The nucleus accumbens (NAc) is a subcortical brain structure known primarily for its roles in pleasure, reward, and addiction. Despite less focus on the NAc in pain research, it also plays a large ...role in the mediation of pain and is effective as a source of analgesia. Evidence for this involvement lies in the NAc's cortical connections, functions, pharmacology, and therapeutic targeting. The NAc projects to and receives information from notable pain structures, such as the prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, periaqueductal gray, habenula, thalamus, etc. Additionally, the NAc and other pain-modulating structures share functions involving opioid regulation and motivational and emotional processing, which each work beyond simply the rewarding experience of pain offset. Pharmacologically speaking, the NAc responds heavily to painful stimuli, due to its high density of μ opioid receptors and the activation of several different neurotransmitter systems in the NAc, such as opioids, dopamine, calcitonin gene-related peptide, γ-aminobutyric acid, glutamate, and substance P, each of which have been shown to elicit analgesic effects. In both preclinical and clinical models, deep brain stimulation of the NAc has elicited successful analgesia. The multi-functional NAc is important in motivational behavior, and the motivation for avoiding pain is just as important to survival as the motivation for seeking pleasure. It is possible, then, that the NAc must be involved in both pleasure and pain in order to help determine the motivational salience of positive and negative events.
The aim of this retrospective comparative study was to evaluate the effects of implemented social and public health measures during the COVID-19 pandemic on the incidence and aetiology of ...maxillofacial injuries.
A retrospective chart review of all the patients who had sustained maxillofacial injuries and presented to the emergency department of Strong Memorial Hospital between March 20
and June 24
, 2019 and 2020, were included in our study. The total study sample comprised of 335 patients (n = 140 in 2019 group, n = 195 in 2020 group). The primary outcome variables of the study were the number of cases and aetiology of maxillofacial injuries. Statistical analysis consisted of descriptive statistics, Chi-square, and two sample t-tests.
The number of patients in the 2020 group was higher (n = 195) than the number of patients in the 2019 group (n = 140). Comparatively, there was an increase in the maxillofacial injuries during the stay-at-home period by (n = 55 39.29%). Although not statistically significant, the aetiology of injuries differed during the stay-at-home period compared to the normal times.
The number of maxillofacial injuries increased during the period of implemented social and public health measures during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Such knowledge can provide valuable information for the establishment of prevention programs and effective health policies and help in the decision-making process pertaining to resource allocation in a dire situation of the pandemic.
This study presents an efficient sparse learning-based pattern recognition framework to recognize the discrete states of three emotions-happy, angry, and neutral emotion-using electroencephalogram ...(EEG) signals. In affective computing with massive spatiotemporal brainwave signals, a large number of features can be extracted to capture various information from multivariate brain data. However, it is often a challenge to model high-dimensional features efficiently in consideration of the intrinsic structure, such as channel location, feature group, time epoch, etc. In this study, features were extensively extracted from EEG signals and were applied on a structured sparse learning model to perform feature selection and classification simultaneously. An efficient ADMM-based algorithm with a closed-form solution was developed to solve the sparse group model. Experimental results show that the proposed method is capable of selecting a small number of important neural features to discriminate the three emotion states with high classification accuracy. With greatly enhanced interpretability and efficiency to learn neural signatures of brain activity from high-dimensional-feature, low-sample-size brain imaging data, the presented computational framework is promising for handling emotion recognition problems with high-dimensional brain imaging data.
The aim of this study was to compare stock (Biomet-Lorenz Stock, Parsippany, NJ) and custom (TMJ Concepts, Inc., Ventura, CA) total temporomandibular joint (TMJ) replacement prosthetics.
This was a ...retrospective cohort study of 17 consecutive patients operated by the same surgeon from 2015 to 2020 comparing stock and custom options for total joint replacement (TJR). The inclusion criteria were patients who documented 1 year of follow-up post-TJR without previous TMJ replacement surgery. The predictor variable was the TMJ prosthetic replacement. The primary clinical outcome variables was pain via Visual Analog Scale (VAS) measured at 1, 3, and 6 months postoperatively and maximum incisal opening measured pre and post-surgery. The other variables were grouped into the following categories: surgery time, length of stay, and unilateral vs bilateral replacements.
Our review showed no statistically significant difference in maximum incisal opening, subjective pain score, hospital stay, surgical time, or complication rate between Biomet-Lorenz stock and TMJ Concepts, Inc. custom total joint replacement. Bilateral TJR, irrespective of prosthesis type, did have greater improvement in maximal incisal opening (MIO) compared with unilateral that was statistically significant (P < .05).
There was no statistically significant difference in the pain VAS or MIO using either stock or custom TJR. Both should be considered good surgical options for improvements in patient function and long-term jaw stability.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
To evaluate the clinical impact of molecular tumor profiling (MTP) with targeted sequencing panel tests, pediatric patients with extracranial solid tumors were enrolled in a prospective observational ...cohort study at 12 institutions. In the 345-patient analytical population, median age at diagnosis was 12 years (range 0-27.5); 298 patients (86%) had 1 or more alterations with potential for impact on care. Genomic alterations with diagnostic, prognostic or therapeutic significance were present in 61, 16 and 65% of patients, respectively. After return of the results, impact on care included 17 patients with a clarified diagnostic classification and 240 patients with an MTP result that could be used to select molecularly targeted therapy matched to identified alterations (MTT). Of the 29 patients who received MTT, 24% had an objective response or experienced durable clinical benefit; all but 1 of these patients received targeted therapy matched to a gene fusion. Of the diagnostic variants identified in 209 patients, 77% were gene fusions. MTP with targeted panel tests that includes fusion detection has a substantial clinical impact for young patients with solid tumors.
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EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, ZAGLJ
Sickle cell disease (SCD) is a severe chronic disease that leads to premature mortality caused by serious complications of the disease such as acute chest syndrome, stroke, and sepsis. Patients ...presenting to the emergency department (ED) with pain due to vaso-occlusive crisis (VOC) are at a higher risk for complications, making it imperative that emergency nurses, nurse practitioners, and physicians are knowledgeable about SCD and understand the other associated complications besides VOC. Because of the complexity of disease and misperceptions about SCD among ED nurses, physicians, and nurse practitioners, a quality improvement (QI) framework for treatment of adults with SCD in EDs was developed. The Emergency Department Sickle Cell Assessment of Needs and Strengths (ED-SCANS) is a research-based QI framework consisting of 7 distinct algorithms that serve to guide all ED team members in assessment and management of the complexity of care that patients with SCD require.
Thesis (M.A)--Utah State University, 2008.
Title from title screen (viewed July 30, 2009). Department: English. Includes bibliographical references. Archival copy available in print.
DNA methylation changes with age. Chronological age predictors built from DNA methylation are termed 'epigenetic clocks'. The deviation of predicted age from the actual age ('age acceleration ...residual', AAR) has been reported to be associated with death. However, it is currently unclear how a better prediction of chronological age affects such association.
In this study, we build multiple predictors based on training DNA methylation samples selected from 13,661 samples (13,402 from blood and 259 from saliva). We use the Lothian Birth Cohorts of 1921 (LBC1921) and 1936 (LBC1936) to examine whether the association between AAR (from these predictors) and death is affected by (1) improving prediction accuracy of an age predictor as its training sample size increases (from 335 to 12,710) and (2) additionally correcting for confounders (i.e., cellular compositions). In addition, we investigated the performance of our predictor in non-blood tissues.
We found that in principle, a near-perfect age predictor could be developed when the training sample size is sufficiently large. The association between AAR and mortality attenuates as prediction accuracy increases. AAR from our best predictor (based on Elastic Net, https://github.com/qzhang314/DNAm-based-age-predictor ) exhibits no association with mortality in both LBC1921 (hazard ratio = 1.08, 95% CI 0.91-1.27) and LBC1936 (hazard ratio = 1.00, 95% CI 0.79-1.28). Predictors based on small sample size are prone to confounding by cellular compositions relative to those from large sample size. We observed comparable performance of our predictor in non-blood tissues with a multi-tissue-based predictor.
This study indicates that the epigenetic clock can be improved by increasing the training sample size and that its association with mortality attenuates with increased prediction of chronological age.
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IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
Test effects of a standardised front-of-package (FOP) disclosure statement (indicating added sugar, non-nutritive sweetener (NNS) and juice content) on accuracy in assessing ingredients and perceived ...healthfulness of children's drinks.
In two randomised controlled experiments, the same participants viewed drink packages and indicated if products contained added sugar or NNS and percent juice and rated drink healthfulness. Experiment 1 (E1) included novel (non-US) children's drinks with a) product claims only (control), b) claims and disclosure, or c) disclosure only. Experiment 2 (E2) included existing children's drinks (with claims) with a) no disclosure (control) or b) disclosure. Both experiments evaluated sweetened (fruit drink and flavoured water) and unsweetened (100 % juice and juice/water blend) drinks. Potential individual differences (education level and race/ethnicity) in effects were explored.
Online survey.
Six hundred and forty-eight US caregivers of young children (1-5 years).
FOP disclosures significantly increased accuracy for most ingredients and drink types, including identifying presence or absence of NNS in sweetened drinks, no added sugar in juice/water blends, and actual percent juice in fruit drinks and juice/water blends in both experiments. Disclosures also increased recognition that the novel 100 % juice and juice/water blend did not contain NNS or added sugar (E1) and existing sweetened drinks contained added sugar (E2). Disclosures reduced perceived healthfulness of sweetened drinks but did not increase unsweetened drink healthfulness ratings. Some differences by participant socio-demographic characteristics require additional research.
FOP disclosures on children's drink packages can increase caregivers' understanding of product ingredients and aid in selecting healthier children's drinks.
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