trials in CTD-ILD and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF). Results A core set comprising specific measures in the domains of lung physiology, lung imaging, survival, dyspnoea, cough and health-related quality of life is proposed as appropriate for consideration for use in a hypothetical 1-year multicentre clinical trial for either CTD-ILD or IPF. As many widely used instruments were found to lack full validation, an agenda for future research is proposed. Conclusion Identification of consensus preliminary domains and instruments to measure them was attained and is a major advance anticipated to facilitate multicentre RCTs in the field

Performing the Digital Self: Understanding Location-Based Social Networking, Territory, Space, and Identity in the City

Expressions of territoriality have been positioned as one of the main reasons users alter their behaviors and perceptions of spatiality and sociality while engaging with location-based social networks (LBSN). Despite the potential for this interplay to further our understanding of LBSN usage in the context of identity, very little work has actually been done towards this. Addressing this gap in the literature is one the chief aims of the article. Drawing on an original six-week study with 42 participants utilizing a bespoke LBSN entitled ‘GeoMoments’, our research explores: (1) the way that territoriality is linked to self-identity; and (2) how this interplay affects the interactions between users as well as the environments they inhabit. Our findings suggest that participants affirmed their self-identity by selectively posting and claiming ownership of their neighborhood through the LBSN. Here, the locative decisions made related to risk, hierarchies, and the users’ relationship to the area. This practice then led participants to discover and interact with the digital information overlaying their physical environments in a playful manner. These interactions demonstrate the perceived power structures that are facilitated by identity claims over a virtual area. In the main, our results reaffirm that territoriality is a central concept in understanding LBSN use, while also drawing attention to the temporality involved in user-to-user and user-to-place interactions pertaining to physical place mediated by LBSN

Proceedings of Patient Reported Outcome Measure’s (PROMs) Conference Oxford 2017: Advances in Patient Reported Outcomes Research

A33-Effects of Out-of-Pocket (OOP) Payments and Financial Distress on Quality of Life (QoL) of People with Parkinson’s (PwP) and their Carer

Increase in invasive group A streptococcal infections and emergence of novel, rapidly expanding sub-lineage of the virulent Streptococcus pyogenes M1 clone, Denmark, 2023

Funding Information: We would like to thank Karina Kaae, Lanni Fugl Niebuhr Nielsen and Joan Nevermann Jensen for their laboratory expertise, and acknowledge the great effort by clinicians and laboratory technicians at hospitals across Denmark and at Landspítali, Reykjavik, in securing samples and data essential for WGS-based surveillance efforts, as well as the dedicated technical staff maintaining and developing the registries and epidemiological databases at the core of national surveillance in Denmark. Publisher Copyright: © 2023 European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC). All rights reserved.A highly virulent sub-lineage of the Streptococcus pyogenes M1 clone has been rapidly expanding throughout Denmark since late 2022 and now accounts for 30% of the new invasive group A streptococcal infections. We aimed to investigate whether a shift in variant composition can account for the high incidence rates observed over winter 2022/23, or if these are better explained by the impact of COVID-19-related restrictions on population immunity and carriage of group A Streptococcus. An increase in incidence rates of invasive (iGAS) and non-invasive (nGAS) group A Streptococcus infection has been reported by several countries across Europe during the 2022/23 winter season [1-3]. Through analysis of all whole genome sequencing (WGS) data acquired for national surveillance of iGAS in Denmark since 2018, we aimed to investigate current genomic developments and the impact of emerging lineages on iGAS incidence rates in 2023. In Denmark, iGAS is not notifiable except in case of meningitis, however, test results from all 10 Departments of Clinical Microbiology (DCMs) are submitted to the Danish Microbiology Database (MiBa) [4] and can be used to monitor incidence rates. Iceland also experienced a higher iGAS incidence in early 2023, and we also present Icelandic WGS data on iGAS isolates from 2022 and 2023.Peer reviewe

Height and body-mass index trajectories of school-aged children and adolescents from 1985 to 2019 in 200 countries and territories: a pooled analysis of 2181 population-based studies with 65 million participants

Summary Background Comparable global data on health and nutrition of school-aged children and adolescents are scarce. We aimed to estimate age trajectories and time trends in mean height and mean body-mass index (BMI), which measures weight gain beyond what is expected from height gain, for school-aged children and adolescents. Methods For this pooled analysis, we used a database of cardiometabolic risk factors collated by the Non-Communicable Disease Risk Factor Collaboration. We applied a Bayesian hierarchical model to estimate trends from 1985 to 2019 in mean height and mean BMI in 1-year age groups for ages 5–19 years. The model allowed for non-linear changes over time in mean height and mean BMI and for non-linear changes with age of children and adolescents, including periods of rapid growth during adolescence. Findings We pooled data from 2181 population-based studies, with measurements of height and weight in 65 million participants in 200 countries and territories. In 2019, we estimated a difference of 20 cm or higher in mean height of 19-year-old adolescents between countries with the tallest populations (the Netherlands, Montenegro, Estonia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina for boys; and the Netherlands, Montenegro, Denmark, and Iceland for girls) and those with the shortest populations (Timor-Leste, Laos, Solomon Islands, and Papua New Guinea for boys; and Guatemala, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Timor-Leste for girls). In the same year, the difference between the highest mean BMI (in Pacific island countries, Kuwait, Bahrain, The Bahamas, Chile, the USA, and New Zealand for both boys and girls and in South Africa for girls) and lowest mean BMI (in India, Bangladesh, Timor-Leste, Ethiopia, and Chad for boys and girls; and in Japan and Romania for girls) was approximately 9–10 kg/m2. In some countries, children aged 5 years started with healthier height or BMI than the global median and, in some cases, as healthy as the best performing countries, but they became progressively less healthy compared with their comparators as they grew older by not growing as tall (eg, boys in Austria and Barbados, and girls in Belgium and Puerto Rico) or gaining too much weight for their height (eg, girls and boys in Kuwait, Bahrain, Fiji, Jamaica, and Mexico; and girls in South Africa and New Zealand). In other countries, growing children overtook the height of their comparators (eg, Latvia, Czech Republic, Morocco, and Iran) or curbed their weight gain (eg, Italy, France, and Croatia) in late childhood and adolescence. When changes in both height and BMI were considered, girls in South Korea, Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and some central Asian countries (eg, Armenia and Azerbaijan), and boys in central and western Europe (eg, Portugal, Denmark, Poland, and Montenegro) had the healthiest changes in anthropometric status over the past 3·5 decades because, compared with children and adolescents in other countries, they had a much larger gain in height than they did in BMI. The unhealthiest changes—gaining too little height, too much weight for their height compared with children in other countries, or both—occurred in many countries in sub-Saharan Africa, New Zealand, and the USA for boys and girls; in Malaysia and some Pacific island nations for boys; and in Mexico for girls. Interpretation The height and BMI trajectories over age and time of school-aged children and adolescents are highly variable across countries, which indicates heterogeneous nutritional quality and lifelong health advantages and risks