Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Equivalent Outcomes with Retransplantation and Primary Liver Transplantation in the Direct Acting Antiviral Era.

BACKGROUND The present multicenter study investigated whether equivalent outcomes to primary LT could be achieved with reLT and whether improvements in outcomes have taken place over time, particularly in the Direct Acting Antiviral (DAA) Era. METHODS All reLT performed at Mayo Clinic-Florida, Mayo Clinic-Rochester and Mayo Clinic-Arizona were divided into Era 1 (2002-2007), Era 2 (2008-2012) and Era 3 (2013-2017) based on the date of reLT. RESULTS Improvement in graft survival (GS) following reLT was seen over the 3 eras (p<0.001). In Era 1 GS following reLT was inferior to Primary LT (p<0.001), while no difference was seen between reLT and Primary LT in Era 2 (p=0.68) or in Era 3 (p=0.36). A significantly higher proportion of patients achieved sustained viral response(SVR) within the first year following reLT in each subsequent era (Era 1: 10.3%, Era 2: 22.5% and Era 3: 100%) (p<0.001). GS was superior in patients undergoing reLT for recurrent HCV who achieved SVR following reLT compared to those who did not (p=0.03). CONCLUSIONS Results similar to primary LT were achieved in Era 3. These improvements coincide with the availability of DAAs, which resulted in a 100% SVR rate in Era 3 and a decrease in the number of patients undergoing reLT for recurrent HCV. The historic dogma that reLT results in inferior outcomes should be revisited.
Enterovirus 71 antagonizes the inhibition of the host intrinsic antiviral factor A3G

Abstract Although the host restriction factor APOBEC3G (A3G) has broad spectrum antiviral activity, whether A3G inhibits enterovirus 71 (EV71) has been unclear until now. In this study, we demonstrated for the first time that A3G could inhibit EV71 virus replication. Silencing A3G in H9 cells enhanced EV71 replication, and EV71 replication was lower in H9 cells expressing A3G than in Jurkat cells without A3G expression, indicating that the EV71 inhibition was A3G-specific. Further investigation revealed that A3G inhibited the 5′UTR activity of EV71 by competitively binding to the 5′UTR through its nucleic acid binding activity. This binding impaired the interaction between the 5′UTR and the host protein poly(C)-binding protein 1 (PCBP1), which is required for the synthesis of EV71 viral proteins and RNA. On the other hand, we found that EV71 overcame A3G suppression through its non-structural protein 2C, which induced A3G degradation through the autophagy–lysosome pathway. Our research provides new insights into the interplay mechanisms of A3G and single-stranded positive RNA viruses.
Parental emotion and pain control behaviour when faced with child's pain: the emotion regulatory role of parental pain-related attention-set shifting and heart rate variability

Abstract This study investigated the moderating role of parental pain-related attention-set shifting and heart rate variability (HRV) for parental distress and pain control behaviour when faced with their child's pain. Participants were 54 schoolchildren and one of their parents. Parental HRV was assessed at study commencement followed by a cued-switching task indexing parental ability to flexibly shift attention between pain-related and neutral attentional sets. In a subsequent phase, parents observed their child perform a cold-pressor task [CPT], allowing for assessment of parental pain control behavior (indexed by latency to stop their child's CPT performance) and parental distress—assessed through self-report following observation of child CPT performance. Findings indicated that parental facilitated attentional shifting (ie, engage) towards a pain-related attentional set contributed to higher levels of pain control behaviour when faced with increasing levels of child facial display of pain. Pain control behaviour among parents who demonstrated impeded attentional shifting to a pain-related attentional set was equally pronounced regardless of low or high levels of child pain expression. Parental ability to shift attention away (ie, disengage) from a pain-related set to a neutral set did not impact findings. Results further indicated that although high levels of parental HRV buffer the impact of child facial pain display on parental emotional distress and pain control behaviour, low levels of HRV constitute a risk factor for higher levels of parental distress and pain control behaviour when faced with increased child facial pain display. Theoretical/clinical implications and further research directions are discussed.
Attention and Choice Across Domains

When people are faced with a decision, they tend to choose the option that draws their attention. In recent years, correlations between attention and choice have been documented in a variety of domains. This leads to the question of whether there is a general, stable relationship between attention and choice. Here, we examined choice behavior in tasks with and without risk and social considerations, using food or monetary rewards, within a single experiment. This allowed us to test the consistency of the decision-making process across domains. In the aggregate, we identified remarkable consistency in the attention-choice link. At the individual level, subjects with strong attentional effects in one task were likely to have strong attentional effects in the others. The strength of these effects also correlated with individuals’ degree of tunnel vision. Thus, the attention–choice relationship appears to be a stable individual trait that is linked to more general attentional constraints.
Indirect Effects From Childhood Sexual Abuse Severity to PTSD: The Role of Avoidance Coping

Men who have sex with men (MSM) disproportionately experience childhood sexual abuse (CSA) compared with heterosexual men, often resulting in continued trauma-related sequelae, including symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) such as avoidance. The variability in trauma-related sequelae may be associated with chronicity or duration of CSA. The relationship between duration of CSA and later PTSD symptom severity is not well understood, including the extent coping strategies account for these relationships. We used linear regression to examine these relationships and to assess the indirect effects of avoidance (behavioral disengagement and denial) and adaptive coping strategies on the relationship between CSA duration and adult PTSD symptom severity on a diverse sample included 290 MSM with a history of CSA. In adjusted models, CSA duration was significantly associated with adult PTSD symptom severity (standardized β = .23, p < .000) and with avoidance coping (standardized β = .19, p = .002). Separating this out, behavioral disengagement was significantly associated with CSA duration (standardized β = .20, p = .001) but denial was not. In adjusted analyses assessing indirect effects, avoidance coping partially accounted for the relationship between CSA duration and total trauma symptom severity (standardized β reduced from .23 to .17; Sobel = 2.90, p = .004). Similarly, behavioral disengagement partially accounted for the association between CSA duration and total symptoms (standardized β reduced from .23 to .18; Sobel = 2.68, p = .007). Avoidance coping, and behavioral disengagement specifically, may play a role in the severity of PTSD symptoms experienced by MSM with CSA histories. This work emphasizes the need for clinicians to consider behavioral disengagement in understanding PTSD symptom severity among MSM with histories of CSA.
Atherosclerotic Lesions in the Superficial Femoral Artery (SFA) Characterized with Velocity Ratios using Vector Velocity Ultrasound

Abstract Purpose Atherosclerotic arteries are challenging to evaluate quantitatively using spectral Doppler ultrasound because of the turbulent flow conditions that occur in relation to the atherosclerotic stenoses. Vector velocity ultrasound is angle independent and provides flow information, which could potentially improve the diagnosis of arterial stenoses. The purpose of the study is to distinguish significant stenoses in the superficial femoral artery (> 50% diameter reduction) from non-significant stenoses based on velocity ratios derived from the commercially available vector velocity ultrasound technique Vector Flow Imaging (VFI). Materials and Methods Velocity ratios (intrastenotic blood flow velocity divided by pre- or poststenotic velocity) from a total of 16 atherosclerotic stenoses and plaques in the superficial femoral artery of 11 patients were obtained using VFI. The stenosis degree, expressed as percentage diameter reduction of the artery, was determined from digital subtraction angiography and compared to the velocity ratios. Results A velocity ratio of 2.5 was found to distinguish clinically relevant stenoses with>50% diameter reduction from clinically non-relevant stenoses with<50% diameter reduction and the difference was statistically significant. Conclusion The study indicates that VFI is a potential future tool for the evaluation of arterial stenoses.
Human Milk Oligosaccharide Concentrations Are Associated with Multiple Fixed and Modifiable Maternal Characteristics, Environmental Factors, and Feeding Practices.

Background Human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs) shape the developing gut microbiome and influence immune function. Aside from genetic Secretor status, the factors influencing HMO synthesis and secretion are largely unknown. Objective We aimed to identify modifiable and nonmodifiable factors associated with HMO concentrations. Methods This prospective observational study included a representative subset of 427 mothers participating in the CHILD birth cohort (mean age: 33 y, 73% Caucasian). Breast milk was collected at 3-4 mo postpartum. Concentrations of 19 predominant HMOs were measured by rapid high-throughput HPLC. Secretor status was defined by the presence of 2'-fucosylactose. Associations with maternal, infant, and environmental factors were explored using multivariable regression. Breastfeeding duration was explored as a secondary outcome. Results Overall, 72% of mothers were Secretors and the mean ± SD duration of any breastfeeding was 12.8 ± 5.7 mo. HMO profiles were highly variable; total HMO concentrations varied 3.7-fold and individual HMOs varied 20- to >100-fold. Secretor mothers had higher total HMO concentrations than did non-Secretors (mean: 15.91 ± 2.80 compared with 8.94 ± 1.51 μmol/mL, P < 0.001) and all individual HMOs differed by Secretor status, except for disialyllacto-N-tetraose (DSLNT). Most HMO concentrations were lower in milk collected later in lactation, although some were higher including DSLNT and 3'-sialyllactose. Independent of Secretor status and lactation stage, seasonal and geographic variation was observed for several HMOs. Parity, ethnicity, and breastfeeding exclusivity also emerged as independent factors associated with some HMOs, whereas diet quality and mode of delivery did not. Together, these factors explained between 14% (for 6'-sialyllactose) and 92% (for 2'-fucosyllactose) of the observed variation in HMO concentrations. Lower concentrations of lacto-N-hexaose or fucodisialyllacto-N-hexaose were associated with earlier breastfeeding cessation. Conclusions HMO concentrations vary widely between mothers and are associated with multiple characteristics beyond genetic Secretor status, as well as feeding practices and environmental factors. Further research is warranted to determine how these associations affect infant health. This study was registered at clinicaltrials.gov as NCT03225534.
Size, Type, and Location of Myoma as Predictors for Successful Laparoscopic Myomectomy: A Tertiary Government Hospital Experience

Background: Laparoscopic myomectomy (LM) is a preferred alternative to abdominal myomectomy due to shorter hospitalization, faster recovery, and decreased intraoperative adhesions. The criteria, however, which constitute proper selection of patients for LM, are still a matter of debate. Since conversion to either laparoscopic-assisted myomectomy (LAM) or laparotomy (EL) entails longer time and increased costs compared to performing an open procedure from the outset, this research aims to evaluate size, location, and type of myoma as predictors for LM. Methodology: Inpatient medical records of all women who underwent LM from January 2014 to August 2016 were retrieved and reviewed. Demographic data, intraoperative records, and postoperative course were obtained. The association of size, type, and location of myomas to the procedure performed was analyzed. Results: There was no significant association between the size of the myoma or its location to the procedure performed. However, intramural and subserous myomas were associated with successful LM, while submucous myomas were associated with conversion to either LAM or EL (P = 0.010). Conclusion: LM is a difficult procedure that challenges even the most skilled laparoscopic surgeon. Proper patient selection lessens complications and decreases the risk of conversion. In this study, type of myoma may be a good predictor for successful LM; however, this conclusion may be limited by the small sample size. A large-scale multicentric prospective study is necessary to validate the role of the proposed predictors to prevent unplanned conversion to an open procedure and reduce cost and increase safety of LM.
Inflammation, Active Fibroplasia, and End-stage Fibrosis in 172 Biliary Atresia Remnants Correlate Poorly With Age at Kasai Portoenterostomy, Visceral Heterotaxy, and Outcome

Published histologic studies of the hilar plate or entire biliary remnant at the time of Kasai portoenterostomy (KHPE) have not provided deep insight into the pathogenesis of biliary atresia, relation to age at surgery, prognosis or the basis for successful drainage. We report detailed histologic findings in 172 centrally reviewed biliary remnants with an average of 6 sections per subject. Active lesions were classified as either necroinflammatory (rare/clustered in a few subjects) or active concentric fibroplasia with or without inflammation (common). Inactive lesions showed bland replacement by collagen and fibrous cords with little or no inflammation. Heterogeneity was common within a given remnant; however, relatively homogenous histologic patterns, defined as 3 or more inactive or active levels in the hepatic ducts levels, characterized most remnants. Homogeneity did not correlate with age at KHPE, presence/absence of congenital anomalies at laparotomy indicative of heterotaxy and outcome. Remnants from youngest subjects were more likely than older subjects to be homogenously inactive suggesting significantly earlier onset in the youngest subset. Conversely remnants from the oldest subjects were often homogenously active suggesting later onset or slower progression. More data are needed in remnants from subjects <30 days old at KHPE and in those with visceral anomalies. Prevalence of partially preserved epithelium in active fibroplastic biliary atresia lesions at all ages suggests that epithelial regression or injury may not be a primary event or that reepithelialization is already underway at the time of KHPE. We hypothesize that outcome after KHPE results from competition between active fibroplasia and reepithelialization of retained, collapsed but not obliterated lumens. The driver of active fibroplasia is unknown.
Policies in Activity-based Flexible Offices -‘I am sloppy with clean-desking. We don’t really know the rules.’

Abstract Activity-based Flexible Offices (A-FOs) are offices with unassigned desks that provide a variety of workspaces. This paper presents desk-sharing and speech rules identified in A-FOs in four Swedish organisations, the emergence of and compliance with these rules, and their consequences for work conditions. Data collection involved 105 semi-structured interviews, document analyses, and observations. The identified rules were: (1) to remove belongings, (2) temporal restrictions on using the same workstations, (3) temporal restrictions on using scarce zones, (4) restrictions on verbal interactions, and (5) restrictions on phone conversations. The cases with extensive user involvement in their planning process had explicit unambiguous rules. A better compliance with rules occurred when (i) the employees were well-prepared and had a unified understanding regarding how and why to follow the rules, (ii) the rules were explicitly communicated and were regarded as easy to follow, and (iii) following the rules facilitated work and improved work conditions. Practitioner summary: Five rules were identified for applying desk-sharing and speech policies in A-FOs. Extensive user involvement resulted in having well-defined and explicitly communicated rules, and prepared employees for how to use the A-FO. Implicit and ambiguous rules led to conflicting interpretations, disregarding rules, and were associated with more negative work conditions.
Bleomycin Revisited: A Direct Comparison of the Intratracheal Micro-Spraying and the Oropharyngeal Aspiration Routes of Bleomycin Administration in Mice

Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF) is a fatal disease characterized by exuberant deposition of extracellular matrix components, deterioration of lung architecture and impairment of lung functions. Its etiopathogenesis remains incompletely understood, as reflected in the lack of an appropriate therapy. Modeling the human disease in mice via the administration of bleomycin (BLM), despite the inherent limitations, has provided valuable insights into the underlying pathogenetic mechanisms, and has been instrumental for the development and validation of new pharmacologic interventions. Here we have directly compared the, most widely used, intratracheal (IT) route of administration with oropharyngeal aspiration (OA). Our results suggest that the OA route of BLM-administration can be used as a safe and effective alternative, minimizing peri-operative and experimental mortality, while preserving a solid fibrotic profile, as assessed with a plethora of standardized readout assays.
Efficient Formal Safety Analysis of Neural Networks

Neural networks are increasingly deployed in real-world safety-critical domains such as autonomous driving, aircraft collision avoidance, and malware detection. However, these networks have been shown to often mispredict on inputs with minor adversarial or even accidental perturbations. Consequences of such errors can be disastrous and even potentially fatal as shown by the recent Tesla autopilot crash. Thus, there is an urgent need for formal analysis systems that can rigorously check neural networks for violations of different safety properties such as robustness against adversarial perturbations within a certain L-norm of a given image. An effective safety analysis system for a neural network must be able to either ensure that a safety property is satisfied by the network or find a counterexample, i.e., an input for which the network will violate the property. Unfortunately, most existing techniques for performing such analysis struggle to scale beyond very small networks and the ones that can scale to larger networks suffer from high false positives and cannot produce concrete counterexamples in case of a property violation. In this paper, we present a new efficient approach for rigorously checking different safety properties of neural networks that significantly outperforms existing approaches by multiple orders of magnitude. Our approach can check different safety properties and find concrete counterexamples for networks that are 10x larger than the ones supported by existing analysis techniques. We believe that our approach to estimating tight output bounds of a network for a given input range can also help improve the explainability of neural networks and guide the training process of more robust neural networks.
Sensory hypersensitivity predicts repetitive behaviours in autistic and typically-developing children

The objective of this study was to examine the relationship between sensory hypersensitivity and restricted interests and repetitive behaviours associated with autism spectrum disorder and their typically-developing peers. Furthermore, the aims included the examination of the relationship across sensory modalities and various types of restricted interests and repetitive behaviours. Data were collected from the parents of 114 children: 49 of whom were diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder and 65 typically-developing children. Parents completed the Sensory Profile 2 – Child Version and the Repetitive Behaviours Questionnaire, Second Edition. The results suggested that sensory hypersensitivity is strongly related to the core autism spectrum disorder symptom of repetitive behaviours. This relationship was not specific to autism spectrum disorder; repetitive behaviours significantly increased with sensory hypersensitivity in typically-developing individuals as well. This effect was consistent across all modalities in both autism spectrum disorder and typically developing groups; group differences were observed in the oral and tactile modalities. Furthermore, sensory hypersensitivity was significantly predictive of repetitive behaviours in all participants, autism spectrum disorder and typically-developing, and importantly, autism spectrum disorder diagnosis did not add any predictive influence above and beyond sensory hypersensitivity. Finally, sensory hypersensitivity was significantly predictive of all subdomains of repetitive behaviours, including repetitive motor movements, rigidity and adherence to routine, preoccupation with restricted patterns of interest and unusual sensory interests, and diagnosis added no predictive ability beyond sensory hypersensitivity.
Treatment Outcomes of Patients with Squamous Cell Carcinoma of the Vulva: The Largest Series from a Tertiary Care Hospital

Objective To evaluate the outcomes of squamous cell carcinoma (SCCA) of the vulva treated at our tertiary care center. Methods The medical records of SCCA patients treated between January 2006 and December 2015 were retrospectively reviewed. Results One hundred forty-five patients met the criteria with the median age of 57 years old, and 58.6% had an underlying disease. The distribution of stages was as follows: IA 6.2%, IB 21.4%, II 26.2%, IIIA 14.5%, IIIB 6.2%, IIIC 9.7%, IVA 9.0%, and IVB 6.9%. One hundred and nine patients underwent surgical intervention and radical local excision with bilateral groin node dissection as the most frequent procedure. Approximately half of the patients received combined treatment with surgery followed by radiation with or without chemotherapy. Recurrence developed in 127 patients after the median follow-up time of one year with the common sites in the groin and vulva region. However, no significant difference in survival occurred in patients with and without groin node recurrence (15 vs. 28 months, P=0.109). The five-year overall survival was 50.8%. Conclusions The survival of patients with SCCA vulvar cancer was modest. The common failure sites were groin and vulva regions with unfavorable outcomes.
Prevalence and Risk Factors of Frailty in a Community-Dwelling Population: The HELIAD Study

Objective: To estimate the prevalence of frailty using five different instruments in a cohort of older adults and explore the association between frailty and various risk factors. Method: 1,867 participants aged 65 years and above were included in the current retrospective cross-sectional study. Frailty was operationalized according to the Fried definition, the FRAIL Scale, the Frailty Index (FI), the Tilburg Frailty Indicator (TFI), and the Groningen Frailty Index (GFI). We explored the role of various frailty risk factors using logistic regression analyses. Results: The prevalence of frailty varied depending on the definition used (Fried definition = 4.1%, FRAIL Scale = 1.5%, FI = 19.7%, TFI = 24.5%, and GFI = 30.2%). The only risk factors consistently associated with frailty irrespectively of definition were education and age. Conclusion: The frailty prevalence reported in our study is similar or lower to that reported in other population studies. Qualitative differences between frailty definitions were observed.