Heidelberg University

Sex Differences in a Contemporary, Real-World Cohort of Patients with Transthyretin Amyloid Cardiomyopathy Treated with Tafamidis

INTRODUCTION: Tafamidis improves outcomes in patients with transthyretin amyloid cardiomyopathy (ATTR-CM) versus placebo. ATTR-CM has historically been considered a predominantly male disease, and women are underrepresented in prior studies. Sex-specific data in contemporary pati...

Estimating the lifetime costs associated with maternal alcohol consumption during pregnancy

Objectives Maternal alcohol consumption during pregnancy is a major, yet preventable, risk factor for fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD), which can lead to lifelong neurodevelopmental, educational, and social challenges. The economic burden of FASD in Germany remains poorly...

Functional characterization of snoRNA-derived RNA (sdRNA) expression in healthy hematopoiesis and acute myeloid leukemia

Abstract SnoRNAs are highly expressed in AML and have implications in leukemogenesis and leukemic maintenance. SnoRNAs can be further processed into snoRNA-derived RNAs (sdRNAs). The role of sdRNAs in AML and healthy hematopoiesis remains largely elusive. We characterized sdRNA a...

Systemic Metabolic Changes in Plasma of Patients with Myelodysplastic Neoplasms and Chronic Myelomonocytic Leukemia

Background: Myelodysplastic neoplasms (MDSs) are clonal hematopoietic stem cell disorders associated with ineffective hematopoiesis, chronic inflammation, and increased cardiovascular morbidity. Although metabolic dysregulation has been implicated in MDS pathogenesis, systemic me...

Barriers to birth preparedness and complication readiness in Tanzania: a narrative review through the lens of the Three Delays Model

Introduction Birth Preparedness and Complication Readiness (BPCR) is a key safe motherhood intervention aimed at reducing maternal and neonatal mortality through timely decision-making, delivery planning, and rapid response to obstetric emergencies. This narrative review synthesi...

A non-renormalization theorem for local functionals in ghost-free vector field theories coupled to dynamical geometry

A bstract We establish a non-renormalization theorem for a class of ghost-free local functionals describing massive vector field theories coupled to dynamical geometry. Under the assumptions of locality, Lorentz invariance, and validity of the effective field theory expansion bel...

Reproducible human reward imaging phenotypes exhibit differential sensitivity to dopamine D2 receptor antagonism

Abstract Human reward processing varies along cue-centric and outcome-centric axes, but a reproducible mechanistic account of individual variation in incentive salience attribution has been lacking. Using fMRI across five cohorts (N-total=1,251; N1=890; N2=245; N3=34; N4=48; N5=3...

Preparing for the tiny predators: Community readiness and perceptions of copepod-based dengue control in eastern guatemala

Background Dengue remains a persistent public health challenge in eastern Guatemala, particularly in communities where irregular water supply, domestic water storage, and limited sanitation infrastructure create favorable conditions for Aedes aegypti proliferation. As concerns in...

Luminescence dating of offshore tsunami deposits from the Shetland Islands, United Kingdom

Abstract. With onshore geological evidence of three tsunami events, the Shetland Islands (UK) yield the most-detailed Holocene tsunami record in the North Sea region. Lately, tsunami deposits were also identified in shallow waters offshore the Shetland Islands. These offshore tsu...

Sex-specific associations of the plasma-proteome with incident coronary artery disease

AIMS: The etiology of coronary artery Disease (CAD) appears different for men and women, yet insights into underlying sex-specific biological mechanisms are limited. We integrated genomic and proteomic analyses to investigate sex-specific associations of the plasma-proteome with...

From Sealed to Anchored: What a Consortium Ledger Adds to HMAC-Sealed IoT Audit Logs in Ambient Assisted Living

A symmetric integrity seal is worth exactly what its key is worth. Any party holding the keyed-hash (HMAC) key of an Internet of Things (IoT) audit trail can forge a record, re-seal a modified one, and leave no cryptographic trace, so an HMAC-sealed log establishes nothing to an...

Clinical outcome after rescue intracranial stenting: a comparison of the ACCLINO flex and the CREDO heal stenting platforms after failed mechanical thrombectomy

Abstract Purpose Mechanical thrombectomy (MT) is the first-line therapy for patients with acute ischemic stroke due to large vessel occlusion; however, despite substantial advances in MT techniques and devices, mechanical recanalization remains unsuccessful in up to 15% of patien...

Cullin 3 ubiquitin ligase regulates redox defense and metabolic programs in proximal tubule cells

Abstract Background Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is characterized by proximal tubule (PT) stress, oxidative injury, and metabolic dysfunction. Human kidney single-nucleus RNA-sequencing (snRNA-seq) identified enrichment of ubiquitin-dependent protein catabolic processes in injure...

Precise predictions for trilinear Higgs couplings and Higgs pair production in extended scalar sectors with anyH3 and anyHH

Abstract A central objective of future collider experiments is to probe the structure of the Higgs potential, which requires access to trilinear scalar couplings, in particular the self-coupling of the observed Higgs boson. While this coupling is fixed in the Standard Model (SM),...

Exercise Training in PAH: Methodological Ingenuity Meets Ethical Complexity

Nicola Benjamin, Ekkehard Grünig; Exercise Training in PAH: Methodological Ingenuity Meets Ethical Complexity, Annals of the American Thoracic Society, , a

Integrative Muscle-Adipose Score (IMAS)

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the potential of integrating muscle and fat compartments into a novel and unified score for outcome prediction in a bicentric European cohort of LT recipients. BACKGROUND: Body composition (BC) reflects nutritional status and metabolic reserves and influ...

Measurement Properties of Delirium Tools in Pediatric Intensive Care: A Systematic Review

CONTEXT: Delirium is common in pediatric intensive care units. Reliable tools are needed, but evidence on measurement properties remains fragmented. OBJECTIVES: To identify pediatric delirium tools and evaluate their measurement properties and certainty of evidence. DATA SOURCES:...

Chronic exposure to aflatoxin B1, ochratoxin A, and citrinin in women and children and associated health risk characterization: blood biomonitoring evidence from rural Bangladesh

Abstract Dietary exposure to mycotoxins—including aflatoxins (AFs), ochratoxin A (OTA), and citrinin (CIT)—represents an important health risk, particularly in low-resource settings with widespread food contamination. This study investigates mycotoxin exposure among 712 participa...

Identifying optimal dose head CT acquisition techniques through cluster analysis from 904,209 scans

Abstract Objectives To identify clinically established and frequently utilized routine head computed tomography (CT) acquisition techniques in children and adults that achieve lower radiation. Materials and methods The level of the analysis is at the CT scan (series) level. CT ac...

Federated Medical Image Segmentation under Real-World Label Noise: A Benchmark Suite for Noisy Label Learning Method Selection

Abstract While federated learning (FL) enables collaborative medical image segmentation without centralizing sensitive data, real-world deployment is frequently complicated by cross-site label imperfections such as contour disagreement, missing or additional structures, and confu...