University Health Network

Three-dimensional reconfigurable magnetic microswarms with boundary-transcending capabilities

Swarm behaviors are prevalent in nature and have inspired many engineering designs. However, achieving artificial swarms capable of reversibly migrating through fluids against gravity and transcending physical boundaries, such as solid–liquid and liquid-air interfaces, remains ch...

Pharmacists’ Prioritization of Patients for Discharge Medication Reconciliation at a Tertiary Academic Centre

Background: Involvement of pharmacists in discharge medication reconciliation (DMR) reduces readmissions when DMR is delivered as part of a medication management bundle. With current staffing and workload, pharmacists are unable to complete DMR for every inpatient. Consequently,...

Racial, Ethnic, and Immigration-Related Disparities Across the Gastrointestinal Care Continuum: A Scoping Review

Background: Gastrointestinal (GI) diseases contribute substantially to healthcare utilization and chronic disease burden through recurrent symptoms, ongoing specialist care, and diagnostic evaluation. However, disparities related to race, ethnicity, and immigration status may ari...

Pediatric Respiratory Failure and Support With Prolonged Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation: Multicenter Cohort Using the Extracorporeal Life Support Organization Registry, 1989–2021

OBJECTIVES: To characterize outcomes in children supported with 14 days or more of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) for respiratory indications. DESIGN: Retrospective analysis of the Extracorporeal Life Support Organization (ELSO) registry. SETTING: ECMO centers contrib...

Sex differences in concussion incidence before and during the COVID-19 pandemic: a population-based study (2017–2022)

OBJECTIVES: This population-based retrospective study investigated the impact of sex on annual case counts and incidence rates of concussions before and during COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS: Using administrative data from ICES, we identified 393,397 individuals with concussion betwe...

Augmented reality for hand function rehabilitation: assessing perceptions of feasibility and meaningfulness among individuals with cervical spinal cord injury

Abstract Background: Creating high-quality, home-based rehabilitation tools is integral for hand function recovery among individuals living with cervical spinal cord injury (cSCI). Specifically, the effectiveness of home-based exercises is limited by compliance issues and a lack...

ATAD2 is a novel regulator of myogenesis and autophagy in skeletal muscles

Abstract The nuclear protein ATAD2 (ATPase family AAA domain containing 2) is a known positive regulator of cell proliferation in various cancer types. The expression and functional roles of ATAD2 in skeletal muscle cells are unknown. In this study, we used transient and stable k...

Purinergic Receptor P2Y2 Regulates Neurogenesis and Functional Recovery Following Spinal Cord Injury in Zebrafish

In contrast to mammals, adult zebrafish (Danio rerio) undergo neuronal regeneration following spinal cord injury (SCI), thereby allowing successful functional recovery. The adaptive regenerative response to SCI in zebrafish includes injury-induced proliferation of ependymal radia...

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...

Growth factor-based manufacturing of human pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes using the vertical wheel bioreactor system

Abstract Background Multiple protocols have been reported for the large-scale generation of human pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes (hPSC-CMs) in bioreactors using small molecules; however, no comparable bioreactor-based methods have been established using growth facto...

Difficult-to-treat systemic lupus erythematosus: from refractory disease to a multidimensional clinical trajectory

Difficult-to-treat (D2T) systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is increasingly recognised in clinical practice but is still conceptually underdeveloped. In contrast to rheumatoid arthritis and psoriatic arthritis, for which formal D2T frameworks have been proposed, SLE still lacks a...

Central Sleep Apnea: Pathophysiology, Diagnosis and Classification.

Central sleep apnea (CSA) is a heterogeneous and relatively rare sleep breathing disorder characterized by recurrent reductions in respiratory drive and airflow during sleep. Its complex and not fully understood pathophysiology reflects challenges in respiratory control mechanism...

ALY688 Protects Against Myocardial Ischemia‐Reperfusion Injury via Direct Effects and Rab8a‐Dependent Extracellular Vesicles

ABSTRACT Despite advances in percutaneous coronary intervention, ischemia‐reperfusion (IR) injury remains a major cause of morbidity and mortality. Adiponectin confers broad cardioprotective effects, motivating the development of adiponectin receptor agonists. Here, we investigat...

Nonviral delivery of chemically modified tRNA rescues nonsense mutations in cystic fibrosis

Suppressor transfer RNAs (sup-tRNAs) can rescue disease-causing nonsense mutations by promoting readthrough of premature termination codons (PTCs). Their clinical translation is limited by suboptimal activity and inefficient in vivo delivery. In this work, we combined site-specif...

Follistatin Alleviates Vascular Dysfunction by Reducing Oxidative Stress and Promoting Browning in Perivascular Adipose Tissue

BACKGROUND: Essential hypertension, characterized by vascular dysfunction, remains a leading modifiable cause of death globally. Perivascular adipose tissue (PVAT), which normally reduces vasoconstriction, becomes contractile in hypertension due to increased reactive oxygen speci...

Expanding Remote Patient Monitoring for Pre‐Lung Transplant Candidates With Interstitial Lung Disease

ABSTRACT Introduction Interstitial lung disease (ILD) is a primary indication for lung transplantation (LTx). Close monitoring of disease progression informs transplant urgency, timing, medical and pre‐habilitation management, and remote home monitoring may support frequent asses...

Adapting computerised language sample analysis for Jamaican Creole-Jamaican English-speaking preschoolers: A pilot study

This pilot study examines the feasibility of adapting the Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts (SALT) for Jamaican Creole-Jamaican English-speaking preschoolers. Standard SALT protocols, designed for monolingual English speakers, risk misrepresenting bilingual children's l...

Identification, validation, and prediction of longitudinal recovery phenotypes in degenerative cervical myelopathy: analysis of prospective cohorts and a randomised controlled trial

Background Symptom evolution in degenerative cervical myelopathy (DCM) is traditionally characterized by severity of neurological deficit. A recent expert consensus challenged this view, proposing that DCM fluctuates across neurological, functional and health-related quality of l...

The future of high-dose, high-intensity neurorehabilitation: Consensus-based core recommendations from the fourth Stroke Recovery and Rehabilitation Roundtable

Objective: Convergent evidence indicates that high-dose, high-intensity rehabilitation (HDHI) improves outcomes beyond usual care after stroke, yet implementation remains limited. While questions of optimal dose, timing, and delivery format continue to be refined, the biological...

Neural dynamics underlying minute-timescale persistent behaviour in the human brain

Pursuing longer-term goals relies on representations of task context that can be maintained over long periods of time and switched flexibly when goals change. Little is known about the neural substrate for maintaining context representations on the minute-timescale on which human...