Duke University

Deletion of P311 enhances regeneration in aged skeletal muscle

While aging results in marked decreases in the capacity of skeletal muscle to repair following injury, as well as increases in fibrosis, the pathways and factors that regulate these processes are poorly defined. P311/Nrep (P311) is a highly conserved protein known to promote fibr...

The global cardiovascular-kidney-liver-metabolic burden from 1990 to 2023

Background The cardiovascular-kidney-liver-metabolic (CKLM) framework represents the multi-organ interplay of systemic metabolic disorders that drive the global burden of cardiovascular diseases (CVD). Methods This study is a descriptive epidemiological analysis of the Global Bur...

AutoEDA: Enabling EDA Flow Automation through Microservice-Based LLM Agents

Electronic Design Automation (EDA) remains heavily reliant on tool command language (Tcl) scripting to drive complex RTL-to-GDSII flows. This scripting-based paradigm is labor-intensive, error-prone, and difficult to scale across large design projects. Recent advances in large la...

In vivo quantification of polyethylene wear in total ankle arthroplasty

Aims In vivo assessment of polyethylene (PE) wear in total ankle arthroplasty (TAA) relies on approximation using 2D metal interspace height (2D-MIH) loss on weightbearing radiographs. Weightbearing CT (WBCT), combined with distance mapping, may improve quantification of PE wear...

SNCA-targeted transcriptional repression therapy alleviates pathological and behavioral perturbations in a Parkinson's disease mouse model

Alpha-synuclein (SNCA) overexpression is implicated in Parkinson's disease (PD) pathogenesis, making SNCA downregulation a promising therapeutic strategy. We developed a SNCA -targeted transcriptional repression therapy using an all-in-one lentiviral vector (LV) carrying deactiva...

Developmental Pathways to Adult Mental Health in Adolescent Parents: Childhood and Early Adolescent Antecedents

This study examined three questions: (a) What are the childhood predictors of becoming a teenage parent (versus a first-time parent as a young adult)? (b) Does becoming a parent in the teen years carry higher risk of young-adult internalizing and externalizing problems than becom...

Cross-cultural adaptation and validation of the Localised Scleroderma Quality of Life Instrument (LoSQI): an international study

Juvenile localised scleroderma (jLS) is a rare disease which impacts negatively on health-related quality of life (HRQoL). We aimed to undertake the cross-cultural adaptation and validation of a novel disease-specific HRQoL measure, the Localised Scleroderma Quality of Life Instr...

Efficient nitrogen management as a win-win strategy for air quality, health, and climate

Reactive nitrogen (Nr) management links climate policy, air quality and food production, yet its combined impacts remain poorly quantified. Here, we conduct ensemble simulations with two global climate models, Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) and Community Earth System...

Tramadol Co‐Administration with Oxycodone or Hydrocodone Increases Opioid Burden without Improving Postoperative Pain Control

Tramadol is frequently co-prescribed with oxycodone or hydrocodone after surgery under the assumption that its dual mechanism of action provides an opioid-sparing benefit. However, evidence supporting this practice is limited and inconsistent. We conducted a secondary analysis of...

The Technology Dependence Index (TDI): Development and Validation in Neonatal and Pediatric Populations

The survival of infants and children with complex medical conditions continues to increase, underscoring the need to quantify technology dependence more effectively. Existing measures emphasize mortality risk and fail to capture the burden of ongoing technological support. To add...

Authentic and Sustained Family Partnership in Neonatal and Pediatric Research

Improving the health and well-being of children requires sustained partnerships with parents, community members, advocates, and researchers to identify and answer high-impact research questions. Meaningful engagement with families and communities in the design, conduct, and disse...

Data-driven prediction of fifteen-year all-cause mortality among 2.3 million individuals in the VA

ABSTRACT We present a data-driven framework to predict 15-year all-cause mortality using outpatient administrative records for 2.3 million Veterans in the largest integrated U.S. healthcare system. Rather than relying on predefined clinical phenotypes, we used the 1,000 most comm...

Acoustic virtual walls enable open, scalable, and programmable microfluidics

Microfluidic platforms are widely used across biomedical research, chemical synthesis, diagnostics, environmental monitoring, and materials science for precisely manipulating small volumes of fluids and suspended particles. However, conventional systems rely on narrow physical ch...

ICD ‐10‐ CM ‐Based Algorithms to Identify Bacteremia Incorporating Pathogen‐Specific Codes: A Validation Study

ABSTRACT Purpose Studying patients with bacteremia in real‐world data often requires using microbiologic data to confirm bacterial growth and species. When microbiologic data are unavailable, pathogen‐specific diagnostic codes may be used to classify the bacteremia type. We devel...

Approximately optimal search on a higher-dimensional sliding puzzle

Abstract Higher-dimensional sliding puzzles are constructed on the vertices of a d -dimensional hypercube, where $$2^d-l$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:msup> <mml:mn>2</mml:mn> <mml:mi>d</mml:mi> </mml:msup> <mml:mo>-</mml:mo> <mml:mi>...

Commensal bacteria inhibit viral infections via a tryptophan metabolite

Clinical outcomes following viral exposures exhibit substantial interindividual variability. Although developing evidence suggests commensal bacteria modulate viral infections, the specific bacteria and mechanisms remain underexplored. Here, we define a pathway by which viral inf...

Genomic catalogue of giant viruses reveals expanded diversity and functional potential

Nucleocytoplasmic large DNA and Mirusviricota viruses exhibit taxonomic richness which continually expands due to metagenomic sequencing. Here we curate a database of giant virus metagenome-assembled genomes (GVMAGs V2), comprising 8,508 species-level representatives from 18,727...

Physics-informed design of drug-excipient nanoparticles via free energy calculation and yoked deep learning

The discovery of self-assembling molecular systems is often constrained by the high computational cost of physics-based simulations and the limited generalizability of data-driven models trained on experimental datasets. This limits our ability to efficiently navigate massive des...

Longitudinal changes in gut microbiota across reproductive states in wild baboons

Background: In humans and other mammals, female reproduction is linked to extensive changes in physiology, immunity, hormones, and behavior. These changes likely shape, and may be shaped by, the composition of gut microbial communities. Characterizing the dynamics of gut microbia...

Cranio-orbital craniotomy via an eyebrow incision for resection of anterior clinoid and tuberculum sella meningiomas

Abstract Background Anterior clinoid meningiomas (ACM) and tuberculum sella meningiomas (TSM) are anterior skull base tumors that commonly cause visual deterioration. The supraorbital keyhole approach may be used to resect these tumors but is limited by restricted intraoperative...