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

Effect of angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor and angiotensin receptor blocker initiation on organ support-free days in patients hospitalized with COVID-19

IMPORTANCE Overactivation of the renin-angiotensin system (RAS) may contribute to poor clinical outcomes in patients with COVID-19. Objective To determine whether angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitor or angiotensin receptor blocker (ARB) initiation improves outcomes in patients hospitalized for COVID-19. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS In an ongoing, adaptive platform randomized clinical trial, 721 critically ill and 58 non–critically ill hospitalized adults were randomized to receive an RAS inhibitor or control between March 16, 2021, and February 25, 2022, at 69 sites in 7 countries (final follow-up on June 1, 2022). INTERVENTIONS Patients were randomized to receive open-label initiation of an ACE inhibitor (n = 257), ARB (n = 248), ARB in combination with DMX-200 (a chemokine receptor-2 inhibitor; n = 10), or no RAS inhibitor (control; n = 264) for up to 10 days. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES The primary outcome was organ support–free days, a composite of hospital survival and days alive without cardiovascular or respiratory organ support through 21 days. The primary analysis was a bayesian cumulative logistic model. Odds ratios (ORs) greater than 1 represent improved outcomes. RESULTS On February 25, 2022, enrollment was discontinued due to safety concerns. Among 679 critically ill patients with available primary outcome data, the median age was 56 years and 239 participants (35.2%) were women. Median (IQR) organ support–free days among critically ill patients was 10 (–1 to 16) in the ACE inhibitor group (n = 231), 8 (–1 to 17) in the ARB group (n = 217), and 12 (0 to 17) in the control group (n = 231) (median adjusted odds ratios of 0.77 [95% bayesian credible interval, 0.58-1.06] for improvement for ACE inhibitor and 0.76 [95% credible interval, 0.56-1.05] for ARB compared with control). The posterior probabilities that ACE inhibitors and ARBs worsened organ support–free days compared with control were 94.9% and 95.4%, respectively. Hospital survival occurred in 166 of 231 critically ill participants (71.9%) in the ACE inhibitor group, 152 of 217 (70.0%) in the ARB group, and 182 of 231 (78.8%) in the control group (posterior probabilities that ACE inhibitor and ARB worsened hospital survival compared with control were 95.3% and 98.1%, respectively). CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE In this trial, among critically ill adults with COVID-19, initiation of an ACE inhibitor or ARB did not improve, and likely worsened, clinical outcomes. TRIAL REGISTRATION ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT0273570

Atmospheric Pressure Microwave Assisted Heterogeneous Catalytic Reactions

The newly synthesized 5,10,15,20-tetra[3-(3-trifluoromethyl)phenoxy]porphyrin, TTFMPP, has been characterized using mass spectroscopy, 1H-, 13C- and 19F-NMR, MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry, UV-Vis and fluorescence spectrophotometry, andcyclic voltammetry. The NMR confirmed the structure of the compound and the massspectrum was in agreement with the proposed molecular formula. The UV-Vis absorptionspectrum of TTFMPP shows characteristic spectral patterns similar to those of tetraphenylporphryin, with a Soret band at 419 nm and four Q bands at 515, 550, 590, and 648 nm.Protonation of the porphyrin with TFA resulted in the expected red shift of the Soret band.Excitation at 419 nm gave an emission at 650 nm. The quantum yield of the porphyrin wasdetermined to be 0.08. Cyclic voltammetry was used to determine the oxidation andreduction potentials of the new porphyrin. Two quasi-reversible one-electron reductions at–1.00 and –1.32 V and a quasi-reversible oxidation at 1.20 V versus the silver/silverchloride reference electrode with tetrabutylammonium tetrafluoroborate as the supportingelectrolyte in methylene chloride were observed

www.mdpi.org/molecules Synthesis and Characterization of

Abstract: The newly synthesized 5,10,15,20-tetra[3-(3-trifluoromethyl)phenoxy] porphyrin, TTFMPP, has been characterized using mass spectroscopy, 1 H-, 13 C- and 19 F-NMR, MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry, UV-Vis and fluorescence spectrophotometry, and cyclic voltammetry. The NMR confirmed the structure of the compound and the mass spectrum was in agreement with the proposed molecular formula. The UV-Vis absorption spectrum of TTFMPP shows characteristic spectral patterns similar to those of tetrapheny