high users

BACKGROUND: An increasing number of countries are currently implementing or scaling-up HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) care. With the introduction of PrEP, there was apprehension that condom use would decline and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) would increase. To inform sexual health counselling and STI screening programmes, we aimed to study sexual behaviour and STI incidence among men who have sex with men (MSM) and transgender women who use long-term daily or event-driven PrEP...

Sinking or floating is the natural state of planktonic organisms and particles in the ocean. Simulating these conditions is critical when making measurements, such as respirometry, because they allow the natural exchange of substrates and products between sinking particles and water flowing around them and prevent organisms that are accustomed to motion from changing their metabolism. We developed a rotating incubator, the RotoBOD (named after its capability to rotate and determine biological oxygen demand, BOD), that uniquely enables automated oxygen measurements in small volumes while keeping the samples in their natural state of suspension...

In this study, we propose a fabric muscle based on the Zigzag Shape Memory Alloy (ZSMA) actuator. Soft wearable robots have been gaining attention due to their flexibility and the ability to provide significant power support to the user without hindering their movement and mobility. There has been an increasing focus on the research and development of fabric muscles, which are crucial components of these robots. This article introduces a high-performance fabric muscle utilizing zigzag-shaped shape memory alloy (SMA), ZSMA, a new form of SMA actuator...

Globally, the incidence of hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, especially preeclampsia, remains high, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. The burden of adverse maternal and perinatal outcomes is particularly high for women who develop a hypertensive disorder remote from term (<34 weeks). In parallel, many women have a suboptimal experience of care. To improve the quality of care in terms of provision and experience, there is a need to support the communication of risks and making of treatment decision in ways that promote respectful maternity care...

Whole-genome sequencing is widely used to investigate population genomic variation in organisms of interest. Assorted tools have been independently developed to call variants from short-read sequencing data aligned to a reference genome, including single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and structural variations (SVs). We developed SNP-SVant, an integrated, flexible, and computationally efficient bioinformatic workflow that predicts high-confidence SNPs and SVs in organisms without benchmarked variants, which are traditionally used for distinguishing sequencing errors from real variants...

BACKGROUND: Healthcare providers may be utilizing central nervous system (CNS) depressants to reduce opioid use due to recent changes in public policy. Combination use of these agents with opioids increases the risk of respiratory depression and death. Healthcare expenditures by individuals using these drug combinations have not been previously quantified. We sought to characterize healthcare costs and expenditures associated with a population reporting concurrent CNS depressants and opioid use compared with nonopioid analgesics in the United States from 2009 to 2019...

INTRODUCTION: Social media platforms serve as a valuable resource for users to share health-related information, aiding in the monitoring of adverse events linked to medications and treatments in drug safety surveillance. However, extracting drug-related adverse events accurately and efficiently from social media poses challenges in both natural language processing research and the pharmacovigilance domain. METHOD: Recognizing the lack of detailed implementation and evaluation of Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT)-based models for drug adverse event extraction on social media, we developed a BERT-based language model tailored to identifying drug adverse events in this context...

BACKGROUND: During the use of electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes), users are still exposed to carcinogens similar to those found in tobacco products. Since these carcinogens are metabolized and excreted in urine, they may have carcinogenic effects on the bladder urinary tract epithelium. This meta-analysis aimed to compare bladder cancer carcinogens in the urine of tobacco users and e-cigarette users using a large number of samples. METHODS: A systematic meta-analysis was performed using data obtained from several scientific databases (up to November 2023)...

Despite recent advancements in bionic upper limb prostheses technology, the rejection rate by users remains unacceptably high. Various factors contribute to this issue, such as limited functionality, complex control mechanisms, and discomfort, with most of these concerns being documented solely through self-assessment surveys. In this article, we introduce our proposed four components for an integrated bionic hand aimed at making it closely resemble a natural hand. These components include an integrated intramedullary stem, a kineticomyographic motor control system, sensory feedback for stereognosis, and sensory feedback for proprioception...

BACKGROUND: Hypertension affects 28.5% of Indians aged 18-69. Real-time registration and follow-up of persons with hypertension are possible with point-of-care digital information systems. We intend to describe herein the experiences of discovering, developing, and deploying a point-of-care digital information system for public health facilities under the India Hypertension Control Initiative. METHODS: We have adopted an agile and user-centered approach in each phase in selected states of India since 2017...

The human body, as a highly complex ecosystem, harbors diverse microbial communities, with major factors triggering allergic reactions encompassing the skin microbiome and fungi. The global diversity of fungi is estimated to range from approximately 600 000 to 1 million species, and theoretically, IgE-mediated sensitization may occur to any fungal species. As of now, the World Health Organization/IUIS official database records 113 fungal allergens originating from 30 different fungi species, covering 42 allergen families...

BACKGROUND: Over the last decade, many organizations dedicated to serving the needs and interests of older adults have turned to social media platforms, such as Twitter, subsequently rebranded X, to improve the visibility of age-related issues. However, notwithstanding their growing digital presence and participation, minimal attention has been paid to the use of social media among these advocacy groups. To achieve policy change, advocacy organizations must first be able to engage and mobilize audiences...

Muscle strength assessments are vital in rehabilitation, orthopedics, and sports medicine. However, current methods used in clinical settings, such as manual muscle testing and hand-held dynamometers, often lack reliability, and isokinetic dynamometers (IKD), while reliable, are not easily portable. The aim of this study was to design and validate a wearable dynamometry system with high accessibility, accuracy, and reliability, and to validate the device. Therefore, we designed a wearable dynamometry system (WDS) equipped with knee joint torque sensors...

BACKGROUND: Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is the gold standard for delineating cancerous lesions in soft tissue. Catheter-based interventions require the accurate placement of multiple long, flexible catheters at the target site. The manual segmentation of catheters in MR images is a challenging and time-consuming task. There is a need for automated catheter segmentation to improve the efficiency of MR-guided procedures. PURPOSE: To develop and assess a machine learning algorithm for the detection of multiple catheters in magnetic resonance images used during catheter-based interventions...

BACKGROUND: Equity-deserving groups face well-known health disparities that are exacerbated by rural residence. Health technologies have shown promise in reducing disparities among these groups, but there has been no comprehensive evidence synthesis of outcomes. PURPOSE: The purpose of this systematic review was to examine the patient, healthcare, and economic outcomes of health technology applications with rural living equity-deserving groups. RESEARCH DESIGN: The databases searched included Medline and Embase...

BACKGROUND: Substance misuse presents significant global public health challenges. Understanding transitions between substance types and the timing of shifts to polysubstance use is vital to developing effective prevention and recovery strategies. The gateway hypothesis suggests that high-risk substance use is preceded by lower-risk substance use. However, the source of this correlation is hotly contested. While some claim that low-risk substance use causes subsequent, riskier substance use, most people using low-risk substances also do not escalate to higher-risk substances...

Cancer immunotherapy has brought about a revolutionary breakthrough in the field of cancer treatment. Immunotherapy has changed the treatment landscape for a variety of solid and hematologic malignancies. To assist researchers in efficiently uncovering valuable information related to cancer immunotherapy, we have presented a manually curated comprehensive database called DIRMC, which focuses on molecular features involved in cancer immunotherapy. All the content was collected manually from published literature, authoritative clinical trial data submitted by clinicians, some databases for drug target prediction such as DrugBank, and some experimentally confirmed high-throughput data sets for the characterization of immune-related molecular interactions in cancer, such as a curated database of T-cell receptor sequences with known antigen specificity (VDJdb), a pathology-associated TCR database (McPAS-TCR) et al...

BACKGROUND: Diagnosis of visceral leishmaniasis (VL) in resource-limited endemic regions is currently based on serological testing with rK39 immunochromatographic tests (ICTs). However, rK39 ICT frequently has suboptimal diagnostic accuracy. Furthermore, treatment monitoring and detection of VL relapses is reliant on insensitive and highly invasive tissue aspirate microscopy. Miniature direct-on-blood PCR nucleic acid lateral flow immunoassay (mini-dbPCR-NALFIA) is an innovative and user-friendly molecular tool which does not require DNA extraction and uses a lateral flow strip for result read-out...

Long-acting injectable pre-exposure prophylaxis (LAI-PrEP) is efficacious in preventing HIV among men-who-have-sex-with-men (MSM) and will be soon available in Europe. This study investigated the intention and preference to use LAI-PrEP among MSM in the Netherlands by employing a diffusion of innovation approach. This study had a cross-sectional design nested within a cohort study established in 2017 to understand oral PrEP use among MSM. 309 MSM completed the survey on their awareness, interest, intention, and preference for LAI-PrEP in June 2022...

BACKGROUND: Serious games, which are gaming applications used for purposes beyond entertainment to educate users on, and address, specific issues, may present a timely approach to promote healthy diabetes management behaviors among children with type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM). The lasting benefits associated with these serious games encompass improved patient education; enhanced glycemic control; the reinforcement of bonds within the community of people with diabetes; the facilitation of meaningful dialogues with caregivers, especially within the familial setting; and a significant reduction in the economic burdens associated with subsequent complications...