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Poly(vinyl chloride) (PVC) is widely used for covering electrical cables, but a decrease in its physicochemical, thermal, and mechanical properties has been observed over time. Poly(nitrile butadiene) rubber (NBR), due to its certain properties, was chosen to be blended with PVC to improve its specific properties, when used as insulation for electrical cables installed in nuclear power plants. Thus, this work focuses on the effect of γ radiation at doses ranging from 10 to 50 KGy on the physicochemical, thermal, morphological, and mechanical properties of PVC, as well as on the improvement of its properties by the incorporation of NBR in the PVC matrix as a blend. A series of PVC/NBR blends containing 10, 20, 30, 40, and 50 wt % NBR was prepared and subjected to thermal aging at 80 °C after adding appropriate additives. The results obtained reveal that thermal aging at 80 °C and exposure of the PVC/NBR blend to γ radiation up to 50 KGy do not practically affect the properties of this material., Competing Interests: The authors declare no competing financial interest., (© 2024 The Authors. Published by American Chemical Society.)

Background: A pressing challenge during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond is to provide accessible and scalable mental health support to isolated older adults in the community. The Telehealth Intervention Program for Older Adults (TIP-OA) is a large-scale, volunteer-based, friendly telephone support program designed to address this unmet need., Methods: A prospective cohort study of 112 TIP-OA participants aged ≥60 years old was conducted in Quebec, Canada (October 2020-June 2021). The intervention consisted of weekly friendly phone calls from trained volunteers. The primary outcome measures included changes in scores of stress, depression, anxiety, and fear surrounding COVID-19, assessed at baseline, 4 and 8-weeks. Additional subgroup analyses were performed with participants with higher baseline scores., Results: The subgroup of participants with higher baseline depression scores (PHQ9 ≥10) had significant improvements in depression scores over the 8-week period measured [mean change score = -2.27 (±4.76), 95%CI (-3.719, -0.827), p = 0.003]. Similarly, participants with higher baseline anxiety scores (GAD7 ≥10) had an improvement over the same period, which, approached significance ( p = 0.06). Moreover, despite peaks in the pandemic and related stressors, our study found no significant ( p ≥ 0.09) increase in stress, depression, anxiety or fear of COVID-19 scores., Discussion: This scalable, volunteer-based, friendly telephone intervention program was associated with decreased scores of depression and anxiety in older adults who reported higher scores at baseline (PHQ 9 ≥10 and GAD7 ≥10)., Competing Interests: Author SR receives a salary award from the Fonds de Recherche de Québec-Santé (FRQS), is a steering committee member for AbbVie, and is a shareholder of Aifred Health. HS has a CIHR fellowship award, MITACS fellowship award, and AGE-WELL award. Author EM receives salary support from the Fond de recherche Santé Québec. Author SK has received research support from Brain and Behavior Foundation, National institute on Aging, BrightFocus Foundation, Brain Canada, Canadian Institute of Health Research, Canadian Consortium on Neurodegeneration in Aging, Centre for Ageing and Brain Health Innovation, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, an Academic Scholars Award from the Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto, and Equipment support from Soterix Medical. Author SBo receives funds from the Canada research Chairs program and various provincial and federal granting agencies. He is president of, and owns equity in, Cliniques et Development In Virtuo; a company that distributes virtual reality environments. Conflicts of interest are managed under UQO's conflicts of interest policy. The remaining authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2022 Sekhon, Lavin, Vacaflor, Rigas, Cinalioglu, Su, Bodenstein, Dikaios, Goodman, Raymond, Ibrahim, Bein, Gruber, Se, Sasi, Walsh, Nazar, Hanganu, Berkani, Royal, Schiavetto, Looper, Launay, McDonald, Seitz, Kumar, Beauchet, Khoury, Bouchard, Battistini, Fallavollita, Miresco, Bruneau, Vahia, Bukhari and Rej.)

Objective: US of salivary glands (SGUS) is a non-invasive tool that allows for diagnosing primary SS (pSS) or secondary SS (sSS). However, little is known about the prevalence of US findings of SS in other CTDs. The aim of this multi-centre observational study was to evaluate, in CTD patients with or without SS, the prevalence of abnormal SGUS findings and the possible association of the findings with clinical or biological phenotypes., Methods: B-Mode SGUS was performed by one operator blinded to clinical data. Each SG was semi-quantitatively rated on a scale from 0 to 4 according to the Jousse-Joulin score; a score ≥2 was considered pathological., Results: Data for 194 patients were analysed (pSS, n = 30; sSS, n = 39; other CTDs, n = 77; controls, n = 48). SGUS findings were abnormal in 80%, 67%, 25% and 2% of patients, respectively. Independent of the underlying disease, age and sex, abnormal SGUS findings were significantly associated with presence of anti-SSA antibodies (P < 0.001), pSS (P < 0.001) and sSS (P < 0.01). Among SS patients, abnormal SGUS findings were associated with the presence of hypergammaglobulinemia, anti-SSA antibodies, objective eye dryness and increased anti-nuclear antibody level, with no difference in EULAR SS Disease Activity Index., Conclusion: Abnormal SGUS findings were associated with anti-SSA antibody positivity independent of the underlying disease. In SS patients, abnormal findings were associated with immunologic features and mouth involvement. Among CTD patients, SGUS changes may be associated with a particular immune profile., (© The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the British Society for Rheumatology. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.)

Intra-articular (IA) hyaluronic acid (HA) and platelet-rich plasma (PRP) injections are increasingly being prescribed for knee osteoarthritis (KOA). However, failure of the medical treatment may result in total knee arthroplasty (TKA). We wondered if IA HA or PRP injections (intervention) may delay the time to TKA (outcome) among KOA patients (population), compared to KOA patients not receiving these injections (comparator). For this systematic literature review (SLR) and meta-analysis, we selected observational studies with at least one group of patients receiving IA HA or PRP and with TKA data available. The main outcome was time from the diagnosis of KOA to TKA. We included 25 articles in the SLR (2,824,401 patients) and four in the meta-analysis. The mean strengthening the reporting of observational studies in epidemiology (STROBE) score was 63%. For patients receiving versus not receiving HA injections, the delay between a declared diagnosis of KOA to TKA was increased by 9.8 months (95% CI (8.2-11.4)). As compared with standard of care, the effect size of HA injections for this outcome was 0.57 (95% CI (0.36-0.76)). Only one study described a median time from PRP injections to TKA of 4.1 years (range 0.3-14.7). IA HA injections were associated with increased time to TKA. Causality cannot be concluded because of missing confounder factors as comorbidities. Data were insufficient to conclude any effect of PRP injections on TKA delay.