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Nano Letters Jul 2024Although biomacromolecules are promising cytosolic drugs which have attracted tremendous attention, the major obstacles were the cellular membrane hindering the entrance...
Although biomacromolecules are promising cytosolic drugs which have attracted tremendous attention, the major obstacles were the cellular membrane hindering the entrance and the endosome entrapment inducing biomacromolecule degradation. How to avoid those limitations to realize directly cytosolic delivery was still a challenge. Here, we prepared oligoarginine modified lipid to assemble a nanovesicle for biomacromolecules delivery, including mRNA (mRNA) and proteins which could be directly delivered into the cytoplasm of dendritic cells through subendocytosis-mediated membrane fusion. We named this membrane fusion lipid nanovesicle as MF-LNV. The mRNA loaded MF-LNV as nanovaccines showed efficient antigen expression to elicit robust immuno responses for cancer therapy. What's more, the antigen protein loaded MF-LNV as nanovaccines elicits much stronger CD8 T cell specific responses than lipid nanoparticles through normal uptake pathways. This MF-LNV represented a refreshing strategy for intracellular delivery of the biomacromolecule.
PubMed: 38954738
DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.4c01709 -
PloS One 2024Transperineal laser ablation is a minimally invasive thermo-ablative treatment for prostate cancer that requires the insertion of a needle for accurate optical fiber...
Transperineal laser ablation is a minimally invasive thermo-ablative treatment for prostate cancer that requires the insertion of a needle for accurate optical fiber positioning. Needle insertion in soft tissues may cause tissue motion and deformation, resulting in tissue damage and needle positioning errors. In this study, we present a wasp-inspired self-propelled needle that uses pneumatic actuation to move forward with zero external push force, thus avoiding large tissue motion and deformation. The needle consists of six parallel 0.25-mm diameter Nitinol rods driven by a pneumatic actuation system. The pneumatic actuation system consists of Magnetic Resonance (MR) safe 3D-printed parts and off-the-shelf plastic screws. A self-propelled motion is achieved by advancing the needle segments one by one, followed by retracting them simultaneously. The advancing needle segment has to overcome a cutting and friction force, while the stationary needle segments experience a friction force in the opposite direction. The needle self-propels through the tissue when the friction force of the five stationary needle segments overcomes the sum of the friction and cutting forces of the advancing needle segment. We evaluated the prototype's performance in 10-wt% gelatin phantoms and ex vivo porcine liver tissue inside a preclinical Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scanner in terms of the slip ratio of the needle with respect to the phantom or liver tissue. Our results demonstrated that the needle was able to self-propel through the phantom and liver tissue with slip ratios of 0.912-0.955 and 0.88, respectively. The prototype is a promising step toward the development of self-propelled needles for MRI-guided transperineal laser ablation as a method to treat prostate cancer.
Topics: Needles; Animals; Equipment Design; Male; Humans; Wasps; Printing, Three-Dimensional; Laser Therapy; Swine; Prostatic Neoplasms; Magnetic Resonance Imaging
PubMed: 38954720
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0306411 -
PLOS Global Public Health 2024In Kenya, overdose remains a major public health concern with approximately 40% of persons who inject drugs (PWID) reporting personal overdoses. PWID living with HIV...
In Kenya, overdose remains a major public health concern with approximately 40% of persons who inject drugs (PWID) reporting personal overdoses. PWID living with HIV (PWID-LH) are particularly vulnerable to experiencing fatal and non-fatal overdoses because of the surrounding physical, social, economic, and political environments, which are not fully understood in Kenya. Through qualitative inquiry, this study characterizes Kenya's overdose risk environment. Participants were purposively recruited from a larger cohort study from September to December 2018 using the following inclusion criteria: HIV-positive, age ≥18 years, injected drugs in the last year, and completed cohort study visits. Semi-structured interviews explored experiences of personal and observed overdoses, including injection settings, sequence of events (e.g., pre-, during, and post-overdose), safety strategies, and treatment. Interviews were transcribed, translated (Swahili to English), reviewed, and analyzed thematically, applying a risk environment framework. Nearly all participants described personal and/or observed overdose experiences (96%) and heroin was the most frequently reported substance (79%). Overdose precursors included increased consumption, polysubstance use, recent incarceration, and rushed injections. There were also indications of female-specific precursors, including violence and accessing prefilled syringes within occupational settings. Overdose safety strategies included avoiding injecting alone, injecting drugs incrementally, assessing drug quality, and avoiding polysubstance use. Basic first-aid techniques and naloxone use were common treatment strategies; however, naloxone awareness was low (25%). Barriers to treatment included social network abandonment, police discrimination, medical stigma, fatalism/religiosity, medical and transportation costs, and limited access to treatment services. In Kenya, the overdose risk environment highlights the need for comprehensive overdose strategies that address the physical, social, economic, and political environments. Morbidity and mortality from overdose among PWID-LH could be reduced through overdose prevention initiatives that support harm reduction education, naloxone awareness, and access, destigmatization of PWID, and reforming punitive policies that criminalize PWID-LH.
PubMed: 38954694
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pgph.0003435 -
Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery Feb 2024Suture extrusion has been reported to be the most common complication following cartilage-sparing otoplasty. Several studies have described various designs of...
BACKGROUND
Suture extrusion has been reported to be the most common complication following cartilage-sparing otoplasty. Several studies have described various designs of postauricular flaps to cover the cartilage sutures and reduce the incidence of suture extrusion.
PATIENTS AND METHODS
One hundred consecutive patients with prominent ears were operated between January 2018 and February 2023 using a de-epithelialized postauricular dermofascial flap that is performed as an adjunct to our cartilage-sparing otoplasty technique which is essentially a combined modified Mustardé and Furnas technique. The flap is used to cover the cartilage holding sutures with an extra layer of vascularized tissue to avoid the scar being directly over these sutures.
RESULTS
The median age of patients was 12 (IQR 9-15) years. One out of the 100 patients (1%) developed a postauricular skin infection requiring surgical removal of sutures. Primary suture extrusion did not occur, compared to our earlier study of cartilage-sparing technique without the postauricular flap in which 17 out of 200 patients had suture extrusion (p=0.001). No hematoma occurred that necessitated return to the theatre. Skin necrosis and wound dehiscence did not occur in any case. No patients developed cartilage deformities or relapse requiring surgical correction.
CONCLUSIONS
Combining cartilage-sparing otoplasty using sutures and the described postauricular dermofascial flap is simple to perform and has significantly reduced the complication rate and improved the outcome compared to cartilage-sparing otoplasty alone. We recommend using this flap for both primary and revisional otoplasty.
PubMed: 38954644
DOI: 10.1097/PRS.0000000000011342 -
European Thyroid Journal Jul 2024The aim of this study was to assess the clinical impact of hand-foot syndrome (HFS) during treatment with two multikinase inhibitors, sorafenib and lenvatinib, in a...
OBJECTIVE
The aim of this study was to assess the clinical impact of hand-foot syndrome (HFS) during treatment with two multikinase inhibitors, sorafenib and lenvatinib, in a large group of patients with advanced thyroid cancer. Moreover, we looked for possible associations between HFS occurrence and clinical and pathological features.
METHODS
We retrospectively evaluated 239 patients with advanced thyroid cancer: 165 treated with lenvatinib and 74 with sorafenib. Statistical analysis was performed to verify which features could be correlated with HFS development.
RESULTS
HFS was observed in 35/74 (47.4%) and in 43/165 (26.7%) patients treated with sorafenib or lenvatinib, respectively. The median latency from the drug beginning and HFS appearance was 27 days for sorafenib and 2.9 months for lenvatinib. G3/G4 toxicity was observed in 16/35 (45.7%) patients treated with sorafenib and only in 3/43 (7%) treated with lenvatinib. Drug dose reduction due to HFS was required in 19/74 (25.7%) and 3/165 (1.8%) patients treated with sorafenib and lenvatinib, respectively. HFS occurrence was significantly associated with a longer duration of therapy in both groups.
CONCLUSIONS
HFS was a frequent adverse event during both lenvatinib and sorafenib therapy, with a higher frequency and toxicity grade during sorafenib treatment. HFS was the most frequent reason for drug reduction or discontinuation in patient treated with sorafenib. Early diagnosis of HFS is important to allow early intervention, possibly in a multidisciplinary setting, and to avoid treatment discontinuation, which is highly relevant to obtain the maximum effectiveness of systemic therapy.
PubMed: 38954633
DOI: 10.1530/ETJ-24-0009 -
IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis... Jul 2024We introduce eFFT, an efficient method for the calculation of the exact Fourier transform of an asynchronous event stream. It is based on keeping the matrices involved...
We introduce eFFT, an efficient method for the calculation of the exact Fourier transform of an asynchronous event stream. It is based on keeping the matrices involved in the Radix-2 FFT algorithm in a tree data structure and updating them with the new events, extensively reusing computations, and avoiding unnecessary calculations while preserving exactness. eFFT can operate event-by-event, requiring for each event only a partial recalculation of the tree since most of the stored data are reused. It can also operate with event packets, using the tree structure to detect and avoid unnecessary and repeated calculations when integrating the different events within each packet to further reduce the number of operations. eFFT has been extensively evaluated with public datasets and experiments, validating its exactness, low processing time, and feasibility for online execution on resource-constrained hardware. We release a C++ implementation of eFFT to the community.
PubMed: 38954586
DOI: 10.1109/TPAMI.2024.3422209 -
IEEE Transactions on Image Processing :... Jul 2024Few-shot learning (FSL) aims at recognizing a novel object under limited training samples. A robust feature extractor (backbone) can significantly improve the...
Few-shot learning (FSL) aims at recognizing a novel object under limited training samples. A robust feature extractor (backbone) can significantly improve the recognition performance of the FSL model. However, training an effective backbone is a challenging issue since (1) designing and validating structures of backbones are time-consuming and expensive processes, and (2) a backbone trained on the known (base) categories is more inclined to focus on the textures of the objects it learns, which is hard to describe the novel samples. To solve these problems, we propose a feature mixture operation on the pre-trained (fixed) features: (1) We replace a part of the values of the feature map from a novel category with the content of other feature maps to increase the generalizability and diversity of training samples, which avoids retraining a complex backbone with high computational costs. (2) We use the similarities between the features to constrain the mixture operation, which helps the classifier focus on the representations of the novel object where these representations are hidden in the features from the pre-trained backbone with biased training. Experimental studies on five benchmark datasets in both inductive and transductive settings demonstrate the effectiveness of our feature mixture (FM). Specifically, compared with the baseline on the Mini-ImageNet dataset, it achieves 3.8% and 4.2% accuracy improvements for 1 and 5 training samples, respectively. Additionally, the proposed mixture operation can be used to improve other existing FSL methods based on backbone training.
PubMed: 38954579
DOI: 10.1109/TIP.2024.3411452 -
Journal of Medical Internet Research Jul 2024The patient-centered approach is essential for quality health care and patient safety. Understanding the service user's perspective on the factors maintaining the health...
Issues Related to the Use of Visual Social Networks and Perceived Usefulness of Social Media Literacy During the Recovery Phase: Qualitative Research Among Girls With Eating Disorders.
BACKGROUND
The patient-centered approach is essential for quality health care and patient safety. Understanding the service user's perspective on the factors maintaining the health problem is crucial for successful treatment, especially for patients who do not recognize their condition as clinically relevant or concerning. Despite the association between intensive use of visual social media and body dissatisfaction and eating disorders, little is known about the meanings users assign to posting or searching for edited photos and the strategies they use to protect themselves from digital risks.
OBJECTIVE
This study aims to examine how young women recovering from eating disorders in Northern Italy perceive the health risks and potential benefits associated with visual social networks (ie, Instagram and Snapchat). The literature has found these platforms to be detrimental to online body comparisons. It also explores the perceived usefulness, willingness, and personal interest in coconstructing social media literacy programs with girls recovering from eating disorders.
METHODS
A total of 30 semistructured interviews were conducted with adolescent girls aged 14-17 years at the end of their treatment for eating disorders. The following areas of research were addressed: (1) the meanings associated with the use of Instagram and Snapchat; (2) the investment in the photographic dimension and feedback; (3) the impact of visual social networks on body experiences; (4) the potential and risks perceived in their use; (5) the importance of supporting girls undergoing treatment for eating disorders in using social networks; and (6) the usefulness and willingness to co-design social network literacy programs. Content analysis was applied.
RESULTS
A total of 7 main contents emerged: active or passive role in using social networks, the impact of online interactions on body image, investment in the photographic dimension, effects on self-representation, perceived risks, self-protective strategies, and potential benefits. The findings highlight a strong awareness of the processes that trigger body comparisons in the virtual context, creating insecurity and worsening the relationship with oneself. The self-protective behaviors identified are the development of critical thinking, the avoidance of sensitive content, increased control over social networking site use, and a certain skepticism toward developing antagonistic ideologies. All these topics were considered fundamental.
CONCLUSIONS
The findings provide important insights for health professionals working with youth in preparing media literacy programs. These programs aim to reduce potential risks and amplify the positive effects of online resources. They underscore the importance of addressing this issue during hospitalization to develop skills and critical thinking aimed at changing small habits that perpetuate the problem in everyday life. The inherent limitations in current service practices, which may not adequately address individual needs or impact posttreatment life, must also be considered.
Topics: Humans; Female; Social Media; Adolescent; Feeding and Eating Disorders; Qualitative Research; Italy
PubMed: 38954459
DOI: 10.2196/53334 -
Behavior Research Methods Jul 2024Whether and how well people can behave randomly is of interest in many areas of psychological research. The ability to generate randomness is often investigated using...
Whether and how well people can behave randomly is of interest in many areas of psychological research. The ability to generate randomness is often investigated using random number generation (RNG) tasks, in which participants are asked to generate a sequence of numbers that is as random as possible. However, there is no consensus on how best to quantify the randomness of responses in human-generated sequences. Traditionally, psychologists have used measures of randomness that directly assess specific features of human behavior in RNG tasks, such as the tendency to avoid repetition or to systematically generate numbers that have not been generated in the recent choice history, a behavior known as cycling. Other disciplines have proposed measures of randomness that are based on a more rigorous mathematical foundation and are less restricted to specific features of randomness, such as algorithmic complexity. More recently, variants of these measures have been proposed to assess systematic patterns in short sequences. We report the first large-scale integrative study to compare measures of specific aspects of randomness with entropy-derived measures based on information theory and measures based on algorithmic complexity. We compare the ability of the different measures to discriminate between human-generated sequences and truly random sequences based on atmospheric noise, and provide a systematic analysis of how the usefulness of randomness measures is affected by sequence length. We conclude with recommendations that can guide the selection of appropriate measures of randomness in psychological research.
PubMed: 38954396
DOI: 10.3758/s13428-024-02456-7 -
Neotropical Entomology Jul 2024Various factors, including environmental variables, influence the behavior of aquatic insects. However, our understanding of insect behavior and their relationships with...
Various factors, including environmental variables, influence the behavior of aquatic insects. However, our understanding of insect behavior and their relationships with these variables remains limited. One important variable is water turbidity, which may be exacerbated by soil erosion, directly impacting visibility in the water and potentially affecting the organism's behaviors. In this study, we investigated larval behavior across seven Odonata species under controlled conditions, examining variations in behavioral diversity (frequency and type) associated with sex and three levels of water turbidity. Our findings revealed that heightened water turbidity correlated with increased behavior frequency, possibly attributable to predator avoidance in darker, seemingly safer habitats. Furthermore, behavior diversity differed between sexes, being higher for males in certain categories and for females in others. Anisoptera species predominantly displayed behaviors like resting, eating, and prey capture, whereas Zygoptera larvae were often observed perching and walking, possibly indicative of distinct predator response strategies. Behaviors shared by Anisoptera larvae could be associated with similar responses to predators and capture of prey. Our study found an increased frequency of behaviors when the larvae are in water with higher turbidity. Behavior frequency disparities between the sexes were observed across various behaviors, likely influenced by species-specific activity levels and individual behavioral plasticity in response to environmental cues. Overall, individuals exhibited heightened behavioral activity in environments with elevated turbidity, potentially reflecting a perceived lower risk environment.
PubMed: 38954393
DOI: 10.1007/s13744-024-01170-5