Debunk

Last time the world faced a deadly pandemic was the H1N1 Spanish flu in 1918, which affected almost one-third of the world's population (500 million people). Since then, almost 100 years later, we are now facing another pandemic of the SARS-CoV2 virus (COVID-19), which is still endemic to this day. As the technology evolved during those 100 years, an effective vaccine for COVID-19 was produced within only a year, a huge feat. But, unfortunately, due to its fast development, another force would arise limiting the impact of the vaccine: vaccine hesitancy and anti-vaxxers, which John Hopkins and the World Health Organization call the biggest current threat to global health...

BACKGROUND: Misinformation, defined as a claim that is false or misleading, considers information that is both shared with the intention of causing harm, and information that is false with no ill intent. Early attempts to downplay the risk of monkeypox (mpox) by singling out men who have sex with men (MSM) may have had the ill effect of stigmatising this group in discussions online. The aim of this study was to evaluate themes present on Instagram related to the 2022 mpox outbreak under #monkeypox...

Patient-reported data derived from surveys places patient feedback at the heart of quality improvement and health system responsiveness. Such surveys are not without critics, however, who contend that there are better ways to collect feedback. Criticisms assert that response rates are too low and measures are not robust, valid or reliable, that patient experience surveys are neither valid nor reliable for Māori and Pacific peoples and that such surveys do not contribute to improved outcomes for patients...

OBJECTIVES: Emphasizing the significance of optimal oral health for enhancing overall well-being, this study aimed to investigate oral health knowledge, self-assessed oral health behaviors, and oral hygiene practices within the Croatian general population. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A cross-sectional observational study was conducted online, utilizing a questionnaire collecting sociodemographic characteristics and inquiring about respondents' oral health knowledge, self-assessed oral health status, oral hygiene habits, and use of oral hygiene products...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

BACKGROUND: Clinical practice, expert opinion, and evidence-based guidelines recommend daily stretching as first-line treatment for multiple sclerosis (MS) spasticity, but this has not been evaluated by fully powered clinical trials. OBJECTIVE: To determine whether MS Spasticity: Take Control (STC), a guideline-based program of spasticity education and stretching exercises has different effects on the impact of spasticity than a control program of different spasticity education and range of motion (ROM) exercises...

Almost a quarter of a millennium after the discovery of an acidic substance in sour milk by Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele and more than 100 years after the demonstration of a tight connection between this lactic acid and tissue hypoxia in shock, we are still surrounded by false beliefs and misunderstandings regarding this fascinating molecule. Common perceptions of lactate, the conjugate base of lactic acid, as a plain waste product of anaerobic metabolism and a marker of cellular distress could not be further from the truth...

Competency-based education (CBE) dates back to the early 1900's. A renewed interest in CBE in health professions education has been sparked by the recommendations that emerged from the 2017 Josiah Macy Jr Foundation conference on CBE. These recommendations urge changes in structure and pedagogy to address gaps between societal needs, healthcare practice, and health professions education. Despite widespread interest, there is significant variability in what constitutes CBE. This variability has challenged the development of an evidence base in the literature and has led to widespread misconceptions regarding CBE...

BACKGROUND: In the current shift towards value-based healthcare, patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) have become essential to assess the effectiveness of medical interventions. However, elucidation of the optimal timeframe for PROMs evaluation remains crucial. This study aimed to 1) determine the proportion of patients who experienced clinically meaningful improvements in PROMs scores at each follow-up visit after total hip (THA) and knee arthroplasty (TKA); and 2) calculate and apply the clinical relevance ratio (CRR) for these long-term PROM collections postoperatively...

Dissociative identity disorder (DID), commonly known as multiple personality disorder (MPD), is a contentious mental health condition that typically arises as a result of traumatic events to help people avoid unpleasant memories. To completely comprehend the complexity and nuance of DID, this study investigates its symptomatology, diagnostic criteria, therapeutic modalities, and historical controversies. Patients with DID frequently have two or more distinct personality identities, each with its memories, characteristics, and attributes...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

OBJECTIVES: To assess the influence of social media platforms, including TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook, in shaping public perceptions about tonsillectomies and to identify the nature of the content disseminated on these platforms. METHODS: A comprehensive analysis of 1482 relevant social media posts related to tonsillectomies was conducted across major platforms, including TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook. Content was categorized based on author, topic of the post, timeframe, and overall tone...

With the proliferation of misinformation have come toolkits that include refutation strategies to target the beliefs of individuals that can be employed preemptively (prebunking) or reactively (debunking). Whereas the theoretical lineage of prebunking is well established within the literature on inoculation theory, the theoretical underpinning of debunking is not. Recent advances in inoculation theory include fostering resistance to a type of message rather than to the content of a message as well as application of messages in both prophylactic and therapeutic situations...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

We synthesize evidence from 176 experimental estimates of 11 interventions intended to combat misinformation in the Global North and Global South, which we classify as informational, educational, sociopsychological, or institutional. Among these, we find the most consistent positive evidence for two informational interventions in both Global North and Global South contexts: inoculation/prebunking and debunking. In a complementary survey of 138 misinformation scholars and practitioners, we find that experts tend to be most optimistic about interventions that have been least widely studied or that have been shown to be mostly ineffective...

BACKGROUND: Globally, there is a disparity that exists between equal employment opportunities for people with disabilities post-schooling. While South Africa has aimed at the inclusion of people with disabilities, there has not been sufficient evidence of a successful transition from school to work environments. OBJECTIVES: This study documents the experiences and barriers that influence the preparation of high school students with disabilities for post-secondary education and work opportunities...

COVID-19 vaccine-related conspiracy narratives skyrocketed in social media in the first year of the pandemic. Science communicators have tried to debunk false information as did Vlad Mixich, a Romanian public health expert, who tried to explain on Facebook why the vaccine cannot modify the human DNA. Drawing on the literature on metaphor as a discourse phenomenon, this paper uses a discourse-led approach to metaphor analysis to identify and analyze the metaphors used by Mixich to explain how vaccines work and the mRNA technology underlying the COVID-19 vaccine...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

Leukotriene A4 hydrolase (LTA4H) functions as a mono-zinc bifunctional enzyme with aminopeptidase and epoxidase activities. While the aminopeptidase mechanism is well understood, the epoxidase mechanism remains less clear. In continuation of our prior research, we undertook an in-depth exploration of the LTA4H catalytic role as an epoxidase, employing a combined SCC-DFTB/CHARMM method. In the current work, we found that the conversion of LTA4 to leukotriene B4 (LTB4) involves three successive steps: epoxy ring opening (RO), nucleophilic attack (NA), and proton transfer (PT) reactions at the epoxy oxygen atom...