Massachusetts General Hospital

The impact of COVID-19 on all-cause mortality and life expectancy: findings from a population-based cohort in uMkhanyakude district, northern KwaZulu-natal

Abstract Background Despite the comprehensive death reporting system in South Africa, significant gaps persist in our understanding of the pandemic’s impact in rural areas. Methods We computed monthly death counts stratified by demographic factors from a population-based demograp...

Social Risk Screening and Referrals in the Pediatric Inpatient Setting

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES: Many professional organizations recently recommended inpatient screening for social risks. Although prior studies have explored social risk screening rates in children's hospitals, many excluded community hospitals and lacked detail on screening practices....

Children’s health before, during, and after parental/caregiver immigration detention in the United States: findings from a cross-sectional survey

Background Parental immigration detention is a significant yet understudied stressor with potential consequences for children's well-being. We examined children's general health before, during, and after parental detention, and compared to the United States (US) pediatric populat...

Human-in-the-loop large language model framework for identification of cutaneous immune-related adverse events

This study evaluated a retrieval-augmented, multi-agent large language model (LLM)–driven, human-in-the-loop framework for detecting cutaneous immune-related adverse events (cirAEs) from clinical notes. Compared with the unassisted manual-review group, the LLM-assisted group demo...

Characterizing In-Home Safety Challenges and Strategies for Children With Medical Complexity

OBJECTIVES: Medical advances have allowed more children with medical complexity (CMC) to live at home, but previous research has linked implanted tubes to patient safety events. We aimed to characterize challenges and strategies parents use to deliver their children's tube-relate...

Clinician Use of an Artificial Intelligence–Enabled Clinical Information Platform

Importance Despite growing interest in the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in medicine, empirical evidence on how clinicians use these tools is limited. Objective To characterize clinician use of an AI-enabled clinical information platform, the distribution of use across the...

Poison exon splicing in the human brain provides a new paradigm for understanding and targeting neurological disorders

Poison exons are highly conserved exons whose inclusion creates premature termination codons and triggers nonsense-mediated decay (NMD) of the mature transcript. Despite their important role in post-transcriptional regulation, poison exons remain poorly annotated due to the lack...

Support or Simplicity: Evaluating Mesh Use in Two-Stage Prepectoral Breast Reconstruction

Background: The routine use of surgical mesh in prepectoral two-stage breast reconstruction has increased despite limited high-level evidence supporting its necessity. The purpose of this study was to evaluate whether mesh use impacts postoperative complications, reconstructive f...

Hemispheric Asymmetry of Neuroimaging Biomarkers in Early Onset Alzheimer's Disease: Clinical and Cognitive Outcomes

Objective Individuals diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease (AD) often exhibit amyloid, tau, and atrophy predominantly in the left or right hemisphere, but group‐level analyses typically ignore inter‐individual variability and changing asymmetry patterns when averaging data across p...

Cross-sectional Comparison of the PREVENT and Pooled Cohort Equations for 10-Year Atherosclerotic Cardiovascular Risk Estimates in a U.S. Cohort of Black and Latina Transgender Women with HIV

Background: Transgender women with HIV face higher rates of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) than the general population. However, ASCVD risk estimators use binary sex variables that may misclassify their risk. We examined the effects of sex variable inputs in the P...

Proton Radiotherapy Decreases Incidence of Radiation‐Induced Second Malignant Neoplasms Compared to Photon Radiotherapy in Patients With Retinoblastoma

Retinoblastoma is the most common primary intraocular neoplasm in children. Use of radiotherapy has decreased due to the incidence of second malignant neoplasms (SMNs). In our study, photon (n = 42) and proton (n = 66) radiotherapy cohorts had median follow-up of 28.7 and 18.2 ye...

Svep1 orchestrates distal airway patterning and alveolar differentiation in murine lung development

Abstract Disruptions in airway branching or alveolar differentiation during lung development can lead to severe respiratory deficiencies and neonatal death. The molecular mechanisms governing branching patterning and early alveolar formation remain elusive. Loss of Svep1 function...

Improving neuropathological reconstruction fidelity via AI slice imputation

Neuropathological analyses benefit from spatially precise volumetric reconstructions that enhance anatomical delineation and improve morphometric accuracy. Prior work has shown the feasibility of reconstructing 3D brain volumes from 2D dissection photographs. However, these outpu...

Plasma Phosphorylated Tau 217 Percentage by Race and Ethnicity in Preclinical Alzheimer Disease

Importance In trials targeting preclinical Alzheimer disease (AD), defined as amyloid pathology without cognitive symptoms, racial and ethnic differences in plasma phosphorylated tau 217 percentage (%p-tau217) may influence screening eligibility. Objective To characterize racial...

Zingiberis Rhizoma Ethanol Extract Attenuates Recognition Memory Deficits and Neuroinflammation in a Mouse Model of Bilateral Common Carotid Artery Stenosis

Chronic cerebral hypoperfusion (CCH), a key contributor to vascular dementia (VaD), causes white matter injury and neuroinflammation. We evaluated the neuroprotective effects of 6-gingerol-rich Zingiberis Rhizoma ethanol extract (ZRex) in a mouse bilateral common carotid artery s...

Multimodal folate receptor-targeted liposomes enable photo-chemo-antibiotic synergy for peritoneal cancer therapy

The complex and heterogeneous nature of cancer presents significant challenges to effective treatment. Because no single therapy can overcome this complex challenge, rational combination strategies that concurrently target tumor survival pathways and engage non-overlapping mechan...

Delays in breast cancer presentation, diagnosis, and treatment in young women

BACKGROUND: Breast cancer (BC) in young patients is often identified at later stages, which can result in poor prognosis. It is important to investigate the factors influencing care delays and how delays affect outcomes. METHODS: This study included women aged ≤40 years at diagno...

Diabetes‐Associated Cognitive Impairment: Pathophysiology and Emerging Therapies

ABSTRACT Diabetes‐associated cognitive impairment (DACI) is a common yet underrecognized condition, manifesting along a spectrum from mild cognitive impairment to dementia. DACI encompasses patients who develop vascular dementia (VaD) or Alzheimer's disease (AD) with diabetes as...

Sleep trajectories in pregnancy: associations with trauma exposure, PTSD, and postpartum depression

Sleep during the perinatal period is often highly disrupted due to maternal biopsychosocial changes that accompany pregnancy. Poor sleep quality is a symptom of PTSD, while insomnia often emerges after a traumatic event and commonly co-occurs with PTSD. Trauma exposure as well as...

Exploring transcriptomic and genomic latent variable correction approaches in differential expression analysis

Abstract Background Differential expression analysis is a central tool for studying the biological processes altered in human diseases via transcriptomic signatures. However, transcriptomic datasets are systematically confounded by latent variables from two distinct sources: unme...