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The Physician Payments Sunshine Act requires manufacturers of drugs, medical devices, medical supplies, and biologics to record all financial relationships with physicians in the Open Payments database with the goal of increasing transparency for patients and the general public. The majority of total money going to orthopedic surgeons has been found to go to a small number of surgeons in the form of royalties and licensing payments. This category of payment is intended to compensate physicians for use of their intellectual property. However, little research has been done to investigate the degree to which these physicians own intellectual property.

To the authors' knowledge, the association between patents and industry payments to orthopedic surgeons has not been explored. We quantify the association between the patents and academic productivity of orthopedic spine surgeons and the amount of royalty and licensing fees they receive. We then compared this with the associations observed for other categories ween industry and physicians.
Surgical site infections (SSIs) are medically devastating and financially costly complications after posterior spinal fusion (PSF) for neuromuscular scoliosis (NMS). Many strategies exist to reduce their occurrence. The efficacy of intraoperative antibiotics in the wound or bone graft is gaining in popularity, but this practice has not been well-studied in the PSF NMS population.

To assess the potential utility of intraoperative local antibiotics in patients with NMS undergoing PSF.

Retrospective review of prospectively collected data.

Pediatric patients who underwent PSF for NMS were identified from the 2016-2018 National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (NSQIP) pediatric spinal fusion datasets.

Perioperative adverse outcome variables assed included the occurrence of SSI, renal complications, and adverse hospital metrics.

Patient demographic factors, comorbidities, and the use of intraoperative antibiotics in the wound were recorded (a specifically assessed variable in the dataset). The assocported by this dataset.
With no increased overall risks and reduced SSIs in higher risk NMS patients undergoing PSF, the use of intrawound antibiotics appears to be supported by this dataset.Orthographic uniqueness point (OUP) refers to the letter position of a word at which it is distinguishable from other lexical items in the language. Previous findings of OUP effects have been mixed and mainly demonstrated in native readers of alphabetic languages. The current study investigated whether OUP effects could be shown among non-native readers in a visual repetition detection task. The experiment tested three OUP conditions (early, mid, late) in native English readers and proficient non-native English readers whose native scripts were Japanese or Korean. Results revealed main effects of OUP on N170 amplitude, where early OUP words elicited more negative N170 and late OUP words elicited marginally less negative N170 than mean activation for both native and non-native readers. There was no indication that non-linearity or non-alphabetic nature of one's native script influenced OUP effects. Results were consistent with a parallel letter processing account in single word reading.We present the novel approach to mathematical modeling of information processes in biosystems. It explores the mathematical formalism and methodology of quantum theory, especially quantum measurement theory. This approach is known as quantum-like and it should be distinguished from study of genuine quantum physical processes in biosystems (quantum biophysics, quantum cognition). It is based on quantum information representation of biosystem's state and modeling its dynamics in the framework of theory of open quantum systems. This paper starts with the non-physicist friendly presentation of quantum measurement theory, from the original von Neumann formulation to modern theory of quantum instruments. Then, latter is applied to model combinations of cognitive effects and gene regulation of glucose/lactose metabolism in Escherichia coli bacterium. The most general construction of quantum instruments is based on the scheme of indirect measurement, in that measurement apparatus plays the role of the environment for a biosystem. The biological essence of this scheme is illustrated by quantum formalization of Helmholtz sensation-perception theory. Then we move to open systems dynamics and consider quantum master equation, with concentrating on quantum Markov processes. In this framework, we model functioning of biological functions such as psychological functions and epigenetic mutation.Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic autoimmune disease characterized by synovitise, and its pathogenesis is complicated. Sphingosine-1-phosphate (S1P) is a lipid produced by sphingosine kinase 1 and 2 (SphK1/2), which participate in some of most-spread skeletal diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis or osteoarthritis. To explore the anti-inflammatory activity of 2-epi-jaspine B analogs as SphKs inhibitors, we used LPS-induced rheumatoid arthritis fibroblast-like synovial cells (HFLS-RA) as the research object to evaluate the anti-inflammatory activity of 16 2-epi-jaspine B analogs and the newly synthesized salt CHJ01. We found that 2-epi-jaspine B analog CHJ01 in hydrochloride salt form has excellent SphK1 inhibitory effect and better anti-RA effect. CHJ01 showed an anti-inflammatory effect similar to that of MTX in vitro, its IC50 value is 8.64 μM. Moreover, the anti-RA effect of CHJ01 was also studied by using a Complete Freund's Adjuvant (CFA)-induced arthritis (AIA) in a rat mode. Pharmacological experiments show that CHJ01 can help to significantly improve the symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis by reducing the swelling volume, arthritis score, spleen index and the level of IL-1β, TNF-α, IL-6 of AIA rats. Therefore, CHJ01 holds high potential for the treatment of RA.Four chain-extended analogs (12a-12d) and two related de-O-sulfonated analogs (13a and 13c) by introducing alkyl groups (a R = C3H7, b R = C6H13, c R = C8H17, d R = C10H21) to the side chains of salacinol (1), a natural α-glucosidase inhibitor from Ayurvedic traditional medicine "Salacia", were synthesized. The α-glucosidase inhibitory activities of all the synthesized analogs were evaluated in vitro. Against human intestinal maltase, the inhibitory activities of 12a and 13a with seven-carbon side chain were equal to that of 1. In contrast, analogs (12b-12d, and 13c) exhibited higher level of inhibitory activity against the same enzyme than 1 and had equal or higher potency than those of the clinically used anti-diabetics, voglibose, acarbose, and miglitol. Thus, elongation of the side chains of 1 was effective for specifically increasing the inhibitory activity against human intestinal maltase.Leptospires are aerobic, Gram-negative spirochetes with a high invasive capacity. Pathogenic leptospires secrete proteases that inactivate a variety of host's proteins including molecules of the extracellular matrix and of the human complement system. This strategy, used by several pathogens of medical importance, contributes to bacterial invasion and immune evasion. In the current work we present evidence that Leptospira proteases also target human cathelicidin (LL-37), an antimicrobial peptide that plays an important role in the innate immune response. By using six Leptospira strains, four pathogenic and two saprophytic, we demonstrated that proteases present in the supernatants of pathogenic strains were capable of degrading LL-37 in a time-dependent manner, whereas proteolytic degradation was not observed with the supernatants of the two saprophytic strains. Inactivation of LL-37 was prevented by using the 1,10-phenanthroline inhibitor, thus suggesting the involvement of metalloproteinases in this process. In addition, the antibacterial activity of LL-37 against two Leptospira strains was evaluated. Compared to the saprophytic strain, a greater resistance of the pathogenic strain to the action of the peptide was observed. Our data suggest that the capacity to inactivate the host defense peptide LL-37 may be part of the virulence arsenal of pathogenic Leptospira, and we hypothesize that its inactivation by the bacteria may influence the outcome of the disease.Tigecycline and carbapenem are last-resort antibiotics for serious infections caused by pathogens with multi-drug resistance (MDR). Whereas, bacterial pathogens with co-resistance to tigecycline and carbapenem are poorly addressed. Here we report a tigecycline- and carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter indicus strain HY20 of duck origin, which co-produces Tet(X5) and NDM-3. Tet(X5) is harbored by a novel plasmid pAI01 (116,992 bp long), which carries 10 antimicrobial resistance genes (AMRs), and heavy metal resistance system cobalt-zinc-cadmium (czc) gene cluster. Unlike that tet(X5) is located in the res-tet(X5)-xerD segment of plasmid, the chromosomal blaNDM-3 is flanked by insertion ISAba125. Collectively, our result represents an example of co-carriage of tet(X5) and blaNDM-3, heightening the importance of AMR surveillance needed in poultry production.Contamination with the fungus Alternaria spp. is often considered to have originated from laboratory sources, which occasionally causes infection in immunocompromised patients, termed as phaeohyphomycosis. Here, we have reported a case of cutaneous alternariosis caused by Alternaria alternata. This diagnosis was based on microscopic examination and mycological culturing of patient's vesicular lesions, with the use of 5 molecular markers (namely, ITS, ATPase, Actin, rpb2, and tef1) for strain identification. We noted that Alternaria infection caused an increase in the serum level of (1-3)-β-D-glucan (BG) in the patients. To the best of our knowledge, no such finding has been reported in previously in the literature.To explore the applicability of MuLBSTA Score in COVID-19 patients, a retrospective analysis was performed on 330 cases of COVID-19 patients in Southeast Hospital of Xiaogan City, Hubei Province. The clinical characteristics of COVID-19 patients were described and multilobe infiltrate in CT, bacterial infection, lymphocyte count, smoke in history, history of hypertension, and age distribution in the population of mild and severe patients were analyzed. All included patients were scored according to the MuLBSTA early warning scoring system and its efficacy in early warning of severe symptoms was analyzed. CT feature of infiltration changes on multiple lobes, the absolute value of lymphocyte count of less than 0.8 × 109, accompanied by bacterial infection, history of smoking, history of hypertension, and an age of greater than 60 years old were all statistically significant factors in patients with severe COVID-19. ROC curve analysis indicated that the sensitivity, specificity and accuracy of the early warning system were 0.651, 0.954 and 0.93, respectively. The MuLBSTA Score has a good early warning effect on severe COVID-19 patients.The recent renewal of cultural approach has substantially enriched knowledge of the human microbiota, notably through the discovery of new taxa from various anatomical sites. As an increasing number of these recent species are currently considered beneficial or harmful for human health, a constant updating of the repertoire of bacteria and archaea isolated from humans by culture is essential. Herein, we show that the number of cultured bacterial species associated with human beings increased, from 2776 in 2018, to 3253 in 2020, representing a 17% increase in 2 years by adding 477 species, of which 64% are new species (N = 307). A wide majority of the species added (i.e., 63%) were isolated using the culturomics approach, while 16% were cultured as part of clinical microbiology laboratories. Human microbiota studies would benefit from the completeness of the repertoire of bacteria associated with human beings, which would require continued efforts to culture microbes from human specimens.
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