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IoP Alliance Nov 2022 Community Call Slides

The aim of this retrospective study was to evaluate the prevalence of anosmia in COVID-19 patients. We also focused on the day of onset of anosmia and the time of recovery from it. In addition, we examined the impact of smoking on the clinical progression of anosmia. One hundred patients participated in the study, with the mean age being 34 years. Regarding gender, 55% of the patients were female, while 45% were male (45%). Furthermore, 64% of the patients were smokers, while 36% were non-smokers. The prevalence of anosmia among the sample was 77%, and the mean of the initial day of anosmia was three days (according to the day of the PCR test). Moreover, the mean of the recovery period in terms of weeks was two weeks, and 76 patients who had anosmia recovered in three months.

Although the refugee phenomenon is not new and refugee camps are rarely temporary, in most cases, the procedures implemented within refugee camps have failed to apply principles of sustainability to ensure refugees’ dignity and improve their quality of life, thereby helping them become independent and self-reliant. This improvement, in turn, may help them return to their homes in the future or may, at least, reduce the high cost and negative coping strategies associated with refugee camps and instead increase refugees’ social integration within the host community. This paper discusses the procedures applied in both the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan and the Dadaab Refugee Complex in Kenya and provides evidence regarding the extent to which they meet the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development without leaving refugees behind. Furthermore, this paper shows how sustainable development goals (SDGs) are interconnected in a refugee camp setting. This study concludes that refugee camps not only failed to align with 2030 agenda but failed to ensure refugees’ basic rights where a more inclusive and sustainable approach is required to improve the refugees’ quality of life and to help them live in dignity and reach self-reliance that can benefit both refugees and their host communities.

BackgroundMonkeypox is a zoonotic virus which persists in animal reservoirs and periodically spills over into humans, causing outbreaks. During the current 2022 outbreak, monkeypox virus has persisted via human-human transmission, across all major continents and for longer than any previous record. This unprecedented spread creates the potential for the virus to ‘spillback’ into local susceptible animal populations. Persistent transmission amongst such animals raises the prospect of monkeypox virus becoming enzootic in new regions. However, the full and specific range of potential animal hosts and reservoirs of monkeypox remains unknown, especially in newly at-risk non-endemic areas.MethodsHere, utilising ensembles of classifiers comprising different class balancing techniques and incorporating instance weights, we identify which animal species are potentially susceptible to monkeypox virus. Subsequently, we generate spatial distribution maps to highlight high-risk geographic areas at high resolution.FindingsWe show that the number of potentially susceptible species is currently underestimated by 2.4 to 4.3-fold, and that a high density of wild susceptible species are native to Europe. We provide lists of these species, and highlight high-risk hosts for spillback and potential long-term reservoirs, which may enable monkeypox virus to become endemic.InterpretationWe highlight the European red fox and brown rat, as they have established interactions with potentially contaminated urban waste and sewage, which provides a mechanism for potential spillback. We anticipate that our results will enable targeted active surveillance of potential spillback event, to minimise risk of the virus becoming endemic in these regions. Our results also indicate the potential of domesticated cats and dogs (latter now confirmed) being susceptible to monkeypox virus, and hence support many health organisations’ advice for infected humans to avoid physical interaction with pets.

International audience

Background Detailed insights in temporal evolution of high‐sensitivity cardiac troponin following acute coronary syndrome (ACS) are currently missing. We aimed to describe and compare the post‐ACS kinetics of high‐sensitivity cardiac troponin I (hs‐cTnI) and high‐sensitivity cardiac troponin T (hs‐cTnT), and to determine their intra‐ and interindividual variation in clinically stable patients. Methods and Results We determined hs‐cTnI (Abbott) and hs‐cTnT (Roche) in 1507 repeated blood samples, derived from 191 patients with ACS (median, 8/patient) who remained free from adverse cardiac events during 1‐year follow‐up. Post‐ACS kinetics were studied by linear mixed‐effect models. Using the samples collected in the 6‐ to 12‐month post‐ACS time frame, patients were then considered to have chronic coronary syndrome. We determined (differences between) the average hs‐cTnI and average hs‐cTnT concentration, and the intra‐ and interindividual variation for both biomarkers. Compared with hs‐cTnT, hs‐cTnI peaked higher (median 3506 ng/L versus 494 ng/L; P P r spearman =0.60), whereas the average hs‐cTnT concentration was 5 times more likely to be above the upper reference limit than hs‐cTnI. The intraindividual variations of hs‐cTnI and hs‐cTnT were 14.0% and 18.1%, while the interindividual variations were 94.1% and 75.9%. Conclusions Hs‐cTnI peaked higher after ACS and was quicker below the upper reference limit. In the post–6‐month samples, hs‐cTnI and hs‐cTnT were clearly not interchangeable, and average hs‐cTnT concentrations were much more often above the upper reference limit than hs‐cTnI. For both markers, the within‐patient variation fell largely below beween‐patient variation. Registration URL: https://www.trialregister.nl ; unique identifiers: NTR1698 and NTR1106.

Purpose The deregulation of the Hippo pathway results in translocation ofYes-associated protein-1 (YAP1) to the nucleus to exert an oncogenic effect. This effect has been demonstrated in several malignancies, yet, in breast cancer (BC), it remains controversial. The present study aimed to investigate the significance of YAP1 expression in BC, its relation to cancer stem cells (CSCs), and the effect of its inhibition on tumor cell survival. Patients and methods We evaluated the expression of YAP1 protein and gene using immunohistochemistry (IHC) and RT-qPCR in FFPE tissue from normal and breast cancer cases. We also studied its association with CSC expression (OCT4, NANOG, and SOX2) and with different clinicopathologic characteristics. Two BC cell lines (MCF7 and MDA-MB-231) were exposed to different concentrations of YAP1 inhibitor "verteporfin" and cell viability was subsequently assessed. Results YAP1 mRNA was higher in BC compared to the normal breast tissue (p-value=0.040) and was higher in luminal tumors compared to triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) (p-value= 0.017). Its expression in tumors was significantly associated with the expression of pluripotency markers (OCT4 and NANOG) (p-value= 0.030 and 0.035, respectively) and its inhibition resulted in a significant reduction of CSC expression in both MCF-7 and MDA-MB-231 cells. YAP1 nuclear expression by IHC, which signifies its activation, was more evident in invasive carcinomas compared to normal breast tissue and in-situ foci where the expression was limited to the cytoplasm. The pretreatment of BC cells (MCF7 and MDA-MB-231) with YAP1 inhibitor "verteporfin" resulted in their sensitization to the effect of tamoxifen and doxorubicin, respectively, and significantly decreased tumor cell proliferation and survival. Conclusion Our results imply that YAP1 is highly expressed and activated in BC and its inhibition could represent a possible novel therapeutic strategy that should be further explored and investigated to improve the outcome of breast cancer patients.

Graphical abstract, Food predilection is linked to variants in the hepatokine “Fibroblast Growth Factor-21” gene (FGF21); with rs838133 linked to the sweet tooth in Caucasians. The effect of FGF21 variants on food intake is still unclear in other populations. A cohort of 196 healthy Emirati subjects was investigated [age: 30.34 ± 9.75yrs (44.4% males)]. The FGF21 rs838133 and rs838145 were genotyped. The daily intake was calculated based on a 61-item food frequency questionnaire. Multivariate analysis was performed using in house R script that implements two-way unsupervised hierarchical clustering to detect the association of the studied single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and related SNPs in linkage disequilibrium, using data from the 1000 genome project. Both SNPs were in Hardy-Weinberg Equilaribium (HWE). BMI positively correlated with age (p = 0.002), but not with caloric intake. Salt intake was significantly higher in subjects homozygous (A: rs838133) and (G:rs838145),(p = 0.03 and 0.01, respectively). An interaction was observed between both SNPs; significantly associated with high salt intake. Using publicly available data, both SNPs fall within a region transmitted in Iberians which has a profile closely similar to Caucasians, but far from Chinese population. In conclusion, the minor alleles of FGF21 rs838145 and rs838133 are associated with high salt intake in Emiratis and may suggest neuro-metabolic link to dietary preference across different populations.

— Background: Coblation tonsillectomy has shown promising findings compared to the bipolar method regarding postoperative pain in the first two weeks and readmission rate due to bleeding or infection in addition to median operation time. Aim: To compare the surgical outcome between coblation and bipolar surgical techniques for tonsillectomy. Methods: This is a retrospective analysis of a prospectively maintained database. One hundred patients, of both sexes and with different ages ranging between 3 and 10 years, were assigned for standard tonsillectomy at Queen Rania Pediatrics Hospital and randomized using sealed envelopes into two groups, each of which included 50 patients, with a minimum follow up of 14 days. Data were collected to assess postoperative pain in the first two weeks, the return to a typical eating routine, readmission rate due to complications such as hemorrhage or infection, and median operation time. Group A included patients who underwent tonsillectomy by coblation technique whereas group B included patients who underwent tonsillectomy by bipolar technique. Postoperative pain was evaluated using the Wong-Baker Faces pain descriptive scale (0-5). Results: Patients in group A had lower average pain scores (3.1,4.3) than patients in group B (4.2,5.2) at day one(P0.05). No significant difference in average pain scores was observed at the end of the postoperative fourteen days between both groups A and B (0.15, 0.17, respectively; P>0.05). The readmission rate was lower in group A than in group B. On the other hand, lower median operation time was reported using the bipolar method. Conclusion: Coblation is a useful surgical technique for tonsillectomy that could reduce postoperative pain scores. Lower postoperative complications such as hemorrhage, poor oral intake, and infection were observed among patients who underwent tonsillectomy by coblation technique. Nevertheless, the median operation time for bipolar tonsillectomy was shorter.

Deep learning models are increasingly informing medical decision making, for instance, in the detection of acute intracranial hemorrhage and pulmonary embolism. However, many models are trained on medical image databases that poorly represent the diversity of the patients they serve. In turn, many artificial intelligence models may not perform as well on assisting providers with important medical decisions for underrepresented populations.Assessment of the ability of deep learning models to classify the self-reported gender, age, self-reported ethnicity, and insurance status of an individual patient from a given chest radiograph.Models were trained and tested with 55,174 radiographs in the MIMIC Chest X-ray (MIMIC-CXR) database. External validation data came from two separate databases, one from CheXpert and another from a multihospital urban health care system after institutional review board approval. Macro-averaged area under the curve (AUC) values were used to evaluate performance of models. Code used for this study is open-source and available at https://github.com/ai-bias/cxr-bias, and pixelstopatients.com/models/demographics.Accuracy of models to predict gender was nearly perfect, with 0.999 (95% confidence interval: 0.99-0.99) AUC on held-out test data and 0.994 (0.99-0.99) and 0.997 (0.99-0.99) on external validation data. There was high accuracy to predict age and ethnicity, ranging from 0.854 (0.80-0.91) to 0.911 (0.88-0.94) AUC, and moderate accuracy to predict insurance status, with AUC ranging from 0.705 (0.60-0.81) on held-out test data to 0.675 (0.54-0.79) on external validation data.Deep learning models can predict the age, self-reported gender, self-reported ethnicity, and insurance status of a patient from a chest radiograph. Visualization techniques are useful to ensure deep learning models function as intended and to demonstrate anatomical regions of interest. These models can be used to ensure that training data are diverse, thereby ensuring artificial intelligence models that work on diverse populations.

Image feature shifts due to atmospheric refraction are predicted with a finite difference machine learning method based on physics-infused modeling and data-driven training using time-lapse imagery. The model’s performance is compared with a previous approach.

Aim To study analgesic effect of lidocaine10 % sprayed to 10 cm х 10 cm gauze swabs with neomycin and bacitracin ointment nasal packing using visual analog scale (VAS) in postoperative period for patients underwent septoplasty operation. Materials and methods 100 patients aged between 17 and 50 years and divided into two equal groups. Group L lidocaine 10% was sprayed to gauze swabs with neomycin and bacitracin ointment nasal packing and group S control group 0.9% NaCl applied to same nasal packing. Postoperatively, VAS scale, side effects and analgesic requirements were recorded. Results There were no differences between the number of female and male patients. Postoperative pain was less in group L than group S, there was a statistically significant difference between L group and S group (p

The present research investigates the feasibility of manufacturing masonry mortars with recycled sand. The primary aim is to study the effect of fine recycled aggregates on fresh and hardened states with properties. Two series of mortars were designed by substituting natural sand with recycled sand, with variable sand replacement ratios ranging from 0% to 100%. One series, named variable workability series, has variable workability with constant water to cement ratio ( W/C), while the other series, called constant workability series, has a constant workability with variable W/C. The density, air content, and slump of mortars in fresh state were measured with a special attention devoted to the effect of pre-saturation of recycled sand on the slump. In the hardened state, the microstructure was studied by means of water accessible porosity test and mercury intrusion porosimetry test. Flexural and compressive strength as well as the dynamic modulus of elasticity were also examined and the correlations between these properties and the microstructure have been established. It was found that the properties of mortars with recycled sand are lower than those obtained for the natural sand mortar (−20% for variable workability series and −45% for constant workability series at the age of 28 days). For the series with variable workability, mechanical properties decrease to a step starting from 30% replacement ratio, while linearly decrease for the mortars with constant workability. The difference between the two series lies in the difference in total porosities and the pore size distribution.