Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Critical Period After Stroke Study (CPASS): A phase II clinical trial testing an optimal time for motor recovery after stroke in humans

Significance Restoration of postinjury brain function is a signal neuroscience challenge. Animal models of stroke recovery demonstrate time-limited windows of heightened motor recovery, similar to developmental neuroplasticity. However, no equivalent windows have been demonstrated in humans. We report a randomized controlled trial applying essential elements of animal motor training paradigms to humans, to determine the existence of an analogous sensitive period in adults. We found a similar sensitive or optimal period 60 to 90 d after stroke, with lesser effects ≤30 d and no effect 6 mo or later after stroke. These findings prospectively demonstrated the existence of a sensitive period in adult humans. We urge the provision of more intensive motor rehabilitation within 60 to 90 d after stroke onset. Restoration of human brain function after injury is a signal challenge for translational neuroscience. Rodent stroke recovery studies identify an optimal or sensitive period for intensive motor training after stroke: near-full recovery is attained if task-specific motor training occurs during this sensitive window. We extended these findings to adult humans with stroke in a randomized controlled trial applying the essential elements of rodent motor training paradigms to humans. Stroke patients were adaptively randomized to begin 20 extra hours of self-selected, task-specific motor therapy at ≤30 d (acute), 2 to 3 mo (subacute), or ≥6 mo (chronic) after stroke, compared with controls receiving standard motor rehabilitation. Upper extremity (UE) impairment assessed by the Action Research Arm Test (ARAT) was measured at up to five time points. The primary outcome measure was ARAT recovery over 1 y after stroke. By 1 y we found significantly increased UE motor function in the subacute group compared with controls (ARAT difference = +6.87 ± 2.63, P = 0.009). The acute group compared with controls showed smaller but significant improvement (ARAT difference = +5.25 ± 2.59 points, P = 0.043). The chronic group showed no significant improvement compared with controls (ARAT = +2.41 ± 2.25, P = 0.29). Thus task-specific motor intervention was most effective within the first 2 to 3 mo after stroke. The similarity to rodent model treatment outcomes suggests that other rodent findings may be translatable to human brain recovery. These results provide empirical evidence of a sensitive period for motor recovery in humans.
Loneliness and frailty among nursing home older adults: the multiple mediating role of social support and resilience

Loneliness has been considered as a risk factor for frailty. Social support (as an external protective resource) and resilience (as an inner protective resource) might play protective roles on the association between loneliness and frailty. In this study, the mediating roles of social support and resilience between loneliness and frailty were explored among older adults living in nursing homes.
Reevaluating clinical assessment outcomes after unrestricted return to play following sport-related concussion

ABSTRACT Primary Objective The objective of this study was to examine neurocognition, postural control, and symptomology at multiple timepoints following concussion. We hypothesized that collegiate athletes would perform similar to or better than their baseline in terms of each outcome at both timepoints. Research Design This was a retrospective study of 71 collegiate athletes (18.3 ± 0.89 years old; 182.2 ± 10.05 cm; 84.2 ± 20.07 kg) to observe changes in outcomes from a previously established clinical protocol. Methods and Procedures Participants were administered ImPACT™, the Sensory Organization Test (SOT), and the revised head injury scale (HIS-r) prior to their seasons (baseline); upon reporting symptom-free following concussion (post-injury); and approximately 8-months after return-to-play to establish a new baseline. Main Outcomes and Results There were no changes in ImPACT scores or HIS-r reporting over time. ImPACT total symptom score (TSS) decreased over time (p = .002, ηp 2 = 0.08). Significant main effects occurred for the SOT equilibrium score (p < .01, ηp 2 = 0.34) and Vestibular sensory ratio (p < .001, ηp 2 = 0.22). Conclusions Our data suggest no decline in neurocognition, balance, or symptom burden approximately eight months post-injury. As clinicians continue to explore “best practices” for concussion management and potential long-term implications of these injuries it is important to monitor outcome measures longitudinally.
Dietary fibre intake and risk of prediabetes in China: results from the Tianjin Chronic Low-grade Systemic Inflammation and Health (TCLSIH) Cohort Study

Abstract High dietary fibre intake has been associated with a lower risk of diabetes, but the association of dietary fibre with prediabetes is only speculative, especially in China, where the supportive data from prospective studies are lacking. This study aimed to examine the association between dietary fibre intake and risk of incident prediabetes among Chinese adults. We performed a prospective analysis in 18 085 participants of the Tianjin Chronic Low-grade Systemic Inflammation and Health cohort study who were free of diabetes, prediabetes, cancer and CVD at baseline. Dietary data were collected using a validated 100-item FFQ. Prediabetes was defined based on the American Diabetes Association diagnostic criteria. Cox proportional hazard models were used to estimate hazard ratios (HR) and 95 % CI. During 63 175 person-years of follow-up, 4139 cases of incident prediabetes occurred. The multivariable HR of prediabetes for the highest v. lowest quartiles were 0·85 (95 % CI 0·75, 0·98) (P for trend = 0·02) for total dietary fibre, 0·84 (95 % CI 0·74, 0·95) (P for trend < 0·01) for soluble fibre and 1·05 (95 % CI 0·93, 1·19) (P for trend = 0·38) for insoluble fibre. Fibre from fruits but not from cereals, beans and vegetables was inversely associated with prediabetes. Our results indicate that intakes of total dietary fibre, soluble fibre and fibre derived from fruit sources were associated with a lower risk of prediabetes.
Visual and Tactile Sensory Systems Share Common Features in Object Recognition

Abstract Although we use our visual and tactile sensory systems interchangeably for object recognition on a daily basis, little is known about the mechanism underlying this ability. This study examined how 3D shape features of objects form two congruent and interchangeable visual and tactile perceptual spaces in healthy male and female participants. Since active exploration plays an important role in shape processing, a virtual reality environment was used to visually explore 3D objects called digital embryos without using the tactile sense. In addition, during the tactile procedure, blindfolded participants actively palpated a 3D-printed version of the same objects with both hands. We first demonstrated that the visual and tactile perceptual spaces were highly similar. We then extracted a series of 3D shape features to investigate how visual and tactile exploration can lead to the correct identification of the relationships between objects. The results indicate that both modalities share the same shape features to form highly similar veridical spaces. This finding suggests that visual and tactile systems might apply similar cognitive processes to sensory inputs that enable humans to rely merely on one modality in the absence of another to recognize surrounding objects.
Pediatric allergic fungal rhinosinusitis: optimizing outcomes

Purpose of review Allergic fungal rhinosinusitis (AFRS) is a debilitating condition for children. Despite there being several reviews on this topic in the adult population, there is a paucity of reviews of AFRS in the pediatric literature. This article reviews the recent evidence of pediatric AFRS with the aim to optimize outcomes of pediatric patients with this condition. Recent findings AFRS is clinically characterized by nasal polyposis, a type I hypersensitivity to fungal epitopes, very thick eosinophilic mucin, and peripheral eosinophilia. Pediatric AFRS has similar clinical characteristics to that in adults but is thought to have a more aggressive nature, with higher serum immunoglobulin E and more frequently bone erosion and malformation of facial bones. Diagnosis of pediatric AFRS is made by using the Bent and Kuhn's criteria developed for adult AFRS. The mainstay of treatment is surgery followed by postoperative corticosteroids. Adjunctive therapies, including topical/oral antifungal agents, allergen immunotherapy and biologics may improve outcomes in pediatric AFRS, but to date the current evidence is limited. Summary To optimize the outcome of pediatric AFRS, adequate and early diagnosis and treatment are essential. Appropriate and comprehensive endoscopic sinus surgery to open the sinuses, remove the fungal burden of disease and improve access of the sinuses to postoperative topical corticosteroid remains the standard of care.
Experience with a New Index to Differentiate Parkinson's Disease and Progressive Supranuclear Palsy

We congratulate Quattrone and colleagues for providing a simple MRI-based measure to separate patients with progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) and Parkinson’s disease (PD). By relating the lateral diameter of the third ventricle to the inner skull diameter, they were able to separate PSP and PD patients with high diagnostic accuracy. We tried to replicate these findings in a cohort of 140 patients with probable or possible diagnoses according to the current consensus guidelines. However, separation of PSP and PD patients was less clear using the proposed index (Table 1). The most likely explanation might be the more advanced disease stages of our PD patients as expressed by the Hoehn & Yahr (H&Y) stages. In Quattrone’s cohort, mean H&Y stage of PD patients was 2 (standard deviation of 1–3 in the training cohort 1–3 and 1–2 in the testing cohort), in our cohort it was 3 (2–5). PSP groups were more comparable: mean H&Y stage was 4 (2–5) in Quattrone’s training group and 3 (2–5) in the testing group compared with a mean H&Y stage of 3 (range, 2–4) in our cohort. Compared with Quattrone’s cohort, our PD cohort had a slightly longer and our PSP cohort a shorter disease duration (Quattrone et al: PSP, 6.4 2.9 years; PD, 3.6 3.5 years vs our cohort: PSP, 4.3 3.1 years; PD, 5.3 3.5 years). We consider our cohort to be more comparable in terms of H&Y stage and total Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale. The internal skull diameters of the Quattrone cohort and our cohort were comparable (Quattrone et al: PSP, 132.5 mm; PD, 133.4 mm vs our cohort: PSP, 133.4 mm; PD, 135.6 mm). However, the mean width of the third ventricle was lower in Quattrone’s PD cohort compared with our PD group, with 4.76 and 9.61, respectively. Therefore, Quattrone’s index for the PD group was 3.57; in our group it was 7.04. We performed a receiver operating characteristic analysis and calculated an area under the curve of 0.66 (95% confidence interval, 0.52–0.77) in separating PSP and PD patients. A cutoff of 6.57 corresponded to an accuracy of 59.26% only. If we separated our cohort of PD patients into the individual H&Y stages, we observed that the value of the index tended to slightly increase with the H&Y stage,
Multi-level multi-modality (PET and CT) fusion radiomics: prognostic modeling for non-small cell lung carcinoma

We developed multi-modality radiomic models by integrating information extracted from 18F-FDG PET and CT images using feature- and image-level fusions, toward improved prognosis for non-small cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC) patients. Two independent cohorts of NSCLC patients from two institutions (87 and 95 patients) were cycled as training and testing datasets. Fusion approaches were applied at two levels, namely feature- and image-levels. For feature-level fusion, radiomic features were extracted individually from CT and PET images and concatenated. Alternatively, radiomic features extracted separately from CT and PET images were averaged. For image-level fusion, wavelet fusion was utilized and tuned with two parameters, namely CT weight and Wavelet Band Pass Filtering Ratio. Clinical and combined clinical + radiomic models were developed. Gray level discretization was performed at 3 different levels (16, 32 and 64) and 225 radiomics features were extracted. Overall survival (OS) was considered as the endpoint. For feature reduction, correlated (redundant) features were excluded using Spearman’s correlation, and best combination of top ten features with highest concordance-indices (via univariate Cox model) were selected in each model for further multivariate Cox model. Moreover, prognostic score’s median, obtained from the training cohort, was used intact in the testing cohort as a threshold to classify patients into low- versus high-risk groups, and log-rank test was applied to assess differences between the Kaplan–Meier curves. Overall, while models based on feature-level fusion strategy showed limited superiority over single-modalities, image-level fusion strategy significantly outperformed both single-modality and feature-level fusion strategies. As such, the clinical model (C-index = 0.656) outperformed all models from single-modality and feature-level strategies, but was outperformed by certain models from image-level fusion strategy. Our findings indicated that image-level fusion multi-modality radiomics models outperformed single-modality, feature-level fusion, and clinical models for OS prediction of NSCLC patients.
A distinct neurocognitive profile: unipolar mania

Abstract Objective Despite a growing number of studies reporting patients with a history of mania without depression have several socio-demographic and clinical differences than bipolar disorder patients, unipolar mania is recognized as bipolar I disorder in the most commonly used classification systems. Studies showing that unipolar mania is a separate clinical entity are insufficient in number, and to the best of our knowledge, there has been no study investigating the neuropsychological differences in this area. The aim of this study is to evaluate the neurocognitive differences between unipolar mania, bipolar I disorder and healthy controls, and to reveal the underlying neurocognitive differences. Materials and Methods Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery was applied to 18 unipolar mania, 19 bipolar I disorder patients and 21 healthy controls matched for age, sex and education levels. Results Unipolar mania group had worse performance regarding visual memory and executive functions, and had specific social cognition deficits compared to both bipolar I disorder and healthy control groups. Conclusion The results of our study indicate that unipolar mania might have unique neurocognitive differences compared to bipolar I disorder, which might support the hypothesis that unipolar mania is a distinct neurocognitive disorder within bipolar spectrum disorders.
Eye screenings among Singaporeans aged 40–60 years: formative research based on the theory of planned behaviour

INTRODUCTION According to the Singapore National Eye Centre (SNEC), the incidence of age‐related eye diseases increases when individuals are aged 40 years and above. [1] In Singapore, the four major eye diseases that are caused by ageing are cataract, glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy (DR), and age‐related macular degeneration (AMD). [2] Health professionals emphasise the importance of early detection of age‐related eye diseases via eye screenings for preserving vision and effective treatment. [3‐5] For instance, SNEC encourages Singaporean adults to attend a baseline comprehensive eye examination at 40 years of age,[6] while the Optometrists and Opticians Board recommends that Singaporean adults aged 59 years and under attend an eye screening biannually. [7] However, only diabetics are currently recommended by a national body to have regular annual eye examinations, as stated in the Ministry of Health’s clinical practice guidelines on diabetes[8]; there are no such national recommendations for cataract, glaucoma and AMD. Yet, eye screenings are important, as age‐related eye diseases can be asymptomatic,[6] with symptoms only appearing in the disease’s advanced stages.
Differences between adult and adolescent male mice in approach/avoidance and expression of hippocampal NPY in response to acute footshock

Abstract Anxiety disorders are the most common neuropsychiatric disorders diagnosed in adolescence and adulthood. Stress can lead to an increase in anxiety-related behaviors, although the consequences of stress in rodents are typically investigated only in adults. The levels of Neuropeptide Y (NPY), a mediator of stress resilience, are reduced in adult patients with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. For rodents, footshock is a physical stressor that increases anxiety-like behavior and reduces NPY in adults, however, the effects in adolescents are unknown. Here we used a 30-min unpredictable footshock protocol to investigate the differences in behavior and stress-relevant molecules between adolescent (6 weeks) and adult (3 months) male C57Bl6/J mice. The protocol resulted in fear expression in both ages as observed by enhanced freezing during footshock and elevation in plasma corticosterone and NPY shortly after exposure. However, effects on approach/avoidance behavior were different between the two ages. One week after footshock exposure, adult mice showed reduced open arm time and entries on elevated plus maze (EPM), whereas adolescent mice showed no effect. Footshock mice in both age groups displayed reduced activity levels in EPM and open field. The hypolocomotion did not relate to motor deficits, as there were no differences between footshock and control groups using rotarod. Surprisingly, we found that the adolescent mice had elevated NPY peptide expression in hippocampus, whereas adults had reduced expression one week after footshock exposure. Together, these results demonstrate that stress differentially affects both behavior and the important stress resilience factor NPY in adolescents compared to adults.
Evaluation of Scopio Labs X100 Full Field PBS: The first high‐resolution full field viewing of peripheral blood specimens combined with artificial intelligence‐based morphological analysis

Current digital cell imaging systems perform peripheral blood smear (PBS) analysis in limited regions of the PBS and require the support of manual microscopy without achieving full digital microscopy. We report a multicenter study that validated the Scopio Labs X100 Full Field PBS, a novel digital imaging system that utilizes a full field view approach for cell recognition and classification, in a decision support system mode.
Microbiological changes and their impact on quality characteristics of red hot chilli pepper mash during natural fermentation

Production of hot sauce may require fermentation of red hot pepper mash in barrels from 2 weeks up to 3 years. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the microbiological changes and their impact on quality characteristics of red hot pepper mash during natural fermentation over a period of 18 months. Aerobic plate count (APC), lactic acid bacteria (LAB) and yeast counts, as well as changes in pH, acid content, colour and aroma of red hot pepper mash, were analysed. LAB and yeast presented a symbiotic association throughout the fermentation process. Significant pH reduction was observed, with an inverse correlation with acid content. There were minor changes in the colour of the mash. Aroma was analysed based on six volatile compounds which had a significant increase during the first 60 days of fermentation, followed by a significant reduction after 300 days.
The rhipidoglossan radula: Formation and development in Margarites helicinus Phipps, 1774 (Trochoidea, Vetigastropoda)

The gastropod radula exhibits exceptional morphological variability. Despite this enormous diversity, the main patterns of synthesis of the teeth and radula membrane, characteristic of different groups can be identified. The rhipidoglossan radula contains numerous teeth in each transverse row and was found in phylogenetically distant groups of Gastropoda. Studying radula formation through stages of ontogeny in species with this type of radula is important in determining the main patterns of radula formation in gastropods. We studied the formation of the radula during development of one species of trochid vetigastropod, Margarites helicinus, using light and electron microscopy as well as confocal laser scanning microscopy. The adult radula is formed in the blind end of the radular sac, which bifurcates into two horns in vetigastropods. The numerous marginal teeth are synthesized in these horns while the central and lateral teeth form in the region where the horns fuse. This morphology of the formation zone appears to be a common pattern for all vetigastropods. The juvenile radula of M. helicinus consists of seven teeth per transverse row and its formation in the radular sac differs significantly from that in the adult. In the juvenile, the formation zone of the radular sac is not split into two horns, and the teeth and radular membrane are synthesized by relatively few, uniform cells. This organization of the larval radular sac is thought to represent a widely occurring larval pattern potentially present in all groups of gastropods. It is associated with early formation of all organs by few cells rather than representing a phylogenetic trait.
Effects of COVID-19 Pandemic on Reported Lyme Disease, United States, 2020

Surveys indicate US residents spent more time outdoors in 2020 than in 2019, but fewer tick bite–related emergency department visits and Lyme disease laboratory tests were reported. Despite ongoing exposure, Lyme disease case reporting for 2020 might be artificially reduced due to coronavirus disease–associated changes in healthcare-seeking behavior.
Calculating Key Figures for Radiology Departments Using a Clinical Data Warehouse - A Technical Case Report

Optimizing the utilization of radiology departments is one of the primary objectives for many hospitals. To support this, a solution has been developed, which at first transforms the export of different Radiological Information Systems (RIS) into the data format of a clinical data warehouse (CDW). Additional features, like for example the time between the creation of a radiologic request and the finalization of the diagnosis for the created images, can then be defined using a simple interface and are calculated and saved in the CDW as well. Finally, the query language of the CDW can be used to create custom reports with all the RIS data including the calculated features and export them into the standard formats Excel and CSV. The solution has been successfully tested with data from two German hospitals.