Washington University in St. Louis

Geospatial analysis of the association of cardiometabolic diseases and incident Lewy body dementia in the Medicare population

Abstract INTRODUCTION: Research on the potential role of cardiometabolic diseases (CMDs) as risk factors for Lewy body dementia (LBD) is limited, and findings from existing studies remain inconclusive. We investigated the geospatial patterns of CMDs and the association with LBD a...

Prenatal Water Fluoride Exposure and Children’s Behavioral Problems

Importance Although fluoride exposure at high levels during the perinatal period has been associated with socioemotional problems among children, there is limited evidence regarding potential associations at lower levels of fluoride exposure, particularly in the US. Objective To...

Secondary use and scholarly impact of a portfolio of clinical trials with shared individual participant level data: cross sectional study

Abstract Objective To assess the number, timing, characteristics, and scholarly impact of secondary publications generated using individual participant level data (IPD) from a portfolio of clinical trials shared with external investigators through a data sharing platform. Design...

sortscore: Sort-seq MAVE scoring and visualization using Python

Abstract Summary A growing number of tools enable the analysis of large variant libraries produced by multiplexed assays of variant effects (MAVEs). Experiments using fluorescent reporters and fluorescence-activated cell sorting sequencing (FACS-seq or Sort-seq) can coarsely quan...

Redefining atrial fibrillation treatment success: patient-defined goals for arrhythmia burden and health-related quality of life

Background: Despite the use of atrial fibrillation (AF) cutoff of 30s as the standard for success in most AF clinical trials, patients consider an AF Severity Scale (AFSS) of ≤ 5 or AF duration ≤ 1 hour as treatment success. Prevalence and factors associated with these patient-de...

Interstitial Lung Disease (ILD) in Immune Inflammatory Myopathies—A Comprehensive Review Focusing on ILD in Antisynthetase Syndrome and MDA5 Dermatomyositis

Interstitial lung disease (ILD) is a frequent manifestation and a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in idiopathic inflammatory myopathies (IIM), particularly in antisynthetase syndrome (ASyS) and anti-melanoma differentiation-associated protein 5 (MDA5) dermatomyositis. Al...

Reimagining biomedical science workflows in the age of large language models

Abstract Large language models (LLMs) are generative artificial intelligence (AI) models that are rapidly reshaping the practice of biomedical science. Their ability to synthesize literature, generate analytical code, and interface with multimodal data offers a new framework for...

Robust inference and correlates from genetic associations with personality

Personality traits describe stable differences in how people think, feel and behave, and how they interact with and experience their social and physical environments1,2. Many questions remain unanswered about associations between DNA and personality traits, such as their robustne...

Cartilage disruption patterns associated with percutaneous intramedullary screw fixation for metatarsal fractures: a cadaveric study

Abstract Purpose Intramedullary screw fixation is an emerging technique for operative metatarsal fractures, yet the extent and location of articular cartilage disruption from retrograde screw insertion remain undefined. This study quantifies cartilage surface disruption and maps...

Ocular manifestations of expanded dengue syndrome: a systematic review with meta-analysis

Ocular manifestations are under-recognized complications of expanded dengue syndrome, with no robust frequency estimates available. A systematic review was conducted following PRISMA guidelines. Primary studies reporting the frequency of ocular manifestations consistent with expa...

Summary of Research: Brentuximab Vedotin and Nivolumab in Combination with Chemotherapy for Nonbulky, Early-Stage Classical Hodgkin Lymphoma

This is a summary of the original research article “Brentuximab Vedotin and Nivolumab in Combination with Chemotherapy for Nonbulky, Early-Stage Classical Hodgkin Lymphoma.” The phase 2 SGN35-027 study (NCT03646123) is a multiple-part clinical trial of brentuximab vedotin (BV), w...

NET-mediated immunothrombosis in ischemic stroke: pathobiology, biomarkers, and therapeutic targeting

Ischemic stroke is increasingly understood not as a purely thromboembolic event but as a thromboinflammatory disease in which innate immune and hemostatic pathways interact. Neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs) have emerged as potentially important mediators and biomarkers withi...

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...

Mega or Micro? Which Influencer to Select for Your Campaign

There is an ongoing debate over whether mega- or micro-influencers are more effective. Zijun Tian, Ryan Dew, and Raghu Iyengar have developed a causal machine learning framework to evaluate the impact of an influencer’s follower count on how many times their videos are viewed. Th...

Impact of Response to Hypomethylating Agent‐Based Therapy on Survival Outcomes in the Context of Baseline Clinical‐Molecular Risk and Transplant Status in Patients With Higher‐Risk Myelodysplastic Syndromes/Neoplasms: An analysis From the International Consortium for MDS (icMDS)

Baseline IPSS-M risk, response to hypomethylating agent (HMA) therapy, and receipt of allogeneic stem cell transplant (allo-HCT) have all been individually shown to impact overall survival (OS) in patients with myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS). However, the prognostic impact of re...

Cancer Risk in Kidney Transplant Recipients on Belatacept Versus Calcineurin Inhibitors: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

BACKGROUND: Belatacept has been increasingly used as a maintenance immunosuppression in kidney transplant recipients since its approval in 2011, due to favorable renal and cardiovascular profiles compared with calcineurin inhibitors (CNIs). However, the long-term risk of cancers...

EphA4 Mediates Pro- and Antitumoral Effects Through Upstream Negative Regulation of AKT in Head and Neck Squamous Cell Carcinoma

Head and Neck Head and Neck Squamous Cell Carcinoma (HNSCC) is driven by an immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment (TME). We examined the immune-modulatory role of EphA4 in HNSCC using spatial analysis, multi-compartment RNA-sequencing from Oral Cavity Squamous Cell Carcinoma (...

Circadian temperature compensation is intrinsically linked with metabolism and redox signaling

Abstract Circadian rhythms are a universal property of organisms, and a defining property of these oscillators is the ability to maintain a precise period at different temperatures. Indeed, the discovery in the 1950s of this property, known as “temperature compensation,” was a wa...

Mitophagy Facilitates Cytosolic Proteostasis to Preserve Cardiac Function

Abstract Background Protein quality control (PQC) is critical for maintaining sarcomere structure and function in cardiac myocytes, and mutations in PQC pathway proteins, such as CRYAB (arginine to glycine at position 120, R120G) and BAG3 (proline to lysine at position 209, P209L...

Object manipulation scaffolds the development of tool use in children

Our species’ extensive reliance on tool use is a key aspect of what makes us human, yet naturalistic data on the social and environmental drivers of tool use development in children remain scarce. We examined the drivers of tool use in naturalistic observations of 31 children in...