Expression quantitative trait locus (eQTL) studies illuminate genomic variants that regulate specific genes and contribute to fine-mapped loci discovered via genome-wide association studies (GWAS). ...Efforts to maximize their accuracy are ongoing. Using 240 glomerular (GLOM) and 311 tubulointerstitial (TUBE) micro-dissected samples from human kidney biopsies, we discovered 5371 GLOM and 9787 TUBE genes with at least one variant significantly associated with expression (eGene) by incorporating kidney single-nucleus open chromatin data and transcription start site distance as an "integrative prior" for Bayesian statistical fine-mapping. The use of an integrative prior resulted in higher resolution eQTLs illustrated by (1) smaller numbers of variants in credible sets with greater confidence, (2) increased enrichment of partitioned heritability for GWAS of two kidney traits, (3) an increased number of variants colocalized with the GWAS loci, and (4) enrichment of computationally predicted functional regulatory variants. A subset of variants and genes were validated experimentally in vitro and using a Drosophila nephrocyte model. More broadly, this study demonstrates that tissue-specific eQTL maps informed by single-nucleus open chromatin data have enhanced utility for diverse downstream analyses.
Tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC) is an autosomal dominant genetic disease affecting multiple body systems with wide variability in presentation. In 2013, Pediatric Neurology published articles ...outlining updated diagnostic criteria and recommendations for surveillance and management of disease manifestations. Advances in knowledge and approvals of new therapies necessitated a revision of those criteria and recommendations.
Chairs and working group cochairs from the 2012 International TSC Consensus Group were invited to meet face-to-face over two days at the 2018 World TSC Conference on July 25 and 26 in Dallas, TX, USA. Before the meeting, working group cochairs worked with group members via e-mail and telephone to (1) review TSC literature since the 2013 publication, (2) confirm or amend prior recommendations, and (3) provide new recommendations as required.
Only two changes were made to clinical diagnostic criteria reported in 2013: “multiple cortical tubers and/or radial migration lines” replaced the more general term “cortical dysplasias,” and sclerotic bone lesions were reinstated as a minor criterion. Genetic diagnostic criteria were reaffirmed, including highlighting recent findings that some individuals with TSC are genetically mosaic for variants in TSC1 or TSC2. Changes to surveillance and management criteria largely reflected increased emphasis on early screening for electroencephalographic abnormalities, enhanced surveillance and management of TSC-associated neuropsychiatric disorders, and new medication approvals.
Updated TSC diagnostic criteria and surveillance and management recommendations presented here should provide an improved framework for optimal care of those living with TSC and their families.
Renal angiomyolipomas are a frequent manifestation of tuberous sclerosis and sporadic lymphangioleiomyomatosis (LAM). These disorders are associated with mutations of TSC1 or TSC2 that lead to ...overactivation of mTOR complex 1 (mTORC1), suggesting an opportunity for targeted therapy by using mTORC1 inhibitors. This study investigated the efficacy and safety of the mTORC1 inhibitor sirolimus for treatment of renal angiomyolipomas in patients with these disorders.
In this multicenter phase 2 nonrandomized open label trial, 16 patients with tuberous sclerosis or sporadic LAM and renal angiomyolipoma(s) were treated with oral sirolimus for up to 2 years. Steady-state blood levels were 3 to 10 ng/mL. The primary outcome was change in size of renal angiomyolipomas measured by MRI and assessed by Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumors (RECIST) criteria. Secondary outcomes included safety, neurocognitive function, and pulmonary function.
The response rate, by RECIST criteria, was 50%. Summated angiomyolipoma diameters were reduced in all 16 patients and by 30% or more in eight (all from the per protocol group of 10). Forty-one of 48 angiomyolipomas were smaller at the last measurement than at baseline. Most shrinkage occurred during the first year of treatment. There was little change in pulmonary function. Recall memory improved in seven of eight patients with tuberous sclerosis. Adverse events were consistent with the known toxicities of sirolimus.
This study showed sustained regression of renal angiomyolipomas in patients with tuberous sclerosis or sporadic LAM receiving 2 years of sirolimus treatment. Possible effects on pulmonary function and neurocognition require further investigation.
Purpose The purpose of this study was to develop a self-administered evaluative tool to measure health-related quality of life in young, active patients with hip disorders. Methods This outcome ...measure was developed for active patients (aged 18 to 60 years, Tegner activity level ≥4) presenting with a variety of symptomatic hip conditions. This multicenter study recruited patients from international hip arthroscopy and arthroplasty surgeon practices. The outcome was created using a process of item generation (51 patients), item reduction (150 patients), and pretesting (31 patients). The questionnaire was tested for test-retest reliability (123 patients); face, content, and construct validity (51 patients); and responsiveness over a 6-month period in post-arthroscopy patients (27 patients). Results Initially, 146 items were identified. This number was reduced to 60 through item reduction, and the items were categorized into 4 domains: (1) symptoms and functional limitations; (2) sports and recreational physical activities; (3) job-related concerns; and (4) social, emotional, and lifestyle concerns. The items were then formatted using a visual analog scale. Test-retest reliability showed Pearson correlations greater than 0.80 for 33 of the 60 questions. The intraclass correlation statistic was 0.78, and the Cronbach α was .99. Face validity and content validity were ensured during development, and construct validity was shown with a correlation of 0.81 to the Non-Arthritic Hip Score. Responsiveness was shown with a paired t test ( P ≤ .01), effect size of 2.0, standardized response mean of 1.7, responsiveness ratio of 6.7, and minimal clinically important difference of 6 points. Conclusions We have developed a new quality-of-life patient-reported outcome measure, the 33-item International Hip Outcome Tool (iHOT-33). This questionnaire uses a visual analog scale response format designed for computer self-administration by young, active patients with hip pathology. Its development has followed the most rigorous methodology involving a very large number of patients. The iHOT-33 has been shown to be reliable; shows face, content, and construct validity; and is highly responsive to clinical change. In our opinion the iHOT-33 can be used as a primary outcome measure for prospective patient evaluation and randomized clinical trials.
The US Army experienced a sharp increase in soldier suicides beginning in 2004. Administrative data reveal that among those at highest risk are soldiers in the 12 months after inpatient treatment of ...a psychiatric disorder.
To develop an actuarial risk algorithm predicting suicide in the 12 months after US Army soldier inpatient treatment of a psychiatric disorder to target expanded posthospitalization care.
There were 53,769 hospitalizations of active duty soldiers from January 1, 2004, through December 31, 2009, with International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification psychiatric admission diagnoses. Administrative data available before hospital discharge abstracted from a wide range of data systems (sociodemographic, US Army career, criminal justice, and medical or pharmacy) were used to predict suicides in the subsequent 12 months using machine learning methods (regression trees and penalized regressions) designed to evaluate cross-validated linear, nonlinear, and interactive predictive associations.
Suicides of soldiers hospitalized with psychiatric disorders in the 12 months after hospital discharge.
Sixty-eight soldiers died by suicide within 12 months of hospital discharge (12.0% of all US Army suicides), equivalent to 263.9 suicides per 100,000 person-years compared with 18.5 suicides per 100,000 person-years in the total US Army. The strongest predictors included sociodemographics (male sex odds ratio (OR), 7.9; 95% CI, 1.9-32.6 and late age of enlistment OR, 1.9; 95% CI, 1.0-3.5), criminal offenses (verbal violence OR, 2.2; 95% CI, 1.2-4.0 and weapons possession OR, 5.6; 95% CI, 1.7-18.3), prior suicidality OR, 2.9; 95% CI, 1.7-4.9, aspects of prior psychiatric inpatient and outpatient treatment (eg, number of antidepressant prescriptions filled in the past 12 months OR, 1.3; 95% CI, 1.1-1.7), and disorders diagnosed during the focal hospitalizations (eg, nonaffective psychosis OR, 2.9; 95% CI, 1.2-7.0). A total of 52.9% of posthospitalization suicides occurred after the 5% of hospitalizations with highest predicted suicide risk (3824.1 suicides per 100,000 person-years). These highest-risk hospitalizations also accounted for significantly elevated proportions of several other adverse posthospitalization outcomes (unintentional injury deaths, suicide attempts, and subsequent hospitalizations).
The high concentration of risk of suicide and other adverse outcomes might justify targeting expanded posthospitalization interventions to soldiers classified as having highest posthospitalization suicide risk, although final determination requires careful consideration of intervention costs, comparative effectiveness, and possible adverse effects.
The 2013 US Veterans Administration/Department of Defense Clinical Practice Guidelines (VA/DoD CPG) require comprehensive suicide risk assessments for VA/DoD patients with mental disorders but ...provide minimal guidance on how to carry out these assessments. Given that clinician-based assessments are not known to be strong predictors of suicide, we investigated whether a precision medicine model using administrative data after outpatient mental health specialty visits could be developed to predict suicides among outpatients. We focused on male nondeployed Regular US Army soldiers because they account for the vast majority of such suicides. Four machine learning classifiers (naive Bayes, random forests, support vector regression and elastic net penalized regression) were explored. Of the Army suicides in 2004-2009, 41.5% occurred among 12.0% of soldiers seen as outpatient by mental health specialists, with risk especially high within 26 weeks of visits. An elastic net classifier with 10-14 predictors optimized sensitivity (45.6% of suicide deaths occurring after the 15% of visits with highest predicted risk). Good model stability was found for a model using 2004-2007 data to predict 2008-2009 suicides, although stability decreased in a model using 2008-2009 data to predict 2010-2012 suicides. The 5% of visits with highest risk included only 0.1% of soldiers (1047.1 suicides/100 000 person-years in the 5 weeks after the visit). This is a high enough concentration of risk to have implications for targeting preventive interventions. An even better model might be developed in the future by including the enriched information on clinician-evaluated suicide risk mandated by the VA/DoD CPG to be recorded.
Objective : To develop a high-fidelity mathematical model intended to replicate the cardiovascular (CV) responses of a critically ill patient to vasoplegic shock-induced hypotension and vasopressor ...therapy. Methods: The mathematical model consists of a lumped-parameter CV physiology model with baroreflex modulation feedback and a phenomenological dynamic dose-response model of a vasopressor. The adequacy of the proposed mathematical model was investigated using an experimental dataset acquired from 10 pigs receiving phenylephrine (PHP) therapy after vasoplegic shock induced via sodium nitroprusside (SNP). Results: Upon calibration, the mathematical model could (i) faithfully replicate the effects of PHP on dynamic changes in blood pressure (BP), cardiac output (CO), and systemic vascular resistance (SVR) (root-mean-squared errors between measured and calibrated mathematical responses: mean arterial BP 2.5+/-1.0 mmHg, CO 0.2+/-0.1 lpm, SVR 2.4+/-1.5 mmHg/lpm; r value: mean arterial BP 0.96+/-0.01, CO 0.65+/-0.45, TPR 0.92+/-0.10) and (ii) predict physiologically plausible behaviors of unmeasured internal CV variables as well as secondary baroreflex modulation effects. Conclusion: This mathematical model is perhaps the first of its kind that can comprehensively replicate both primary (i.e., direct) and secondary (i.e., baroreflex modulation) effects of a vasopressor drug on an array of CV variables, rendering it ideally suited to pre-clinical virtual evaluation of the safety and efficacy of closed-loop control algorithms for autonomous vasopressor administration once it is extensively validated. Significance: This mathematical model architecture incorporating both direct and baroreflex modulation effects may generalize to serve as part of an effective platform for high-fidelity in silico simulation of CV responses to vasopressors during vasoplegic shock.
Patients with recurrent malignant gliomas treated with stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) and multiagent systemic therapies were reviewed to determine the effects of patient- and treatment-related ...factors on survival and toxicity.
A retrospective analysis was performed on patients with recurrent malignant gliomas treated with salvage SRS from September 2002 to March 2010. All patients had experienced progression after treatment with temozolomide and radiotherapy. Salvage SRS was typically administered only after multiple postchemoradiation salvage systemic therapies had failed.
63 patients were treated with SRS for recurrent high-grade glioma; 49 patients had World Health Organization (WHO) Grade 4 disease. Median follow-up was 31 months from primary diagnosis and 7 months from SRS. Median overall survival from primary diagnosis was 41 months for all patients. Median progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival from SRS (OS-SRS) were 6 and 10 months for all patients, respectively. The 1-year OS-SRS for patients with Grade 4 glioma who received adjuvant (concurrent with or after SRS) bevacizumab was 50% vs. 22% for patients not receiving adjuvant bevacizumab (p = 0.005). Median PFS for patients with a WHO Grade 4 glioma who received adjuvant bevacizumab was 5.2 months vs. 2.1 months for patients who did not receive adjuvant bevacizumab (p = 0.014). Karnofsky performance status (KPS) and age were not significantly different between treatment groups. Treatment-related Grade 3/4 toxicity for patients receiving and not receiving adjuvant BVZ was 10% and 14%, respectively (p = 0.58).On multivariate analysis, the relative risk of death and progression with adjuvant bevacizumab was 0.37 (confidence interval CI 0.17-0.82) and 0.45 (CI 0.21-0.97). KPS >70 and age <50 years were significantly associated with improved survival.
The combination of salvage radiosurgery and bevacizumab to treat recurrent malignant gliomas is well tolerated and seems to be associated with improved outcomes. Prospective multiinstitutional studies are required to determine efficacy and long-term toxicity with this approach.
N-of-1 trials provide a mechanism for making evidence based treatment decisions for an individual patient. They use key methodological elements of group clinical trials to evaluate treatment ...effectiveness in a single patient, for situations that cannot always accommodate large scale trials: rare diseases, comorbid conditions, or in patients using concurrent therapies. Improvement in the reporting and clarity of methods and findings in N-of-1 trials is essential for reader to gauge the validity of trials and to replicate successful findings. A CONSORT extension for N-of-1 trials (CENT 2015) provides guidance on the reporting of individual and series of N-of-1 trials. CENT provides additional guidance for 14 of the 25 items of the CONSORT 2010 checklist and recommends a diagram for depicting an individual N-of-1 trial and modifies the CONSORT flow diagram to address the flow of a series of N-of-1 trials. The rationale, development process, and CENT 2015 checklist and diagrams are reported in this document.
Elevated systolic blood (SBP) pressure is a leading global health risk. Quantifying the levels of SBP is important to guide prevention policies and interventions.
To estimate the association between ...SBP of at least 110 to 115 mm Hg and SBP of 140 mm Hg or higher and the burden of different causes of death and disability by age and sex for 195 countries and territories, 1990-2015.
A comparative risk assessment of health loss related to SBP. Estimated distribution of SBP was based on 844 studies from 154 countries (published 1980-2015) of 8.69 million participants. Spatiotemporal Gaussian process regression was used to generate estimates of mean SBP and adjusted variance for each age, sex, country, and year. Diseases with sufficient evidence for a causal relationship with high SBP (eg, ischemic heart disease, ischemic stroke, and hemorrhagic stroke) were included in the primary analysis.
Mean SBP level, cause-specific deaths, and health burden related to SBP (≥110-115 mm Hg and also ≥140 mm Hg) by age, sex, country, and year.
Between 1990-2015, the rate of SBP of at least 110 to 115 mm Hg increased from 73 119 (95% uncertainty interval UI, 67 949-78 241) to 81 373 (95% UI, 76 814-85 770) per 100 000, and SBP of 140 mm Hg or higher increased from 17 307 (95% UI, 17 117-17 492) to 20 526 (95% UI, 20 283-20 746) per 100 000. The estimated annual death rate per 100 000 associated with SBP of at least 110 to 115 mm Hg increased from 135.6 (95% UI, 122.4-148.1) to 145.2 (95% UI 130.3-159.9) and the rate for SBP of 140 mm Hg or higher increased from 97.9 (95% UI, 87.5-108.1) to 106.3 (95% UI, 94.6-118.1). For loss of DALYs associated with systolic blood pressure of 140 mm Hg or higher, the loss increased from 95.9 million (95% uncertainty interval UI, 87.0-104.9 million) to 143.0 million (95% UI, 130.2-157.0 million) corrected, and for SBP of 140 mm Hg or higher, the loss increased from 5.2 million (95% UI, 4.6-5.7 million) to 7.8 million (95% UI, 7.0-8.7 million). The largest numbers of SBP-related deaths were caused by ischemic heart disease (4.9 million 95% UI, 4.0-5.7 million; 54.5%), hemorrhagic stroke (2.0 million 95% UI, 1.6-2.3 million; 58.3%), and ischemic stroke (1.5 million 95% UI, 1.2-1.8 million; 50.0%). In 2015, China, India, Russia, Indonesia, and the United States accounted for more than half of the global DALYs related to SBP of at least 110 to 115 mm Hg.
In international surveys, although there is uncertainty in some estimates, the rate of elevated SBP (≥110-115 and ≥140 mm Hg) increased substantially between 1990 and 2015, and DALYs and deaths associated with elevated SBP also increased. Projections based on this sample suggest that in 2015, an estimated 3.5 billion adults had SBP of at least 110 to 115 mm Hg and 874 million adults had SBP of 140 mm Hg or higher.
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