Self-perception but not peer reputation of bullying victimization is associated with non-clinical psychotic experiences in adolescents

Background Bullying victimization may be linked to psychosis but only self-report measures of victimization have been used so far. This study aimed (a) to investigate the differential associations of peer-nominated versus self-reported victim status with non-clinical psychotic experiences in a sample of young adolescents, and (b) to examine whether different types of self-reported victimization predict non-clinical psychotic experiences in these adolescents. Method A combination of standard self-report and peer nomination procedures was used to assess victimization. The sample (n = 724) was divided into four groups (exclusively self-reported victims, self- and peer-reported victims, exclusively peer-reported victims, and non-victims) to test for a group effect on non-clinical psychotic experiences. The relationship between types of victimization and non-clinical psychotic experiences was examined by a regression analysis. Results Self-reported victims, along with self- and peer-reported victims, scored higher than peer-reported victims and non-victims on non-clinical psychotic experiences. Self-reports of direct relational, indirect relational and physical victimization significantly improved the prediction of non-clinical psychotic experiences whereas verbal and possession-directed victimization had no significant predictive value. Conclusions The relationship between victimization and non-clinical psychotic experiences is only present for self-reported victimization, possibly indicative of an interpretation bias. The observed discrepancy between self-report and peer-report highlights the importance of implementing a combination of both measures for future research. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

Observation Versus Embolization in Patients with Blunt Splenic Injury after Trauma: A Propensity Score Analysis

Background: Non-operative management (NOM) is the standard of care in hemodynamically stable patients with blunt splenic injury after trauma. Splenic artery embolization (SAE) is reported to increase observation success rate. Studies demonstrating improved splenic salvage rates with SAE primarily compared SAE with historical controls. The aim of this study was to investigate whether SAE improves success rate compared to observation alone in contemporaneous patients with blunt splenic injury. Methods: We included adult patients with blunt splenic injury admitted to five Level 1 Trauma Centers between January 2009 and December 2012 and selected for NOM. Successful treatment was defined as splenic salvage and no splenic re-intervention. We calculated propensity scores, expressing the probability of undergoing SAE, using multivariable logistic regression and created five strata based on the quintiles of the propensity score distribution. A weighted relative risk (RR) was calculated across strata to express the chances of success with SAE. Results: Two hundred and six patients were included in the study. Treatment was successful in 180 patients: 134/146 (92 %) patients treated with observation and 48/57 (84 %) patients treated with SAE. The weighted RR for success with SAE was 1.17 (0.94-1.45); for complications, the weighted RR was 0.71 (0.41-1.22). The mean number of transfused blood products was 4.4 (SD 9.9) in the observation group versus 9.1 (SD 17.2) in the SAE group. Conclusions: After correction for confounders with propensity score stratification technique, there was no significant difference between embolization and observation alone with regard to successful treatment in patients with blunt splenic injury after trauma

Plant sterols cause macrothrombocytopenia in a mouse model of sitosterolemia

Mutations in either ABCG5 or ABCG8 cause sitosterolemia, an inborn error of metabolism characterized by high plasma plant sterol concentrations. Recently, macrothrombocytopenia was described in a number of sitosterolemia patients, linking hematological dysfunction to disturbed sterol metabolism. Here, we demonstrate that macrothrombocytopenia is an intrinsic feature of murine sitosterolemia. Abcg5-deficient (Abcg5(-/-)) mice showed a 68% reduction in platelet count, and platelets were enlarged compared with wild-type controls. Macrothrombocytopenia was not due to decreased numbers of megakaryocytes or their progenitors, but defective megakaryocyte development with deterioration of the demarcation membrane system was evident. Lethally irradiated wild-type mice transplanted with bone marrow from Abcg5(-/-) mice displayed normal platelets, whereas Abcg5(-/-) mice transplanted with wild-type bone marrow still showed macrothrombocytopenia. Treatment with the sterol absorption inhibitor ezetimibe rapidly reversed macrothrombocytopenia in Abcg5(-/-) mice concomitant with a strong decrease in plasma plant sterols. Thus, accumulation of plant sterols is responsible for development of macrothrombocytopenia in sitosterolemia, and blocking intestinal plant sterol absorption provides an effective means of treatment

Aggressions, social cognitions, anger and sadness in bullies and victims

Background: The present study aimed to investigate children's social information processing (SIP) and emotions in the bullying situation, taking into account reactive and proactive aggression. More specifically, we investigated the way in which children interpret social information, which goals they select, how they evaluate their responses and which emotions they express in hypothetical situations. Method: The participants comprised 242 Dutch children (120 girls and 122 boys; mean age: 117.2 months), who were assigned by means of peer nominations (Salmivalli, Lagerspetz, et al., 1996) to one of the following roles: bully (n = 21), follower of the bully (n = 38), victim (n = 35), defender of the victim (n = 48), outsider (n = 52) and not involved (n = 32). Sixteen children (including 3 bully/victims) were not given any role. The reactive and proactive aggression scale (Dodge, & Coie, 1987) was filled out by teachers in order to test the association between these types of aggression and involvement in bullying. Children were presented with ambiguous scenarios and responded to questions about attribution of intent, goal selection and emotions (anger and sadness). In addition, two questionnaires were administered to children: one assessed perceived self-efficacy in performing aggression, inhibiting aggression and using verbal persuasion skills, and the other assessed expected outcomes from behaving aggressively or prosocially. Results: Results showed that while reactive aggression was common in bullies and victims, proactive aggression was only characteristic of bullies. Both bullies and victims, compared to the other children, scored higher on hostile interpretation, anger, retaliation and ease of aggression. Bullies and followers claimed that it was easy for them to use verbal persuasion, while victims turned out to be the saddest group. All children, irrespective of their role in the peer group, thought that aggressive as well as prosocial behavior was more likely to produce desired results from a friendly peer than from an aggressive one. Conclusions: Bullies and victims seem to be similar in reactive aggression, SIP, and in the expression of anger, but the motivations which lead to their behavior may be different, as well as the final outcomes of their acts. © Association for Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 2004

Deep Learning-Based Natural Language Processing in Radiology:The Impact of Report Complexity, Disease Prevalence, Dataset Size, and Algorithm Type on Model Performance

In radiology, natural language processing (NLP) allows the extraction of valuable information from radiology reports. It can be used for various downstream tasks such as quality improvement, epidemiological research, and monitoring guideline adherence. Class imbalance, variation in dataset size, variation in report complexity, and algorithm type all influence NLP performance but have not yet been systematically and interrelatedly evaluated. In this study, we investigate these factors on the performance of four types [a fully connected neural network (Dense), a long short-term memory recurrent neural network (LSTM), a convolutional neural network (CNN), and a Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT)] of deep learning-based NLP. Two datasets consisting of radiologist-annotated reports of both trauma radiographs (n = 2469) and chest radiographs and computer tomography (CT) studies (n = 2255) were split into training sets (80%) and testing sets (20%). The training data was used as a source to train all four model types in 84 experiments (Fracture-data) and 45 experiments (Chest-data) with variation in size and prevalence. The performance was evaluated on sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value, area under the curve, and F score. After the NLP of radiology reports, all four model-architectures demonstrated high performance with metrics up to > 0.90. CNN, LSTM, and Dense were outperformed by the BERT algorithm because of its stable results despite variation in training size and prevalence. Awareness of variation in prevalence is warranted because it impacts sensitivity and specificity in opposite directions. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10916-021-01761-4

Match-derived relative pitch area changes the physical and team tactical performance of elite soccer players in small-sided soccer games

Small-sided games (SSGs) are used in training sessions to prepare for full-sized matches. For the same number of players, smaller pitch sizes result in decreased physical performance and shorter interpersonal distances. A relative pitch area derived from the full-sized match results in larger pitch sizes and this may increase the fit between SSGs and full-sized matches. This study aimed to investigate SSGs with a traditional small pitch and a match-derived relative pitch area in youth elite soccer players. Four age categories (under-13, under-15, under-17 and under-19) played 4 vs. 4 plus goalkeepers on a small (40x30m, 120m(2) relative pitch area) and large pitch (68x47m, 320m(2) relative pitch area). The number of games per age category ranged 15-30. Positional data (LPM-system) were collected to determine physical (total distance covered, high intensity distance and number of sprints) and team tactical (inter-team distance, LPW-ratio, surface area, stretch indices, goalkeeper-defender distance) performance measures and tactical variability. On a large pitch, physical performance significantly increased, inter-team and intra-team distances were significantly larger and tactical variability of intra-team distance measures significantly increased. The match-derived relative pitch area is an important training manipulation and leads to changes in physical and tactical performance 4 vs. 4 plus goalkeepers.</p

Surgical Site Infections at Donor and Recipient Sites in Patients with Iliac Crest Harvesting For Autologous Bone Grafting - A Pilot Evaluation

Surgeons harvest the iliac crest for bone grafting. The epidemiology of surgical site infections (SSI) associated with this procedure at the donor, or recipient site, is unknown. We perform a retrospective pilot evaluation of adult patients undergoing first-time orthopedic surgery at the Balgrist University Hospital between 2014-2019. We excluded patients with infection at the index surgery, diabetic foot surgeries, superficial SSIs, and revision surgeries. We included 20,088 episodes of primary orthopedic surgery, of which 467 with iliac crest bone sampling (467/20,088; 2%). Only two iliac sites (2/467; 0.4%) become infected. In contrast, surgeries with iliac crest sampling yielded more SSIs at the recipient site than those without (1.9% vs. 0.8%; χ2-test; p<0.01). These patients equally revealed more co-morbidities such as a longer duration of surgery (median 127 vs. 79 minutes), when compared to the general orthopedic population. In multivariate logistic regression analysis with the outcome “ SSI at the recipient site”, the iliac harvesting was independently associated with deep SSIs requiring surgical revision (odds ratio 2.1; 95% confidence interval 1.1-4.2). In our pilot evaluation with 20,088 primary orthopedic surgeries, the SSI risk of the iliac harvest site was low. In contrast, surgeries with supplementary iliac crest harvesting revealed a higher SSI risk than the general orthopedic population, potentially due to a mix of local independent risks of grafting together with a prolonged surgery time. Keywords : Autologous bone grafting; Deep surgical site infections; Epidemiology; Iliac crest harvesting; Revision surger

A novel signalling screen demonstrates that CALR mutations activate essential MAPK signalling and facilitate megakaryocyte differentiation.

Most MPN patients lacking JAK2 mutations harbour somatic CALR mutations that are thought to activate cytokine signalling although the mechanism is unclear. To identify kinases important for survival of CALR-mutant cells we developed a novel strategy (KISMET) which utilises the full range of kinase selectivity data available from each inhibitor and thus takes advantage of off-target noise that limits conventional siRNA or inhibitor screens. KISMET successfully identified known essential kinases in haematopoietic and non-haematopoietic cell lines and identified the MAPK pathway as required for growth of the CALR-mutated MARIMO cells. Expression of mutant CALR in murine or human haematopoietic cell lines was accompanied by MPL-dependent activation of MAPK signalling, and MPN patients with CALR mutations showed increased MAPK activity in CD34-cells, platelets and megakaryocytes. Although CALR mutations resulted in protein instability and proteosomal degradation, mutant CALR was able to enhance megakaryopoiesis and pro-platelet production from human CD34+ progenitors. These data link aberrant MAPK activation to the MPN phenotype and identify it as a potential therapeutic target in CALR-mutant positive MPNs.Leukemia accepted article preview online, 14 October 2016. doi:10.1038/leu.2016.280.Work in the Green lab is supported by Leukemia and Lymphoma Research, Cancer Research UK, the NIHR Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre, the Cambridge Experimental Cancer Medicine Centre and the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society of America. WW is supported by the Austrian Science Foundation (J 3578-B21). CGA is supported by Kay Kendall Leukaemia Fund clinical research fellowship. UM is supported by a Cancer Research UK Clinician Scientist Fellowship. Work in the Huntly lab is supported by the European Research Council, the MRC (UK), Bloodwise, the Cambridge NIHR funded BRC, KKLF and a WT/MRC Stem Cell centre grant. Work in the Green and Huntly Labs is supported by core support grants by the Wellcome Trust to the Cambridge Institute for Medical Research (100140/z/12/z) and Wellcome Trust-MRC Cambridge Stem Cell Institute (097922/Z/11/Z)