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AbstractIn response to the Covid-19 pandemic, the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute launched five multisite clinical trials testing candidate host tissue-directed medical interventions to hasten recovery, improve function, and reduce morbidity and mortality. Speed, flexibility, and collaboration were essential. This article from the Steering and Executive committees describes the Collaborating Network of Networks for Evaluating Covid-19 and Therapeutic Strategies (CONNECTS) research program that enrolled 6690 participants and evaluated 18 intervention strategies using 10 molecular agents across the care continuum (outpatient, inpatient, and post discharge), and reports lessons learned from this initiative. Successes include rapid trial execution through collaboration and adaptive platform designs. Challenges that impeded efficiency included time required to execute subcontracts, constraints on clinical research workforce, and limited research infrastructure in nonacademic settings.

Background: The World Health Organization Surgical Safety Checklist (SSC), now used by healthcare providers worldwide, has proved to be useful in the improvement of patients' health through the reduction of mortality and morbidity after surgery. In the Emilia-Romagna region in Italy the SSC is accompanied by a document that registers any non-conformity (NC) identified during SSC completion. This study aimed to investigate the association between surgical complications and checklist compliance, in terms of incompleteness and presence of NCs, using data from the Modena Local Health Unit (LHU)., Methods: We used data from surgeries performed in the Modena LHU between 2018 and 2022, with their SSC and related NC document. We estimated relative risks (RRs) of complications fitting three modified Poisson regression models. Model 1 included checklist incompleteness and NC presence, Model 2 adjusted Model 1 for patients' sex and age group, and Model 3 adjusted Model 2 for the other potential confounders. We also performed a sensitivity analysis estimating the same three models including death outcomes as complications., Results: We found an increased risk of complications for both checklist incompleteness (unadjusted RR [uRR]= 2.04; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.17 to 3.54) and presence of NCs (uRR = 2.35; 95% CI: 1.71 to 3.22). Results were consistent after adjustment and in the sensitivity analysis., Conclusions: Improving checklist compliance can reduce the risk of surgical complications. In particular, NCs are a risk factor that must be further investigated to better understand their relationship with complications. We believe that NCs data recording is helpful for both researchers in the scope of surgical complications, and healthcare professionals in the operating room., (© 2024 The Author(s). Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Background and Aim: Previously observed associations between interpregnancy interval (IPI) and perinatal outcomes using a between-individual method may be confounded by unmeasured maternal factors. This study aims to examine the association between IPI and adverse perinatal outcomes using within-individual comparative analyses., Methods: We studied 10,647 individuals from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Consecutive Pregnancies Study in Utah with ≥3 liveborn singleton pregnancies. We matched two IPIs per individual and used conditional logistic regression to examine the association between IPI and adverse perinatal outcomes, including preterm birth (PTB, <37 weeks' gestation), small-for-gestational-age (SGA, <10th percentile of sex-specific birthweight for gestational age), low birthweight (LBW, <2,500 g), and neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) admission. Point and 95% confidence interval (CI) estimates were adjusted for factors that vary across pregnancies within individuals., Results: CIs did not unequivocally support either an increase or a decrease in the odds of PTB (adjusted odds ratio [aOR]: 1.31, 95% CI: 0.87, 1.96), SGA (aOR: 0.81, 95% CI: 0.51, 1.28), LBW (aOR: 1.59, 95% CI: 0.90, 2.80), or NICU admission (aOR: 0.96, 95% CI: 0.66, 1.40) for an IPI <6 months compared to 18-23-months IPI (reference), and neither did the CIs for the aOR of IPIs of 6-11 and 12-18 months compared to the reference. In contrast, an IPI ≥24 months was associated with increased odds of LBW (aOR: 1.66, 95% CI: 1.03, 2.66 for 24-29 months; aOR: 2.27, 95% CI: 1.21, 4.29 for 30-35 months; and aOR: 2.09, 95% CI: 1.17, 3.72 for ≥36 months)., Conclusions: Using a within-individual comparative method, we did not find evidence that a short IPI compared to the recommended IPI of 18-23 months was associated with increased odds of PTB, SGA, LBW, and NICU admission. IPI ≥ 24 months was associated with increased odds of delivering an LBW infant., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest., (© 2024 The Author(s).Health Science Reports published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

Introduction: With increasing morbidity and risk of death, obesity has become a serious health problem largely attributable to difficulties in finding proper treatments for related diseases. Many studies show how detecting abnormal eating behaviors could be useful in developing effective clinical treatments. This study aims at validating the Greek version of the Eating Behaviors Assessment for Obesity (EBA-O)., Method: After a double English/Greek forward/backward translation of the EBA-O, 294 participants completed the Greek version (GR-EBA-O), the Eating Disorder Examination Questionnaire, the Binge Eating Scale, and the Yale Food Addiction Scale. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and construct validity were calculated, and Two-way MANOVA was computed with the factors of GR-EBA-O controlling for sex and BMI categories., Results: CFA confirmed the second-order five factors (i.e., food addiction, night eating, binge eating, sweet eating, and prandial hyperphagia) structure of the original EBA-O with excellent fit indices. GR-EBA-O factors were highly correlated. The GR-EBA-O subscales were also significantly correlated with the remaining measures, demonstrating good concurrent validity., Conclusion: The Greek version of the EBA-O has demonstrated sound psychometric properties and appears a reliable and user-friendly tool to identify pathological eating behaviors in obesity., Level of Evidence: V, descriptive research., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

The "climate extremes hypothesis" is a major assumption of geographic studies of heat tolerance and climatic vulnerability. However, this assumption remains vastly untested across taxa, and multiple factors may contribute to uncoupling heat tolerance estimates and geographic limits. Our dataset includes 1000 entries of heat tolerance data and maximum temperatures for each species' known geographic limits (hereafter, Tmax). We gathered this information across major animal taxa, including marine fish, terrestrial arthropods, amphibians, non-avian reptiles, birds, and mammals. We first tested if heat tolerance constrains the Tmax of sites where species could be observed. Secondly, we tested if the strength of such restrictions depends on how high Tmax is relative to heat tolerance. Thirdly, we correlated the different estimates of Tmax among them and across species. Restrictions are strong for amphibians, arthropods, and birds but often weak or inconsistent for reptiles and mammals. Marine fish describe a non-linear relationship that contrasts with terrestrial groups. Traditional heat tolerance measures in thermal vulnerability studies, like panting temperatures and the upper set point of preferred temperatures, do not predict Tmax or are inversely correlated to it, respectively. Heat tolerance restricts the geographic warm edges more strongly for species that reach sites with higher Tmax for their heat tolerance. These emerging patterns underline the importance of reliable species' heat tolerance indexes to identify their thermal vulnerability at their warm range edges. Besides, the tight correlations of Tmax estimates across on-land microhabitats support a view of multiple types of thermal challenges simultaneously shaping ranges' warm edges for on-land species. The heterogeneous correlation of Tmax estimates in the ocean supports the view that fish thermoregulation is generally limited, too. We propose new hypotheses to understand thermal restrictions on animal distribution., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: Catarina Vinagre reports financial support was provided by Foundation for Science and Technology. Miguel Trefaut Rodrigues reports financial support was provided by State of Sao Paulo Research Foundation. Miguel Tejedo reports financial support was provided by Secretaría de Estado de Investigación, Desarrollo e Innovación. Agustín Camacho Guerrero reports financial support was provided by Council of the European Union., (Copyright © 2024. Published by Elsevier B.V.)

Purpose: This paper describes the process developed at the University of Pittsburgh to increase the number of NIH-funded Diversity Supplements., Method: The authors formed a Diversity in Academia Workgroup where we created the infrastructure and process to increase the number of Diversity Supplements. Each year, the Office of Sponsored Programs provided a list of grants that would be eligible to submit a Diversity Supplement. We surveyed the Principal Investigators inquiring about their interest in working with a trainee on a Diversity Supplement. If yes, we included their information in a database we built so that trainees could search for eligible research studies. The Diversity Deans then identified underrepresented faculty and postdoctoral researchers. We invited Program Officers from NIH to participate in a panel presentation for trainees, which was well attended., Results: The number of Diversity Supplements awarded to Pitt researchers has significantly increased from 7 in 2020 to 10 in 2021 and to 15 in 2022. Six more have been awarded in the first half of 2023., Conclusions: We created the Diversity in Academia Workgroup with the goal to increase the number of Diversity Supplements at the University of Pittsburgh and in so doing, increase the diversity in the biomedical research workforce. While challenging, we know the critical importance and benefits of increased diversity at the University, and we have made significant strides toward this goal., Competing Interests: None., (© The Author(s) 2024.)