Overall, de novo cancer incidence was comparable to that in the general population (standard incidence ratio 0.92; 95% CI, 0.83-1.01). De novo cancer risk was significantly lower in patients with idiopathic/congenital GHD (0.64; 0.43-0.91), but similar in those with pituitary/hypothalamic tumors or other etiologies versus the general population. Neither adult-onset nor childhood-onset GHD was associated with increased de novo cancer risks. Neutral effects were observed in lipids/fasting blood glucose levels.

These final KIMS cohort data support the safety of long-term GH replacement in adults with GHD as prescribed in routine clinical practice.

These final KIMS cohort data support the safety of long-term GH replacement in adults with GHD as prescribed in routine clinical practice.

There are inequalities experienced by minority ethnic groups in the UK in organ donation and transplant services, with significant variation in relation to demand for, access to and waiting times for these services.

A narrative review of research obtained via several databases, including PubMed and Medline, was conducted.

A vision of equity and inclusion, which meets the need of the heterogeneous UK population, can only be realized by adopting a culturally competent approach to systems-wide working in organ donation in four core areas-transplant services; workforce and staff training; diversity and inclusion research; and public engagement.

Most of the data on the background of organ donors and recipients use general categories such as Asian or Black. We need to progress to a position of more granular data by more specific ethnicity so that we can better understand the trends and target action accordingly.

By positively embracing the heterogeneity of the UK population, demand for transplantation can be reduced through a sustained commitment to public health interventions and culturally competent approaches in the management of long-term conditions.

Improved access to transplantation and reduced waiting times can be achieved to increase the number of organ donors from minority ethnic groups if there are concerted and adequately resourced culturally competent interventions with concomitant evaluation programmes.

Improved access to transplantation and reduced waiting times can be achieved to increase the number of organ donors from minority ethnic groups if there are concerted and adequately resourced culturally competent interventions with concomitant evaluation programmes.Temporally stable patterns of neural coordination among distributed brain regions are crucial for survival. Recently, many studies highlight association between healthy aging and modifications in organization of functional brain networks, across various time-scales. Nonetheless, quantitative characterization of temporal stability of functional brain networks across healthy aging remains unexplored. This study introduces a data-driven unsupervised approach to capture high-dimensional dynamic functional connectivity (dFC) via low-dimensional patterns and subsequent estimation of temporal stability using quantitative metrics. Healthy aging related changes in temporal stability of dFC were characterized across resting-state, movie-viewing, and sensorimotor tasks (SMT) on a large (n = 645) healthy aging dataset (18-88 years). Prominent results reveal that (1) whole-brain temporal dynamics of dFC movie-watching task is closer to resting-state than to SMT with an overall trend of highest temporal stability observed during SMT followed by movie-watching and resting-state, invariant across lifespan aging, (2) in both tasks conditions stability of neurocognitive networks in young adults is higher than older adults, and (3) temporal stability of whole brain resting-state follows a U-shaped curve along lifespan-a pattern shared by sensorimotor network stability indicating their deeper relationship. Overall, the results can be applied generally for studying cohorts of neurological disorders using neuroimaging tools.The litter size of mouse strains is determined by the number of oocytes naturally ovulated. Many attempts have been made to increase litter sizes by conventional superovulation regimens (e.g., using equine or human gonadotropins, eCG/hCG but had limited success because of unexpected decreases in the numbers of embryos surviving to term. Here, we examined whether rat-derived anti-inhibin monoclonal antibodies (AIMAs) could be used for this purpose. When C57BL/6 female mice were treated with an AIMA and mated, the number of healthy offspring per mouse increased by 1.4-fold (11.9 vs. 8.6 in controls). By contrast, treatment with eCG/hCG or anti-inhibin serum resulted in fewer offspring than in nontreated controls. The overall efficiency of production based on all females treated (including nonpregnant ones) was improved 2.4 times with AIMA compared with nontreated controls. The AIMA treatment was also effective in ICR mice, increasing the litter size from 15.3 to 21.2 pups. We then applied this technique to an in vivo genome-editing method (improved genome-editing via oviductal nucleic acid delivery, i-GONAD) to produce C57BL/6 mice deficient for tyrosinase. The mean litter size following i-GONAD increased from 4.8 to 7.3 after the AIMA treatment and genetic modifications were confirmed in 80/88 (91%) of the offspring. Thus, AIMA treatment is a promising method for increasing the litter size of mice and may be applied for the easy proliferation of mouse colonies as well as in vivo genetic manipulation, especially when the mouse strains are sensitive to handling.

The relationship between cigarette smoking status and SARS-CoV-2 infection and coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) severity is highly debated. We conducted a retrospective cohort study of >2.4 million adults in a large healthcare system to evaluate whether smoking is associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection and disease severity.

This retrospective cohort study of 2,427,293 adults in KPNC from 3/5/2020 (baseline) to 12/31/2020 (pre-vaccine) included smoking status (current, former, never), socio-demographics, and comorbidities from the electronic health record. SARS-CoV-2 infection (identified by a positive PCR test) and COVID-19 severity (hospitalization, ICU admission or death ≤30 days of COVID-19 diagnosis) were estimated in time-to-event analyses using Cox proportional hazard regression models adjusting for covariates. Secondary analyses examined COVID-19 severity among patients with COVID-19 using logistic regression.

During the study, 44,270 patients had SARS-CoV-2 infection. Current smoking was assigation. Results support prioritizing individuals with smoking-related comorbidities for vaccine outreach and treatments as they become available.Alzheimer’s disease (AD) patients suffer progressive cerebral atrophy before dementia onset. However, the region-specific atrophic processes and the influences of age and apolipoprotein E (APOE) on atrophic trajectory are still unclear. By mapping the region-specific nonlinear atrophic trajectory of whole cerebrum from amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI) to AD based on longitudinal structural magnetic resonance imaging data from Alzheimer’s disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) database, we unraveled a quadratic accelerated atrophic trajectory of 68 cerebral regions from aMCI to AD, especially in the superior temporal pole, caudate, and hippocampus. Besides, interaction analyses demonstrated that APOE ε4 carriers had faster atrophic rates than noncarriers in 8 regions, including the caudate, hippocampus, insula, etc.; younger patients progressed faster than older patients in 32 regions, especially for the superior temporal pole, hippocampus, and superior temporal gyrus; and 15 regions demonstrated complex interaction among age, APOE, and disease progression, including the caudate, hippocampus, etc. (P  less then  0.05/68, Bonferroni correction). Finally, Cox proportional hazards regression model based on the identified region-specific biomarkers could effectively predict the time to AD conversion within 10 years. In summary, cerebral atrophic trajectory mapping could help a comprehensive understanding of AD development and offer potential biomarkers for predicting AD conversion.An accurate quantitative method for four prohibited ephedrine substances in human urine has been established, based on ultra-performance liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS/MS). The quantitative bias caused by pretreatment operations and matrix effects was reduced by the dilute and shoot pretreatment method. The good separation of isomers was achieved with the advantages of the UPLC instrument and Agilent Poroshell 120 EC-C8 UPLC column. Stable quantitative ions were selected during the analysis with MS/MS. The result of the method validation experiment showed an excellent linearity between 50% and 200% threshold concentration with a correlation coefficient (r2) greater than 0.999. The coefficient of variation at the limit of quantification and threshold was less then 20% and 10%, respectively. The uncertainty was below the maximum uncertainty specified in the technical document of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). The analytical result using this method has passed the WADA-external quality assessment scheme. The anti-doping laboratory has applied the method in routine tests and reported adverse analytical finding.

Little is known about the international impact of E-cigarette or Vaping-Associated Lung Injury (’EVALI’) on youth perceptions of vaping harms.

Repeat cross-sectional online surveys of youth aged 16-19 years in England, Canada, and the United States before (2017, 2018), during (2019 August/September), and after (2020 February/March, 2020 August) the 'EVALI’ outbreak (N = 63380). Logistic regressions assessed trends, country differences, and associations between exposure to negative news stories about vaping and vaping harm perceptions.

Exposure to negative news stories increased between 2017 and February-March 2020 in England (12.6% to 34.2%), Canada (16.7% to 56.9%), and the United States (18.0% to 64.6%), accelerating during (2019) and immediately after (February-March 2020) the outbreak (p < .001) before returning to 2019 levels by August 2020. Similarly, the accurate perception that vaping is less harmful than smoking declined between 2017 and February-March 2020 in England (77.3% to 62.2%), Canadwhile perceptions of harm were sustained. Exposure to negative news stories also predicted two of the three harm perception measures. Overall, findings suggest that 'EVALI’ may have exacerbated youth’s perceptions of vaping harms internationally.Ribonucleic acid (RNA) is a pivotal nucleic acid that plays a crucial role in regulating many biological activities. Recently, one study utilized a machine learning algorithm to automatically classify RNA structural events generated by a Mycobacterium smegmatis porin A nanopore trap. Although it can achieve desirable classification results, compared with deep learning (DL) methods, this classic machine learning requires domain knowledge to manually extract features, which is sophisticated, labor-intensive and time-consuming. Meanwhile, the generated original RNA structural events are not strictly equal in length, which is incompatible with the input requirements of DL models. To alleviate this issue, we propose a sequence-to-sequence (S2S) module that transforms the unequal length sequence (UELS) to the equal length sequence. Furthermore, to automatically extract features from the RNA structural events, we propose a sequence-to-sequence neural network based on DL. In addition, we add an attention mechanism to capture vital information for classification, such as dwell time and blockage amplitude.