Long-term outcomes following a single corticosteroid injection for trigger finger

BACKGROUND: The outcomes of corticosteroid injection for trigger finger are well documented only with short-term follow-up. The purpose of this investigation was to determine the long-term effectiveness of a single injection and to examine predictors of success up to ten years after injection. METHODS: This case series analyzed 366 first-time corticosteroid injections in flexor tendon sheaths from January 2000 to December 2007 with a minimum follow-up duration of five years. Two hundred and forty patients (66%) were female, 161 patients (44%) had multiple trigger fingers, and eighty-eight patients (24%) had diabetes at the time of injection. The primary outcome of treatment failure was defined as subsequent injection or surgical trigger finger release of the affected digit. Medical records were reviewed, and any patients without documented failure or a return office visit in 2012 to 2013 were contacted by telephone regarding symptom recurrence and the need for additional treatment. Kaplan-Meier analyses with log-rank test and Cox regression analysis assessed the effect of baseline patient and disease characteristics on injection success. RESULTS: Forty-five percent of patients demonstrated long-term treatment success after a single injection. In the final regression model, the interaction of sex and the number of trigger fingers was the single predictor of treatment success. Exploring this association revealed a ten-year success rate of 56% for female patients presenting for the first time with a trigger finger compared with 35% in male patients presenting for the first time with a trigger finger, 39% in female patients with multiple trigger fingers, and 37% in male patients with multiple trigger fingers. Eighty-four percent of treatment failures occurred within the first two years following injection. Patient age, symptom type, and undifferentiated diabetes status were not predictive of treatment success. CONCLUSIONS: Female patients presenting with their first trigger finger have the highest rate of long-term treatment success after a single corticosteroid injection. Patients who continue to experience symptom relief two years after injection are likely to maintain long-term success. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: Therapeutic Level IV. See Instructions for Authors for a complete description of levels of evidence

Mining Gems in Literature and Genomes: A Proof of Concept in \u3cem\u3eArtemisia tridentata\u3c/em\u3e

Increasing temperatures and aridity negatively affect plant communities, including the recruitment of foundational species like sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata). While research on the genomic basis of plant resilience towards drought has been conducted in crops and model plants, fewer studies have evaluated natural plant communities. We provide a resource for identifying genes underpinning drought across a broad range of plants using a literature mining approach with the newly developed package G2PMineR. Using our initial gene pool query, we refined the pipeline and manually vetted the top 50 candidate genes/gene families for relatedness to plant stress drought response and categorized based on ontologies. Selecting the exemplar gene DREB- which had the highest occurrence in the literature mining process- we provide a proof of concept by mining the Artemisia tridentata genome using known DREB DNA sequences from NCBI GenBank. Limited scaffold matches were discovered in two species of legumes, but not in the model plant species Arabidopsis thaliana. Our research will be used to construct networks for genome to phenome research, with applicability to assessing adaptive capacity of natural plant communities towards drought by analyzing gene sequences in the Artemisia tridentata genome. We anticipate this research will inform future restoration efforts for sagebrush and other plant species by ensuring individuals have the adaptive capacity to endure future drought conditions

Cryptochrome 1a localisation in light- and dark-adapted retinae of several migratory and non-migratory bird species: no signs of light-dependent activation.

The magnetic compass of birds seems to be based on light-dependent radical-pair processes in the eyes. Cryptochromes are currently the only candidate proteins known in vertebrates that may serve as the primary radical-pair-based magnetoreceptor molecules. Previous immunohistochemical studies have suggested that cryptochrome 1a (Cry1a) is localised in the photoreceptor outer segments of the ultraviolet/violet (UV/V) cones, and it has been claimed that differences in Cry1a antibody staining intensities show that Cry1a is activated by light and that this should make Cry1a the most likely magnetoreceptive candidate molecule. Here, we present an independent study of Cry1a distribution within retinae of several bird species, ranging from non-migratory domestic chicken and rock pigeon to night-migratory passerines, using both the previously used antibody and two newly generated antibodies, one against the same epitope as the originally used antibody and one against a different epitope of Cry1a. We confirm the UV/V cone outer segment localisation of Cry1a in all the tested bird species. In some stainings, we found Cry1a immunoreactivity as a distinct punctate pattern throughout the whole length of the UV/V cone outer segments. These dots with a diameter of around 170 nm might suggest that many Cry1a molecules accumulate in distinct spots in the UV/V cone outer segments. However, we did not see any notable difference in Cry1a immunoreactivity between light- and dark-adapted retinae. We find no evidence whatsoever that a C-terminal antibody against Cry1a labels only a light-activated form of the Cry1a protein