Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center Shreveport

Nociceptin/Orphanin FQ Peptide (NOP) Receptor Agonists as Novel Analgesics in Pain Medicine

Chronic pain is a major cause of disability worldwide, impacting around 20% of adults globally. Conventional mu-opioid peptide (MOP) receptor agonists provide effective analgesia; however, their prolonged use is restricted by severe dose-limiting toxicities such as opioid-induced...

Consensus Ensembles for Zero-Shot Algorithm Classification with Large Language Models

Manual classification of algorithmic problems is costly and inconsistent, although it remains essential for curriculum sequencing, recommendation systems, and quality control on competitive programming platforms. To address this limitation, this study investigates whether consens...

RhoA Y42C drives cell plasticity and PD-1-mediated immune evasion of diffuse gastric cancer

Diffuse gastric cancer (DGC) is an aggressive gastric cancer subtype with a poor prognosis. The RHOA Y42C mutation is recurrent in DGC, but its independent oncogenic role is unclear. Next-Generation Sequencing of 431 DGC cases revealed that most RHOA mutations occurred without CD...

Expanded protocadherin-1 usage reveals a broader hantavirus entry landscape

Mammalian hantaviruses are RNA viruses that cause hantavirus cardiopulmonary syndrome in the Americas and hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome in Eurasia. The cellular entry mechanisms of most hantaviruses remain poorly defined. To examine entry by phylogenetically distinct hant...

Characteristics of solid versus hematologic malignancies in people living with human immunodeficiency virus

People living with HIV (PLWH) face increased risks of both AIDS-defining and non-AIDS-defining malignancies. We characterized the age-standardized cancer burden, compared clinical characteristics and survival outcomes between hematologic and solid malignancies in PLWH, and perfor...

Paracetamol: A History of Assumptions, Errors, and Evidence Reversals in Pain Management

Abstract Purpose of Review Paracetamol (acetaminophen) is among the most widely used medications in the history of humanity for treatment of pain conditions. For more than half a century, it has occupied a unique position as the archetypal first-line analgesic and antipyretic, re...

Computational pathology for skeletal muscle disease in mouse models using topological signatures and visual word encoding

Tissue analysis is considered the gold standard for the diagnosis of a wide spectrum of disorders. However, pathologists perform labor-intensive evaluations to ensure accurate results. Computational pathology has made significant advances in the development of task-specific predi...

Physician Perceptions of Particulate Versus Non-Particulate Steroids in Epidural Steroid Injections

Background Epidural steroid injections (ESIs) are widely used for the treatment of chronic spinal pain, particularly in cervical and lumbar radiculopathy. Corticosteroids used in ESIs are broadly classified as particulate or non-particulate formulations, each with distinct safety...

mTOR inhibition augments antitumor immune effector response by reprogramming the TP53-mutant, immune-cold HNSCC tumor microenvironment

Resistance to immunotherapy remains a major clinical challenge in TP53 -mutant head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC), a disease subset characterized by immune exclusion, high recurrence, and poor outcomes. Given the constitutive activation of PI3K/AKT/mTOR signaling in TP...