Case Western Reserve University

Diblock/Triblock Composition Controls Pore Structure and Mechanical Response in Hierarchically Ordered Hydrogels

Abstract Hydrogels are ubiquitous in a range of applications, including drug delivery, tissue engineering, and personal care products. The prevalence is a direct result of fundamental advances in the physics and chemistry of swollen networks that enable tailorable properties to e...

Adapting and implementing “Compassionatomy”: a compassion-cultivating approach to humanistic anatomy training for medical students

Abstract Background Humanistic practices offer many benefits in medical education. Compassionatomy, developed at University of California San Diego, incorporates humanistic compassion-cultivating practices into anatomy labs and was found to increase identification with body donor...

Predicting 5-Year Mortality After Prosthetic Joint Infection Using a 30-Item Accumulated Frailty Index in a 13,371-Patient Multicenter Cohort

Background Prosthetic joint infection (PJI) involves a significant mortality risk, with 26-30% of patients dying within 5 years. Current risk assessment tools offer limited prognostic accuracy for PJI patients. This study aimed to develop a prognostic model for 5-year all-cause m...

Genomic and Transcriptomic Landscapes of MEN1-Wild-Type Low-Grade Metastatic Pancreatic NETs Uncover Key Oncogenic Drivers and Targetable Pathways

Sporadic pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (pNETs) with wild type MEN1 represent a major yet largely ignored subset whose biology and metastatic potential remain poorly understood. Because metastasis can occur despite low histologic grade and modest mutational burden, we hypothesi...

Lipid-driven membrane remodeling engages a lysosome-dependent adaptive repair program during retinal aging

Abstract Age-associated remodeling of membrane lipid composition has been implicated in cellular dysfunction, yet the mechanisms linking lipid changes to membrane integrity and disease remain poorly defined. In the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE), lipid dysregulation is strongly...

Types of Self-Expandable Metal Stents for Palliative Drainage of Unresectable Extrahepatic Malignant Biliary Obstruction: A Network Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials

Background: The optimal self-expandable metallic stent (SEMS) choice for endoscopic drainage of unresectable extrahepatic malignant biliary obstruction (MBO) with endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP) remains unclear due to limited randomized controlled trial (RCT...

Changes in External Developmental Assets Across Adolescence in Low‐Income Urban Youth

ABSTRACT This study investigated longitudinal changes in external developmental assets (EDA)—support, empowerment, boundaries & expectations across ecological and interpersonal contexts of family, peers, school, and neighborhood—among predominantly Black, low‐income urban adolesc...

Breathing Retraining and Laryngeal Control in Exercise-Induced Laryngeal Obstruction and Breathing Pattern Dysfunction: A Practical Therapy Model for Clinicians

Objective: Exercise-induced laryngeal obstruction (EILO) and breathing pattern dysfunction (BPD) are common, yet frequently misdiagnosed, contributors to exertional dyspnea, especially in adolescent and young adult athletes. Despite increasing recognition of behavioral interventi...

The beginning of the end for manual chart review: LLM-mediated database construction

Manual clinical data abstraction is the reference standard for research databases but is labor-intensive, costly, and susceptible to human error. We evaluated the accuracy of a locally deployed open-source large language model (LLM) framework for automated extraction of structure...

“They could …distance themselves from me claiming I still had Ebola”: experiences of Ebola virus disease survivors in Central Uganda

Ebola continues to be a great public health challenge in Uganda where it is vulnerable to future Ebola outbreaks. Survivors are likely to continue experiencing the after effects of Ebola during the recovery period. The study was conducted to explore experiences of Ebola survivors...

Cardiac imaging biomarkers of heart failure in diabetes for phenotyping, risk stratification, and evaluating therapeutic response

Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is a well-established risk factor for the development of heart failure (HF), yet HF risk within this population is highly heterogeneous. Appropriate biomarker selection and a limited mechanistic understanding of the phenotypic subtypes of HF in T2D...

Educational approaches to teach the 2017 periodontal classification to dental healthcare professionals: A scoping review

Abstract Background Diagnostic errors are a major concern, particularly when long‐standing diagnostic criteria are updated. Following the 2017 World Workshop on the Classification of Periodontal and Peri‐implant Diseases and Conditions, a new classification was released in 2018....

The SNA-Evaluation Framework: Advancing the Use of Social Network Analysis in Program Evaluation

As evaluation increasingly addresses the complexities inherent in dynamic program systems, social network analysis (SNA) offers significant opportunities alongside notable challenges. While SNA can reveal patterns of collaboration, communication, and influence, its application is...

Bias Testing and Mitigation in Black Box LLMs using Metamorphic Relations

The widespread deployment of Large Language Models (LLMs) has intensified concerns about subtle social biases embedded in their outputs. Existing guardrails often fail when faced with indirect or contextually complex bias-inducing prompts. To address these limitations, we propose...

Curvature-induced smectic-C order of tangentially anchored hard spherocylinders on a sphere with a rigidly locked director field

We study the strict locked-orientation limit of hard spherocylinders on a sphere, in which the rod axes are rigidly locked to a prescribed tangential director field. The bulk hard-rod phase diagram contains no smectic-C (Sm-C) phase, so any coherent tilt found here is curvature-i...

Splicing genes as main targets of differential splicing

Abstract Splicing of transcripts via the spliceosome machinery is a complex process involving a multitude of proteins and short noncoding RNAs. In addition to full-length transcripts with all exons in the genomically encoded order, alternatively spliced transcripts can also be pr...

Platelet Reactivity and Sex Differences: Clinical Implications for Women

Platelets are central to hemostasis and thrombosis. Excessive platelet activation contributes to arterial thrombotic events, including myocardial infarction, ischemic stroke, and complications of peripheral artery disease, whereas excessive platelet inhibition increases bleeding...

Stereotactic Body Radiotherapy vs Moderately Hypofractionated IMRT for Localized Intermediate-Risk Prostate Cancer

Importance The treatment of prostate cancer with radiotherapy is evolving. How quickly radiotherapy can be delivered, and the relative risks and benefits of such a treatment, is of significant public interest. Objective To determine whether stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) w...

Characterization of microbial dark matter at scale with MetaSBT and taxonomy-aware Sequence Bloom Trees

ABSTRACT Metagenomics has become a powerful tool for studying microbial communities, allowing researchers to investigate microbial diversity within complex environmental samples. Recent advances in sequencing technology have enabled the recovery of near-complete microbial genomes...

Blood pressure Time in Target Range and Clinical Outcomes in Chronic Kidney Disease

BACKGROUND: We examined the association between blood pressure (BP) time in target range and clinical outcomes in chronic kidney disease (CKD). METHODS: In 1908 participants in the Chronic Renal Insufficiency Cohort study who had BP measured at each visit for the first five years...