Racial and ethnic disparities in COVID-19 outcomes exist, but whether in-hospital care explains this difference is not known. We sought to determine racial and ethnic differences in demographics, ...comorbidities, in-hospital treatments, and in-hospital outcomes of patients hospitalized with COVID-19.
This was a cohort study using MiCOVID-19, a multi-center, retrospective, collaborative quality improvement registry, which included data on patients hospitalized with COVID-19 across 38 hospitals in the State of Michigan. 2,639 adult patients with COVID-19 hospitalized at a site participating in the MiCOVID-19 Registry were randomly selected. Outcomes included in-hospital mortality, age at death, intensive care unit admission, and need for invasive mechanical ventilation by race and ethnicity. Baseline comorbidities differed by race and ethnicity. In addition, Black patients had higher lactate dehydrogenase, erythrocyte sedimentation rate, C-reactive protein, creatine phosphokinase, and ferritin levels. Black patients were less likely to receive dexamethasone and remdesivir compared with White patients (4.2% vs 14.3% and 2.2% vs. 11.8%, p < 0.001 for each). Black (18.7%) and White (19.6%) patients experienced greater mortality compared with Asian (13.0%) and Latino (5.9%) patients (p < 0.01). The mean age at death was significantly lower by 8 years for Black patients (69.4 ± 13.3 years) compared with White (77.9 ± 12.6), Asian (77.6 ± 6.6), and Latino patients (77.4 ± 15.5) (p < 0.001).
COVID-19 mortality appears to be driven by both pre-hospitalization clinical and social factors and potentially in-hospital care. Policies aimed at population health and equitable application of evidence-based medical therapy are needed to alleviate the burden of COVID-19.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
The wine yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, is the best understood microbial eukaryote at the molecular and cellular level, yet its natural geographic distribution is unknown. Here we report the ...results of a field survey for S. cerevisiae, S. paradoxus and other budding yeast on oak trees in Europe. We show that yeast species differ in their geographic distributions, and investigated which ecological variables can predict the isolation rate of S. paradoxus, the most abundant species. We find a positive association between trunk girth and S. paradoxus abundance suggesting that older trees harbor more yeast. S. paradoxus isolation frequency is also associated with summer temperature, showing highest isolation rates at intermediate temperatures. Using our statistical model, we estimated a range of summer temperatures at which we expect high S. paradoxus isolation rates, and show that the geographic distribution predicted by this optimum temperature range is consistent with the worldwide distribution of sites where S. paradoxus has been isolated. Using laboratory estimates of optimal growth temperatures for S. cerevisiae relative to S. paradoxus, we also estimated an optimum range of summer temperatures for S. cerevisiae. The geographic distribution of these optimum temperatures is consistent with the locations where wild S. cerevisiae have been reported, and can explain why only human‐associated S. cerevisiae strains are isolated at northernmost latitudes. Our results provide a starting point for targeted isolation of S. cerevisiae from natural habitats, which could lead to a better understanding of climate associations and natural history in this important model microbe.
Using field data, we show an association between summer temperature and the isolation rate of budding yeast from oak trees. By combining this result with published laboratory data, we predict global ranges where the wine yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, and its sister species may naturally occur.
Objective
To detail the characteristic traits of children with fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASDs) and maternal risk factors in a southeastern U.S. County.
Methods
Independent samples were drawn ...from 2 different cohorts of first‐grade students. All consented children (49.8%) were measured for height, weight, and head circumference, and those ≤ 25th centile entered the study along with a random sample drawn from all enrolled students. Study children were examined for physical growth, dysmorphology, and neurobehavior, and their mothers were interviewed.
Results
Total dysmorphology scores discriminated well the physical traits of children across the FASD continuum: fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) = 15.8, partial FAS (PFAS) = 10.8, alcohol‐related neurobehavioral disorder (ARND) = 5.2, and typically developing controls = 4.4. Additionally, a neurobehavioral battery distinguished children with each FASD diagnosis from controls. Behavioral problems qualified more children for FASD diagnoses than cognitive traits. Significant proximal maternal risk variables were as follows: reports of prepregnancy drinking, drinking in any trimester, and comorbid use of other drugs in lifetime and during pregnancy, especially alcohol and marijuana (14.9% among mothers of children with FASD vs. 0.4% for controls). Distal maternal risks included reports of other health problems (e.g., depression), living unmarried with a partner during pregnancy, and a lower level of spirituality. Controlling for other drug use during pregnancy, having a child diagnosed with a FASD was 17.5 times greater for women who reported usual consumption of 3 drinks per drinking day prior to pregnancy than for nondrinking mothers (p < 0.001, 95% CI = 5.1 to 59.9). There was no significant difference in the prevalence of FASD by race, Hispanic ethnicity, or socioeconomic status. The prevalence of FASD was not lower than 17.3 per 1,000, and weighted estimated prevalence was 49.0 per 1,000 or 4.9%.
Conclusion
This site had the second lowest rate in the CoFASP study, yet children with FASD are prevalent.
In the Southeastern US site, mothers of children with fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD) were significantly later than mothers of typically developing controls in recognizing their pregnancy. Self‐rated spirituality was significantly lower among mothers of children with FASD, and self‐reported drinking prior to pregnancy was significantly associated with increased odds (7.8‐17.6 times) of bearing a child with FASD than that of women reporting no drinking. This site had the second lowest weighted prevalence of FASD of the four Collaboration on Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders Prevalence (CoFASP) sites of 4.9%.
Mutations in the estrogen receptor (ER)α gene, ESR1, have been identified in breast cancer metastases after progression on endocrine therapies. Because of limitations of metastatic biopsies, the ...reported frequency of ESR1 mutations may be underestimated. Here, we show a high frequency of ESR1 mutations using circulating plasma tumor DNA (ptDNA) from patients with metastatic breast cancer.
We retrospectively obtained plasma samples from eight patients with known ESR1 mutations and three patients with wild-type ESR1 identified by next-generation sequencing (NGS) of biopsied metastatic tissues. Three common ESR1 mutations were queried for using droplet digital PCR (ddPCR). In a prospective cohort, metastatic tissue and plasma were collected contemporaneously from eight ER-positive and four ER-negative patients. Tissue biopsies were sequenced by NGS, and ptDNA ESR1 mutations were analyzed by ddPCR.
In the retrospective cohort, all corresponding mutations were detected in ptDNA, with two patients harboring additional ESR1 mutations not present in their metastatic tissues. In the prospective cohort, three ER-positive patients did not have adequate tissue for NGS, and no ESR1 mutations were identified in tissue biopsies from the other nine patients. In contrast, ddPCR detected seven ptDNA ESR1 mutations in 6 of 12 patients (50%).
We show that ESR1 mutations can occur at a high frequency and suggest that blood can be used to identify additional mutations not found by sequencing of a single metastatic lesion.
Objective
Primary progressive apraxia of speech (PPAOS) is associated with imaging abnormalities in the lateral premotor cortex (LPC) and supplementary motor area (SMA). It is not known whether ...greater involvement of these regions in either hemisphere is associated with demographics, presenting, and/or longitudinal features.
Methods
In 51 prospectively recruited PPAOS patients who completed 18F‐fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) positron emission tomography (PET), we classified patients as left‐dominant, right‐dominant, or symmetric, based on visual assessment of the LPC and SMA on FDG‐PET. SPM and statistical analyses of regional metabolic values were performed. Diagnosis of PPAOS was made if apraxia of speech was present and aphasia absent. Thirteen patients completed ioflupane‐123I (dopamine transporter DAT) scans. We compared cross‐sectional and longitudinal clinicopathological, genetic, and neuroimaging characteristics across the three groups, with area under the receiver‐operating curve (AUROC) determined as a measure of effect size.
Results
In all, 49% of the PPAOS patients were classified as left‐dominant, 31% as right‐dominant, and 20% as symmetric, which was supported by results from the SPM and regional analyses. There were no differences in baseline characteristics. Longitudinally, right‐dominant PPAOS showed faster rates of progression of ideomotor apraxia (AUROC 0.79), behavioral disturbances (AUROC 0.84), including disinhibition symptoms (AUROC 0.82) and negative behaviors (AUROC 0.82), and parkinsonism (AUROC 0.75) compared to left‐dominant PPAOS. Symmetric PPAOS showed faster rates of dysarthria progression compared to left‐dominant (AUROC 0.89) and right‐dominant PPAOS (AUROC 0.79). Five patients showed abnormal DAT uptake. Braak neurofibrillary tangle stage differed across groups (p = 0.01).
Conclusions
Patients with PPAOS and a right‐dominant pattern of hypometabolism on FDG‐PET have the fastest rates of decline of behavioral and motor features.
The obesity paradox in which overweight/obesity is associated with mortality benefits is believed to be explained by confounding and reverse causality rather than by a genuine clinical benefit of ...excess body weight. We aimed to gain deeper insights into the paradox through analyzing mortality relationships with several adiposity measures; assessing subgroups with type 2 diabetes, with coronary heart disease (CHD), with cancer, and by smoking status; and adjusting for several confounders.
We studied the general UK Biobank population (
= 502,631) along with three subgroups of people with type 2 diabetes (
= 23,842), CHD (
= 24,268), and cancer (
= 45,790) at baseline. A range of adiposity exposures were considered, including BMI (continuous and categorical), waist circumference, body fat percentage, and waist-to-hip ratio, and the outcome was all-cause mortality. We used Cox regression models adjusted for age, smoking status, deprivation index, education, and disease history.
For BMI, the obesity paradox was observed among people with type 2 diabetes (adjusted hazard ratio for obese vs. normal BMI 0.78 95% CI 0.65, 0.95) but not among those with CHD (1.00 0.86, 1.17). The obesity paradox was pronounced in current smokers, absent in never smokers, and more pronounced in men than in women. For other adiposity measures, there was less evidence for an obesity paradox, yet smoking status consistently modified the adiposity-mortality relationship.
The obesity paradox was observed in people with type 2 diabetes and is heavily modified by smoking status. The results of subgroup analyses and statistical adjustments are consistent with reverse causality and confounding.
Current methods to identify coseismic landslides immediately after an earthquake using optical imagery are too slow to effectively inform emergency response activities. Issues with cloud cover, data ...collection and processing, and manual landslide identification mean even the most rapid mapping exercises are often incomplete when the emergency response ends. In this study, we demonstrate how traditional empirical methods for modelling the total distribution and relative intensity (in terms of point density) of coseismic landsliding can be successfully undertaken in the hours and days immediately after an earthquake, allowing the results to effectively inform stakeholders during the response. The method uses fuzzy logic in a GIS (Geographic Information Systems) to quickly assess and identify the location-specific relationships between predisposing factors and landslide occurrence during the earthquake, based on small initial samples of identified landslides. We show that this approach can accurately model both the spatial pattern and the number density of landsliding from the event based on just several hundred mapped landslides, provided they have sufficiently wide spatial coverage, improving upon previous methods. This suggests that systematic high-fidelity mapping of landslides following an earthquake is not necessary for informing rapid modelling attempts. Instead, mapping should focus on rapid sampling from the entire affected area to generate results that can inform the modelling. This method is therefore suited to conditions in which imagery is affected by partial cloud cover or in which the total number of landslides is so large that mapping requires significant time to complete. The method therefore has the potential to provide a quick assessment of landslide hazard after an earthquake and may therefore inform emergency operations more effectively compared to current practice.
It is unlikely that parents can have effective sexuality discussions with their adolescent if the adolescent is not responsive to their efforts. We evaluated young adolescents’ intentions of being ...responsive to sexual communication with their mother and whether youths who were likely, ambivalent, or unlikely to be responsive differed on their characteristics, features of previous sexual communication, and features of the mother-adolescent relationship.
Participants were 259 Canadian adolescents (12–14 years; 53% girls) who received and returned a survey by mail. They completed measures of responsiveness intentions, expected outcomes of sexual communication, extent of past sexual communication, the frequency with which mothers encouraged questions and provided information about sexuality topics, open communication, and mothers’ provision of warmth, structure, and autonomy support.
We found that 37% of adolescents were likely to be responsive to sexual communication with their mother, 34% were ambivalent, and 29% were unlikely to be responsive. Youths’ responsiveness intentions were general rather than topic-specific. A discriminant analysis showed that only features of previous sexual communication separated all three groups whereas specific mother-adolescent relationship features (open communication and structure) and one adolescent characteristic (expected outcomes) separated the unlikely group from the other groups.
Young adolescents' intentions of being responsive to sexual communication from their mother are diverse yet general in nature. Mothers' engagement in sexual communication appears essential for youths' openness to these discussions. Enhancing specific mother-adolescent relationship features and youths’ outcome expectations may shift adolescents who are resistant to sexuality discussions to being more sure.
The Pacific marine heatwave (PMH) of 2014-2016 was an intense, long-lasting environmental disturbance expressed throughout the north Pacific. While dramatic consequences of the PMH on pelagic food ...webs have been well documented, effects on nearshore food webs, i.e. those based on macroalgal primary productivity, benthic invertebrate intermediate consumers, and specialized benthivorous top predators including some marine birds, are not well understood. We conducted summer and winter coastline marine bird surveys in 2 National Parks in the northern Gulf of Alaska from 2006 to 2022. We evaluated changes in abundance of benthivorous marine birds in relation to the PMH, after accounting for effects of season and region. We also evaluated changes in abundance of nearshore benthic invertebrate prey to allow specific consideration of a prey-based mechanism for effects of the PMH across food webs. We found that benthivorous marine birds, consisting of sea ducks and shorebirds, did not show a strong response to the PMH, unlike significant effects demonstrated by piscivorous birds in pelagic biomes. In contrast to extreme reductions in quantity and quality of forage fish documented elsewhere, we found that common benthic invertebrate prey abundance remained relatively stable. Our results support the hypothesis that, across food webs, top predator responses to the PMH were driven primarily by how and whether the PMH affected their prey availability. These findings show how a large-scale environmental perturbation affects biological communities differently through various trophic pathways, which provides insight into ecosystem resiliency and can inform management strategies in the face of persistent climate change.
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