Sensory event-related potential morphology predicts age in premature infants

Objective: We investigated whether sensory-evoked cortical potentials could be used to estimate the age of an infant. Such a model could be used to identify infants who deviate from normal neurodevelopment. Methods: Infants aged between 28- and 40-weeks post-menstrual age (PMA) (166 recording sessions in 96 infants) received trains of visual and tactile stimuli. Neurodynamic response functions for each stimulus were derived using principal component analysis and a machine learning model trained and validated to predict infant age. Results: PMA could be predicted accurately from the magnitude of the evoked responses (training set mean absolute error and 95% confidence intervals: 1.41 [1.14; 1.74] weeks, p = 0.0001; test set mean absolute error: 1.55 [1.21; 1.95] weeks, p = 0.0002). Moreover, we show that their predicted age (their brain age) is correlated with a measure known to relate to maturity of the nervous system and is linked to long-term neurodevelopment. Conclusions: Sensory-evoked potentials are predictive of age in premature infants and brain age deviations are related to biologically and clinically meaningful individual differences in nervous system maturation. Significance: This model could be used to detect abnormal development of infants’ response to sensory stimuli in their environment and may be predictive of neurodevelopmental outcome

Parental experience of neonatal pain research while participating in the Parental touch trial (Petal)

Parental involvement in neonatal comfort care is a core component of family-centred care. Yet, parents experience a range of positive and negative feelings when providing pain-relieving interventions for their infants. Parents of infants who participated in the Parental touch trial (Petal), a multicentre randomised controlled trial investigating the impact of gentle parental touch on neonatal pain, were asked to complete an anonymous survey. This survey aimed to (1) explore parent-reported motivations in deciding to participate in the Petal trial; (2) understand parent-reported experiences related to trial participation; (3) understand parents' willingness to participate in future studies; and (4) evaluate parent-reported feelings while they were delivering a gentle touch intervention either before or after a clinically necessary blood test. One hundred six parents (1 parent per infant) took part in the survey. Primary motivators for participation were altruistic. Parents most frequently reported that they wanted their child to take part in the research because it has a potential benefit to babies in the future and because they wanted to improve scientific understanding. Parents reported that providing gentle touch to their children during painful procedures was associated with positive emotions, such as feeling “useful” (64%) and “reassured” (53%). Furthermore, nearly all parents (98%) were pleased to have participated in the Petal trial and would consider, or maybe consider, participating in further research studies. These results underscore the importance of structuring trials around parental involvement and providing opportunities for parents to be involved in providing comfort to their infants during necessary painful clinical procedures

Effect of parental touch on relieving acute procedural pain in neonates and parental anxiety (Petal): a multicentre, randomised controlled trial in the UK

Background Touch interventions such as massage and skin-to-skin contact relieve neonatal pain. The Parental touch trial (Petal) aimed to assess whether parental stroking of their baby before a clinically required heel lance, at a speed of approximately 3 cm/s to optimally activate C-tactile nerve fibres, provides effective pain relief. Methods Petal is a multicentre, randomised, parallel-group interventional superiority trial conducted in the John Radcliffe Hospital (Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Oxford, UK) and the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital (Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, Exeter, UK). Neonates without neurological abnormalities who were born at 35 weeks gestational age or more and required a blood test via a heel lance in the first week of life were randomly assigned (1:1) to receive parental touch for 10 s either before (intervention group) or after (control group) the clinically required heel lance. Randomisation was managed at the Oxford site using a web-based minimisation algorithm with allocation concealment. The primary outcome measure was the magnitude of noxious-evoked brain activity in response to the heel lance measured with electroencephalography (EEG). Secondary outcome measures were Premature Infant Pain Profile-Revised (PIPP-R) score, development of tachycardia, and parental anxiety score. For all outcomes, the per-protocol effect was estimated via complier average causal effect analysis on the full analysis set. The trial is registered on ISRCTN (ISRCTN14135962) and ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT04901611). Findings Between Sept 1, 2021, and Feb 7, 2023, 159 parents were approached to participate in the study, and 112 neonates were included. 56 neonates were randomly assigned to the intervention group of parental stroking before the heel lance and 56 to the control group of parental stroking after the heel lance. The mean of the magnitude of the heel lance-evoked brain activity was 0·85 arbitrary units (a.u.; SD 0·70; n=39; a scaled magnitude of 1 a.u. represents the expected mean response to a heel lance in term-aged neonates) in the intervention group and 0·91 a.u. (SD 0·76; n=43) in the control group. Therefore, the primary outcome did not differ significantly between groups, with a mean difference of –0·11 a.u. (lower in intervention group; SD 0·77; 95% CI –0·42 to 0·20; p=0·38; n=82). No significant difference was observed across secondary outcomes. The PIPP-R difference in means was 1·10 (higher in intervention group, 95% CI –0·42 to 2·61; p=0·15; n=100); the odds ratio of becoming tachycardic was 2·08 (95% CI 0·46 to 9·46; p=0·34, n=105) in the intervention group with reference to the control group; and the difference in parental State-Trait Anxiety Inventory-State score was –0·44 (higher in control group; SD 6·85; 95% CI –2·91 to 2·02; p=0·72; n=106). One serious adverse event (desaturation) occurred in a neonate randomly assigned to the control group, which was not considered to be related to the study. Interpretation Parental stroking delivered at an optimal speed to activate C-tactile fibres for a duration of 10 s before the painful procedure did not significantly change neonates' magnitude of pain-related brain activity, PIPP-R score, or development of tachycardia. The trial highlighted the challenge of translating an experimental researcher-led tactile intervention into a parent-led approach, and the value of involving parents in their baby's pain management. Funding Wellcome Trust and Bliss

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

Current Trends in Quarantine Entomology

With world trade in agricultural commodities increasing, the introduction of exotic insects into new areas where they become pests will increase. The development and application of quarantine treatments or other mitigation approaches to prevent pest introduction in traded commodities raise many research and regulatory issues. The probit 9 standard for quarantine treatment efficacy has given way to risk-based alternatives. Varietal testing may have merit for some treatments or commodities but not for others. Development of generic treatments to control broad groups of insects or insects in all commodities can expedite new trade in agricultural products. Area-wide pest management programs lower pest levels before harvest and improve the quarantine security provided by any post-harvest treatments. Systems approaches capitalize on cumulative pest mortality from multiple control components to achieve quarantine security in an exported commodity. Certain quarantine treatment technologies such as irradiation are not universally accepted, which is slowing their adoption. Standardized phytosanitary measures and research protocols are needed to improve the flow of information when countries propose to trade in a regulated commodity