Lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic: impact on infants with pyloric stenosis

The COVID-19 pandemic has posed challenges for the delivery of healthcare for infants with disruption to 6-week health checks and health visitor services.1 An area of particular concern is late presentation to the hospital.2 However, current data do not offer an objective picture of how significant a problem this may be, with other reports showing low rates of delays in presentation.3 Infantile hypertrophic pyloric stenosis (IHPS) is a common, non-infective infantile condition with a predictable clinical course and therefore a good indicator condition to assess for delays in presentation. We aimed to assess whether infants with IHPS presented later during ‘lockdown’ compared with the same period the preceding year

Comparison of serological assays for the detection of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies

SARS-CoV-2 virus was first detected in late 2019 and circulated globally, causing COVID-19, which is characterised by sub-clinical to severe disease in humans. Here, we investigate the serological antibody responses to SARS-CoV-2 infection during acute and convalescent infection using a cohort of (i) COVID-19 patients admitted to hospital, (ii) healthy individuals who had experienced ‘COVID19 like-illness’, and (iii) a cohort of healthy individuals prior to the emergence of SARS-CoV-2. We compare SARS-CoV-2 specific antibody detection rates from four different serological methods, virus neutralisation test (VNT), ID Screen® SARS-CoV-2-N IgG ELISA, Whole Antigen ELISA, and lentivirus-based SARS-CoV-2 pseudotype virus neutralisation tests (pVNT). All methods were able to detect prior infection with COVID-19, albeit with different relative sensitivities. The VNT and SARSCoV-2-N ELISA methods showed a strong correlation yet provided increased detection rates when used in combination. A pVNT correlated strongly with SARS-CoV-2 VNT and was able to effectively discriminate SARS-CoV-2 antibody positive and negative serum with the same efficiency as the VNT. Moreover, the pVNT was performed with the same level of discrimination across multiple separate institutions. Therefore, the pVNT is a sensitive, specific, and reproducible lower biosafety level alternative to VNT for detecting SARS-CoV-2 antibodies for diagnostic and research applications. Our data illustrate the potential utility of applying VNT or pVNT and ELISA antibody tests in parallel to enhance the sensitivity of exposure to infection

High performance liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry dual extraction method for identification of green tea catechin metabolites excreted in human urine

The simultaneous analysis of free-form and conjugated flavonoids in the same sample is difficult but necessary to properly estimate their bioavailability. A method was developed to optimise the extraction of both free and conjugated forms of catechins and metabolites in a biological sample following the consumption of green tea. A double-blind randomised controlled trial was performed in which 26 volunteers consumed daily green tea and vitamin C supplements and 24 consumed a placebo for 3 months. Urine was collected for 24h at 4 separate time points (pre- and post-consumption) to confirm compliance to the supplementation and to distinguish between placebo and supplementation consumption. The urine was assessed for both free and conjugated metabolites of green tea using LC-MS2 analysis, after a combination extraction method, which involved an ethyl acetate extraction followed by an acetonitrile protein precipitation. The combination method resulted in a good recovery of EC-O-sulphate (91±7%), EGC-O-glucuronide (94±6%), EC (95±6%), EGC (111±5%) and ethyl gallate (74±3%). A potential total of 55 catechin metabolites were investigated, and of these, 26 conjugated (with methyl, glucuronide or sulphate groups) and 3 free-form (unconjugated) compounds were identified in urine following green tea consumption. The majority of EC and EGC conjugates significantly increased post-consumption of green tea in comparison to baseline (pre-supplementation) samples. The conjugated metabolites associated with the highest peak areas were O-methyl-EC-O-sulphate and the valerolactones M6/M6'-O-sulphate. In line with previous studies, EC and EGC were only identified as conjugated derivatives, and EGCG and ECG were not found as mono-conjugated or free-forms. In summary, the method reported here provides a good recovery of catechin compounds and is appropriate for use in the assessment of flavonoid bioavailability, particularly for biological tissues that may contain endogenous deconjugating enzymes

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

Link between Insomnia and the Development of Alzheimer\u27s disease?

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most common type of dementia, affecting many adults over the age of 65. There is no known cure of AD. According to the Alzheimer’s Association, “every 65 seconds, someone in the United States develops Alzheimer’s disease” (2019). “Alzheimer’s causes problems with memory, thinking and behavior. Symptoms develop slowly and can become severe enough to interfere with daily tasks. Alzheimer’s disease is the sixth leading cause of death in the United States, with an estimated 5.7 million Americans of all ages are living with AD in 2018 (Alzheimer’s Association, 2019). The recommended amount of sleep per night for older adults is 7-8 hours (National Sleep Foundation, 2019). Insomnia is a common sleep disorder, with symptoms of difficulty falling asleep, staying asleep, or both, as stated by the National Institutes of Health (2019). Forty-four percent of people over the age of 65 experience symptoms of insomnia. It is suggested that insomnia increases the development of one of the major pathological agents in AD: amyloid-beta plaques. The purpose of this Evidenced Based Practice Brief is to research how insomnia compared to adequate sleep in patients sixty-five years and older increases the risk of the development of AD. By looking at the research regarding whether insomnia increases a patient’s risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease, nurses will be able to provide current evidence based practice when aiding in preventative strategies for Alzheimer’s disease

VERENPAINEEN MITTAAMINEN : Ohjausvideot mittaustoimintoon

Verenpaineen mittaaminen on erittäin yleinen hoitotyöntekijän suorittama toimenpide. Oikea mittaustulos ja se, että jokainen suorittaa mittauksen samalla tavalla, on erittäin tärkeää potilaan hoidon jatkuvuuden kannalta. Verenpaineen mittaustulokset vaikuttavat muun muassa potilaan lääkitykseen. Opinnäytetyöni tarkoitus on tuottaa ohjausvideot verenpaineen manuaalisesta, automaattisesta ja kehonsisäisestä mittaamisesta hoitotyön opiskelijoiden ja valmiiden hoitotyöntekijöiden oppimis- ja perehtymiskäyttöön. Videoiden tarkoituksena on auttaa hoitotyöntekijää hahmottamaan, mistä hänen tulee huolehtia mitatessaan potilaan verenpainetta ja kuinka toimenpide tehdään oikein. Opinnäytetyön tavoite on, että verenpaineen mittaaminen hoitotoimenpiteenä yhtenäistyy ja tätä kautta potilaan hoito yhdenmukaistuu, hoidon jatkuvuus paranee ja potilasturvallisuus kasvaa. Opinnäytetyön tilaaja on Piuha-projekti, joka on Jyväskylän ammattikorkeakoulun hallinnoima, osittain ESR-rahoitteinen kehittämishanke, jossa osatoteuttajina ovat Jyväskylän yliopisto ja Keski-Suomen sairaanhoitopiiri. Hankkeen tavoitteena on potilasohjauksen kehittäminen, hoitotyön henkilöstön osaamisen vahvistaminen uusien teknologisten ratkaisujen avulla ja sosiaali- ja terveydenhuollon palvelujärjestelmän asiakaslähtöisen yhteistyö- ja toimintamallin luominen.Measuring of the blood pressure is a very common procedure for healthcare personnel. Obtaining the right measurement result and the fact that everyone conducts the procedure in the same way, are extremely important factors for the continuity of the treatment. Blood pressure measurements, among other things, affect the medication of the patient. The purpose of the thesis is to produce instructional videos on the manual, automatic and invasive measuring of blood pressure for the education and orientation of healthcare students and healthcare professionals. The purpose of the videos is to help the healthcare personnel to perceive what they need to take into account when they measure the blood pressure of a patient, and how to do it properly. The goal of the thesis was to standardize the method of blood pressure measurement and, thus, standardize patient treatment, improve the continuity of the treatment and increase the safety of the patients. The thesis is commissioned by the Piuha project, which is a JAMK University of Applied Sciences governed, partially ESR funded development project, in which Jyväskylä University and Central Finland Health Care District also take part. The main goals of the project are: development of patient guidance, strengthening the skills of the healthcare personnel through the use of technological applications, and creation of a patient oriented approach and cooperation in the social and medical service system

Towards Memorable Information Retrieval

Information overload is a problem many of us can relate to nowadays. The deluge of user generated content on the Internet, and the easy accessibility to a vast amount of data compounds the problem of remembering and retaining information that is consumed. To make information consumed more memorable, strategies such as note-taking have been found to be effective by augmenting human memory under specific conditions. This is based on the rationale that humans tend to recall information better if they have produced the information themselves. Previous works in online education have shown that conversational systems can improve learning effects. Although memorization is an important part of learning, the effect of conversation on human memorability remains unexplored. We aim to address this knowledge gap through an experimental study, by investigating human memorability in a classical information retrieval setup. We explore the impact of note-taking affordances and conversational interfaces on the memorability of information consumed by users. Our results show that traditional web search and note-taking have positive effects on knowledge gain, while the search engine with a conversational interface has the potential to augment long-term memorability. This work highlights the benefits of using note-taking and conversational interfaces to aid human memorability. Our findings have important implications on building information retrieval systems that cater to optimizing memorability of information consumed.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.Web Information SystemsHuman-Centred Artificial Intelligenc

Temperature Effects on a M. tuberculosis-infectious Subset of Mycobacteriophages

Mycobacteriophages are viruses that infect mycobacterial hosts. Over 1300 mycobacteriophages have been organized into at least 34 distinct groupings or clusters based on genomic sequence similarity. Some mycobacteriophages from Clusters A and K can also infect Mycobacterium tuberculosis, a distinction of potential medical importance. Recently, Hope College SEA-PHAGES students have been isolating predicted Cluster K phages at a higher frequency (≥ 2x) after changing the isolation temperature from 37°C to 32°C. Additionally, these phages were unable to propagate at 42°C. PCR analysis supported a Cluster K classification for many predicted Cluster K phages isolated at 32°C, but for only one of the phages (Ruthiejr) isolated at 37°C. Interestingly, Ruthiejr does propagate at 42°C. We hypothesized that Cluster K phages may have a relative growth advantage at lower temperatures. We investigated temperature-dependent growth properties of several known and PCR-supported Cluster K mycobacteriophages. We examined phage thermostability, adsorption rate, reproductive cycle time (latent period), and burst size. Stability at 42°C appeared phage-dependent and was not always consistent with growth temperature profiles and/or host adsorption kinetics. For example, phages Bella96 and Krueger, both growth-defective at 42°C, also displayed reduced thermostability and host adsorption kinetics at 42°C compared to lower temperatures. In contrast, phages Polymorphads and Hyperbowlee, also growth defective at 42°C, were nonetheless stable at 42°C. Notably, Hyperbowlee also showed almost no host adsorption at 42°C. One-step growth analysis of D29 (control), Bella96, and Krueger showed impaired growth of the Cluster K phages at ≥ 37°C compared to D29. These results now suggest that Cluster K phages may have a growth disadvantage at temperatures ≥ 32°C. Our findings provide insight into the growth behavior and temperature sensitivity of Cluster K phages and may lead to discoveries about M. smegmatis and M. tuberculosis infection by mycobacteriophages