Musculoskeletal Outcomes Among Older Adults Following Hospitalization For Covid-19: A Pilot Study

Background Older individuals are at high risk for musculoskeletal impairment following hospitalization due to decreased neuromuscular function and bone mineral density (BMD) arising from illness itself, and external factors such as immobilization and changes in nutritional status. To address the knowledge gap regarding the longitudinal impact of COVID-19 on musculoskeletal outcomes, this thesis aimed to study the relationship between COVID-19 severity and physical functional, incidence of falls and fractures in older adults. Secondarily, in a subset of patients we examined the relationship between COVID-19 severity and osteoporosis- and sarcopenia-related measures. Methods This study analyzed data from the VALIANT study and VALIANT MSK Sub-study. The VALIANT study included individuals who were over 60 years old and were hospitalized due to COVID-19 in the Yale New Haven Hospital System (YNHHS) from July 2020-July 2021. Virtual interviews were performed at the time of hospitalization, and 1, 3, and 6-months post-hospitalization and measured a range of sociodemographic, clinical and general health-related characteristics, physical function domains relevant to musculoskeletal health and mobility, and incident falls and fractures. Patients who consented to be re-contacted were invited to participate in the VALIANT MSK Sub-study and presented for an in-patient visit which included a survey, serum sample collection, a dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry test, the short physical performance battery and grip strength assessment. Descriptive statistics were used to evaluate primary and secondary outcomes, stratified by COVID-19 severity as defined by SOFA score, inpatient level of care, and inflammatory markers (high-sensitivity C-reactive protein and interleukin-6) at baseline and 6 months. Results Among 341 participants enrolled in the VALIANT parent study, the median age was 70.0 years (IQR 12) , with 49% female, and 72.5% White individuals while among the 62 participants in the VALIANT MSK Sub-Study, the median age was 67.0 years (IQR 10), with 49% females, and 64.2% White individuals. In the VALIANT cohort, when physical function status at 6 months was stratified by COVID-19 severity, multiple domains emerged as being significantly different. A higher proportion of patients who had a higher SOFA score (≥3) reported being unable to independently bathe (9.2% vs 2.4%, p\u3c0.001), get in and out of a chair (5.8% vs 1.7%, p=0.017), use the toilet (3.8% vs 0.3%, p=0.006), shop (20.1% vs 11.6%, p=0.011), or walk flight of stairs (15.4% vs 8.2%, p=0.016). A significantly higher proportion of VALIANT participants with high inpatient hsCRP levels during hospitalization (≥97 mg/L) were unable to independently do housework (31.7% vs 21.1%, p= 0.013), shop (33.1% vs 19.7%, p=0.043), walk a quarter mile (28.5% vs 24.2%, p=0.009) and walk flights of stairs (37.0% vs 15.9%. p= 0.0114). In the VALIANT MSK Sub-study, a similar general trend was observed with a higher proportion of patients with SOFA scores ≥3 or hsCRP≥97 mg/L reporting that they were unable to independently perform certain physical function tasks. At baseline, 101/339 (29.8%) VALIANT participants reported a fall in the past year before COVID-19 compared with 15/62 (24.2%) of VALIANT MSK Sub-Study participants. At 6 months, 24.3% of VALIANT participants reported having an incident fall since COVID infection compared with 19.4% of VALIANT MSK participants. When participants of both groups were categorized based on COVID severity no significant differences were seen in the proportion of new falls in the 6 months. Seven participants overall reported having a fracture following COVID-19 hospitalization. Among the VALIANT MSK participants, 3 participants (5.2%) had osteoporosis and 22 participants (37.9%) had osteopenia. Mean femoral neck (FN) BMD was lower among patients with hsCRP ≥97 (0.79 vs 0.21, p\u3c0.001). Five participants (8.1%) met criteria for probable sarcopenia. No participants met criteria for sarcopenia or severe sarcopenia. When examining individual sarcopenia assessment components, there was no statistically significant difference when categorized based on COVID severity. Conclusions Our study shows that a greater proportion of older adults presenting with severe COVID-19 as defined by SOFA, inpatient level of care, or high hsCRP and high IL-6 had worse physical functional status and lower FN BMD at six months. Further multivariable analyses should explore whether these associations remain when adjusted for key musculoskeletal health-related covariates, and how baseline status is associated with outcomes at 6 months. Attention to the rehabilitation needs of patients following COVID-19 hospitalization is important, as well as consideration for osteoporosis and sarcopenia screening for those with more severe disease

Robust estimation of bacterial cell count from optical density

Optical density (OD) is widely used to estimate the density of cells in liquid culture, but cannot be compared between instruments without a standardized calibration protocol and is challenging to relate to actual cell count. We address this with an interlaboratory study comparing three simple, low-cost, and highly accessible OD calibration protocols across 244 laboratories, applied to eight strains of constitutive GFP-expressing E. coli. Based on our results, we recommend calibrating OD to estimated cell count using serial dilution of silica microspheres, which produces highly precise calibration (95.5% of residuals <1.2-fold), is easily assessed for quality control, also assesses instrument effective linear range, and can be combined with fluorescence calibration to obtain units of Molecules of Equivalent Fluorescein (MEFL) per cell, allowing direct comparison and data fusion with flow cytometry measurements: in our study, fluorescence per cell measurements showed only a 1.07-fold mean difference between plate reader and flow cytometry data

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

MUSiC : a model-unspecific search for new physics in proton-proton collisions at root s=13TeV

Results of the Model Unspecific Search in CMS (MUSiC), using proton-proton collision data recorded at the LHC at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 35.9 fb(-1), are presented. The MUSiC analysis searches for anomalies that could be signatures of physics beyond the standard model. The analysis is based on the comparison of observed data with the standard model prediction, as determined from simulation, in several hundred final states and multiple kinematic distributions. Events containing at least one electron or muon are classified based on their final state topology, and an automated search algorithm surveys the observed data for deviations from the prediction. The sensitivity of the search is validated using multiple methods. No significant deviations from the predictions have been observed. For a wide range of final state topologies, agreement is found between the data and the standard model simulation. This analysis complements dedicated search analyses by significantly expanding the range of final states covered using a model independent approach with the largest data set to date to probe phase space regions beyond the reach of previous general searches.Peer reviewe

Search for new particles in events with energetic jets and large missing transverse momentum in proton-proton collisions at root s=13 TeV

A search is presented for new particles produced at the LHC in proton-proton collisions at root s = 13 TeV, using events with energetic jets and large missing transverse momentum. The analysis is based on a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 101 fb(-1), collected in 2017-2018 with the CMS detector. Machine learning techniques are used to define separate categories for events with narrow jets from initial-state radiation and events with large-radius jets consistent with a hadronic decay of a W or Z boson. A statistical combination is made with an earlier search based on a data sample of 36 fb(-1), collected in 2016. No significant excess of events is observed with respect to the standard model background expectation determined from control samples in data. The results are interpreted in terms of limits on the branching fraction of an invisible decay of the Higgs boson, as well as constraints on simplified models of dark matter, on first-generation scalar leptoquarks decaying to quarks and neutrinos, and on models with large extra dimensions. Several of the new limits, specifically for spin-1 dark matter mediators, pseudoscalar mediators, colored mediators, and leptoquarks, are the most restrictive to date.Peer reviewe

Measurement of prompt open-charm production cross sections in proton-proton collisions at root s=13 TeV

The production cross sections for prompt open-charm mesons in proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13TeV are reported. The measurement is performed using a data sample collected by the CMS experiment corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 29 nb(-1). The differential production cross sections of the D*(+/-), D-+/-, and D-0 ((D) over bar (0)) mesons are presented in ranges of transverse momentum and pseudorapidity 4 < p(T) < 100 GeV and vertical bar eta vertical bar < 2.1, respectively. The results are compared to several theoretical calculations and to previous measurements.Peer reviewe

Measurement of b jet shapes in proton-proton collisions at root s=5.02 TeV

We present the first study of charged-hadron production associated with jets originating from b quarks in proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 5.02 TeV. The data sample used in this study was collected with the CMS detector at the CERN LHC and corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 27.4 pb(-1). To characterize the jet substructure, the differential jet shapes, defined as the normalized transverse momentum distribution of charged hadrons as a function of angular distance from the jet axis, are measured for b jets. In addition to the jet shapes, the per-jet yields of charged particles associated with b jets are also quantified, again as a function of the angular distance with respect to the jet axis. Extracted jet shape and particle yield distributions for b jets are compared with results for inclusive jets, as well as with the predictions from the pythia and herwig++ event generators.Peer reviewe

Combined searches for the production of supersymmetric top quark partners in proton-proton collisions at root s=13 TeV

A combination of searches for top squark pair production using proton-proton collision data at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV at the CERN LHC, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 137 fb(-1) collected by the CMS experiment, is presented. Signatures with at least 2 jets and large missing transverse momentum are categorized into events with 0, 1, or 2 leptons. New results for regions of parameter space where the kinematical properties of top squark pair production and top quark pair production are very similar are presented. Depending on themodel, the combined result excludes a top squarkmass up to 1325 GeV for amassless neutralino, and a neutralinomass up to 700 GeV for a top squarkmass of 1150 GeV. Top squarks with masses from 145 to 295 GeV, for neutralino masses from 0 to 100 GeV, with a mass difference between the top squark and the neutralino in a window of 30 GeV around the mass of the top quark, are excluded for the first time with CMS data. The results of theses searches are also interpreted in an alternative signal model of dark matter production via a spin-0 mediator in association with a top quark pair. Upper limits are set on the cross section for mediator particle masses of up to 420 GeV

Measurement of the azimuthal anisotropy of Y(1S) and Y(2S) mesons in PbPb collisions at root s(NN)=5.02 TeV

The second-order Fourier coefficients (v(2)) characterizing the azimuthal distributions of Y(1S) and Y(2S) mesons produced in PbPb collisions at root s(NN) = 5.02 TeV are studied. The Y mesons are reconstructed in their dimuon decay channel, as measured by the CMS detector. The collected data set corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 1.7 nb(-1). The scalar product method is used to extract the v2 coefficients of the azimuthal distributions. Results are reported for the rapidity range vertical bar y vertical bar < 2.4, in the transverse momentum interval 0 < pT < 50 GeV/c, and in three centrality ranges of 10-30%, 30-50% and 50-90%. In contrast to the J/psi mesons, the measured v(2) values for the Y mesons are found to be consistent with zero. (C) 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V.Peer reviewe

Probing effective field theory operators in the associated production of top quarks with a Z boson in multilepton final states at root s=13 TeV

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