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Dahlgaard Jama posted an update 2 days, 10 hours ago
Background and aims to report the clinical features and the relevance of diagnostic investigations in patients with chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyradiculoneuropathy (CIDP). We retrospectively reviewed data from patients with a clinical diagnosis of CIDP included in a national database. Among the 500 included patients with a clinical diagnosis of CIDP, 437 patients (87%) fulfilled the EFNS/PNS criteria for CIDP (definite in 407, probable in 26, possible in four). In 352 patients (86%) motor nerve conduction abnormalities consistent with demyelination were sufficient for the diagnosis of definite CIDP. In 55 patients this diagnosis required the addition of one or two (from probable or from possible CIDP, respectively) supportive tests, while in 20 cases they improved the diagnosis from possible to probable CIDP, seven patients did not change diagnosis. Considering these 85 patients, CSF studies were performed in 79 cases (93%) upgrading the certainty of diagnosis in 59% of examined patients. Sensory nerve conduction studies were performed in 85% of patients with an improvement of diagnosis in 32% of cases. Nerve biopsy and US/MRI exams resulted positive in about 40% of examined patients, but they were performed in few patients (7 patients and 16 patients, respectively). A response to therapy was present in 84% of treated patients (n = 77), contributing to support the diagnosis in 40 patients in whom the other supportive criteria were not sufficient. In most patients with CIDP the diagnosis is possible solely with motor nerve conduction studies while other investigations may help improving the diagnosis in a minority of patients. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.Estimating the effectiveness of protected areas in reducing deforestation is useful to support management decisions. This information helps underpin whether to invest in better management of areas already protected or to create new ones. Statistical matching is commonly used to assess this effectiveness, but regional differences in protection effectiveness and the presence of spatial autocorrelation are frequently overlooked. We assessed methods to estimate the effectiveness of protected areas, using Colombia as a case study. We employed statistical matching to account for confounding factors in park location, and controlled for spatial autocorrelation to determine statistical significance. We compared the performance of different matching procedures – ways of generating matching pairs at different scales – in estimating protected area effectiveness. Differences in matching procedures affected the performance of matching, resulting in different estimates of the effectiveness of protected areas. Independent mapressure conditions, and can be applied to other regions to effectively assess the performance of protected areas. Article impact statement Spatial autocorrelation and sampling design can distort estimations of protected area effectiveness at reducing forest loss. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.BACKGROUND Pulmonary complications and infections frequently affect patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC). Common characteristics can predispose these patients to the development of severe respiratory illness, which may be particularly relevant during the 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. METHODS A scoping review was performed to assess the impact of pulmonary comorbidities and adverse respiratory outcomes in HNSCC patients. RESULTS Advanced age, history of tobacco and alcohol abuse, and cardiopulmonary comorbidities are significant risk factors for the development of adverse respiratory outcomes. Treatment toxicities from radiation or chemoradiation therapy significantly increase these risks. CONCLUSION Respiratory complications are a frequent cause of morbidity and mortality among HNSCC patients, and the COVID-19 pandemic may disproportionately affect this population. Interventions designed to decrease smoking and alcohol use, improve oral hygiene, and aggressively manage medical comorbidities are important to the long-term management and health of these patients. © 2020 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.Voxelwise modeling is a powerful framework to predict single-voxel functional selectivity for the stimulus features that exist in complex natural stimuli. Prexasertib research buy Yet, because VM disregards potential correlations across stimulus features or neighboring voxels, it may yield suboptimal sensitivity in measuring functional selectivity in the presence of high levels of measurement noise. Here, we introduce a novel voxelwise modeling approach that simultaneously utilizes stimulus correlations in model features and response correlations among voxel neighborhoods. The proposed method performs feature and spatial regularization while still generating single-voxel response predictions. We demonstrated the performance of our approach on a functional magnetic resonance imaging dataset from a natural vision experiment. Compared to VM, the proposed method yields clear improvements in prediction performance, together with increased feature coherence and spatial coherence of voxelwise models. Overall, the proposed method can offer improved sensitivity in modeling of single voxels in naturalistic functional magnetic resonance imaging experiments. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.Ca2+ /calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II (CaMKII) is known to be a crucial regulator in the post-synapse during long-term potentiation. This important protein has been the subject of many studies centered on understanding memory at the molecular, cellular, and organismic level. CaMKII is encoded by four genes in humans, all of which undergo alternative splicing at the RNA level, leading to an enormous diversity of expressed proteins. Advances in sequencing technologies have facilitated the discovery of many new CaMKII transcripts. To date, newly discovered CaMKII transcripts have been incorporated into an ambiguous naming scheme. Herein, we review the initial experiments leading to the discovery of CaMKII and its subsequent variants. We propose the adoption of a new, unambiguous naming scheme for CaMKII variants. Finally, we discuss biological implications for CaMKII splice variants. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.