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Preprint INTERESTING IMAGES | doi:10.20944/preprints202305.1509.v1

Atypical Prostatic Stromal Sarcoma Presented with T2WI Central Heterogeneous Hyperintense Lesion Showing Peripheral Zone & Peri Prostatic Fat Invasion

Jehan Abdelghany Mazroa, Khalid A Almakhalas, Galal A Bashanfer

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: prostatic carcinoma; MRI prostate; MRI prostate stromal sarcoma

Online: 22 May 2023 (10:51:05 CEST)

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Preprint ARTICLE | doi:10.20944/preprints202305.1505.v1

Impact of Adherence to the Mediterranean Diet on Health-Related Quality of Life in Poorly Controlled Diabetics

Carmen Celada Roldan, Jaime Lopez Diez, Faustino Rider Garrido, Maria Angeles Cerezuela Abarca, Almudena Tarraga Marcos, Pedro Tarraga Lopez

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: Quality of life; Mediterranean diet; , MEDAS-14; type 2 diabetes; physical dimension; emotional dimension

Online: 22 May 2023 (10:47:21 CEST)

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Introduction: When analyzing the current situation in Spain, derived from our current lifestyles far from following a Mediterranean lifestyle, there is an alarming prevalence of diabesity, which increases the global risk of suffering from cardiovascular disease (CVD) and decreases the quality of life related to health (QLRH). In order to guarantee, beyond glycemic control of patients with type 2 diabetes (DM2), adequate control of cardiovascular risk factors (CVRF) in DM2, it will be necessary to carry out a community intervention focused on the application of education programs focused on promoting the acquisition of healthy eating habits through the Mediterranean diet (DMED). This dietary pattern, together with physical exercise, has been shown to contribute to improving the QLRH of patients. Objective: To analyze the quality of life related to health, present in patients with poorly controlled type 2 diabetes, to determine the possible relationship between this and the degree of adherence to the Mediterranean diet and to examine whether there are differences between the sexes. Material and methods: Observational descriptive study in 93 patients diagnosed with DM2 with poor glycemic control (1Ac ≥ 7%), carried out in various health centers in Albacete and Cuenca, in which the baseline relationship between adherence to DMed and the HRQoL. They were administered a data collection sheet that included a survey of the degree of adherence to the DMed (MEDAS-14) and QLRH (SF-12v2) in the Primary Care (PC) medical and nursing consultations. The variables were analyzed: age groups, sex, years of evolution of DM2, body mass index (BMI), as well as basal glycemia (GB) and glycosylated hemoglobin (HbA1c). The “MEDAS-14” (adherence to DMED) was the main variable and the “SF-12v2” (QLRH) was the secondary variable. Material and methods: Observational descriptive study in 93 patients diagnosed with DM2 with poor glycemic control (1Ac ≥ 7%), carried out in various health centers in Albacete and Cuenca, in which the baseline relationship between adherence to DMed and the HRQoL. They were administered a data collection sheet that included a survey of the degree of adherence to the DMed (MEDAS-14) and QLRH (SF-12v2) in the Primary Care (PC) medical and nursing consultations. The variables were analyzed: age groups, sex, years of evolution of DM2, body mass index (BMI), as well as basal glycemia (GB) and glycosylated hemoglobin (HbA1c). The “MEDAS-14” (adherence to DMED) was the main variable and the “SF-12v2” (QLRH) was the secondary variable. Results: Patients with poorly controlled DM2 and with low adherence to the MedDM show a non-significantly greater affectation in the physical sphere: fair general state of health, physical function I (limitation to make moderate efforts such as moving a table, vacuuming or walk more than an hour), physical function II (limitation to climb several flights of stairs), physical role (problems at work or daily activities doing less than loved ones), physical role II (they had to stop performing some tasks at work or activities of daily living) and regular body pain. Presenting less affectation in the mental field: emotional role I, emotional role II, mental health I, vitality and mental health II. Without affectation in the social function since they consider that rarely the emotional or physical problems have hindered their social activities. Conclusions: Diabetic patients with poor glycemic control have low adherence to the MedMD (<9 points) and have poor QLRH. Low adherence to the DMed and obesity are related to a greater affectation in the physical dimension and less affectation in the mental dimension without affectation in the "social function".

Preprint REVIEW | doi:10.20944/preprints202305.1454.v1

Relevance of Genetic Identification and Kinship Analysis in Human and Natural Catastrophes – A Review

Alejandra Real-Picado, Luis Diaz, Cláudia Gomes

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: Catastrophes; Genetic identification; Kinship analysis; DNA degradation

Online: 22 May 2023 (03:01:25 CEST)

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Preprint REVIEW | doi:10.20944/preprints202305.1297.v1

Recent Advances in Elucidating the Mechanism Underlying Proteinuric Kidney Disease/Nephrotic Syndrome: Lessons From Knockout/Transgenic Mouse Models

Ryosuke Saiki, Kan Katayama, Kaoru Dohi

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: genetic kidney disease; knockout; nephrotic syndrome; proteinuria; transgenic

Online: 18 May 2023 (08:10:21 CEST)

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Preprint ARTICLE | doi:10.20944/preprints202305.1216.v1

Processing Adipose Tissue Samples in a GMP Environment Standardizes Their Use in Cell Therapy Treatments. Data on 302 Patients

Martina Cremona, Giulio Rusconi, Alessandro Ferrario, Luca Mariotta, Mauro Gola, Gianni Soldati

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: Adipose-derived stem cells; human cell therapy; mesenchymal stem cells; endothelial cells; pericytes; GMP-compliant-facility; clean room; ATMPs

Online: 17 May 2023 (09:53:20 CEST)

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Preprint REVIEW | doi:10.20944/preprints202305.0596.v1

Multilineage-Differentiating Stress-Enduring Cells (Muse Cells): An Easily Accessible, Pluripotent Stem Cell Niche with Unique and Powerful Properties for Multiple Regenerative Medicine Applications

Riccardo Ossanna, Sheila Veronese, Lindsey Alejandra Quintero Sierra, Anita Conti, Giamaica Conti, Andrea Sbarbati

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: Cell-based therapy; Regenerative medicine; Pluripotency; Mesenchymal stem cells; Stromal Vascular Fraction

Online: 9 May 2023 (08:16:25 CEST)

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Preprint REVIEW | doi:10.20944/preprints202304.0092.v2

Applying the Good Publication Practice 2022 Guidelines in the Asia-Pacific Region: A Practical Guide

Blair Hesp, Katsuhisa Arai, Namita Bose, Rachael Profit, Malvika Katarya, Jonathan Lee, Ronnie Lin, Magdalene Chu, Andrew Sakko, Hazel Fernandez

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: Asia-Pacific; Authorship; Conflict of interest; Disclosures; Ethics; Good Publication Practice; Manuscript development

Online: 5 May 2023 (11:16:36 CEST)

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Preprint COMMUNICATION | doi:10.20944/preprints202305.0239.v1

Physicochemical Characterization of Hyaluronic Acid Vascosupplemented Synovial Fluid in Combination with Physiotherapy in Knee Osteoarthritis

Ilie Onu, Robert Gherghel, Isabella Nacu, Florina-Daniela Cojocaru, Liliana Verestiuc, Daniela-Viorelia Matei, Ioana Buculei, Dan Cascaval, Ionela Lacramioara Serban, Daniel Andrei Iordan, Alexandra Tucaliuc, Anca-Irina Galaction

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: knee osteoarthritis; synovial fluid; hyaluronic acid; physical therapy; ATR-FTIR spectroscopy; rheological properties; bioadhesion

Online: 4 May 2023 (08:42:51 CEST)

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Preprint REVIEW | doi:10.20944/preprints202304.1214.v1

Perspectives on Aging and Quality of Life

Shinichi Noto

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: aging, elderly, lifestyle-related diseases, quality of life

Online: 29 April 2023 (05:24:51 CEST)

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Preprint ARTICLE | doi:10.20944/preprints202304.0992.v1

Mehmet Bülent Balioğlu, Kadir Abul, Ahmet Onur Akpolat, Ali Volkan Özlük, Nurullah Saçık, Fatih Aksay, Mehmet Çetinkaya

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: Early onset scoliosis; Shilla technique; growth guidance; implant complications; quality of life scores

Online: 26 April 2023 (13:03:49 CEST)

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Preprint REVIEW | doi:10.20944/preprints202304.0859.v1

Nutritional Aspects of Iron in Health and Disease

Edouard Charlebois, Kostas Pantopoulos

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: Iron deficiency; iron overload; anemia; heme; metabolic syndrome; cardiovascular disease; cancer; microbiome

Online: 24 April 2023 (12:48:31 CEST)

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Preprint REVIEW | doi:10.20944/preprints202304.0799.v1

Artificial Intelligence Applications in Breast Imaging: Current Status and Future Directions

Clayton R Taylor, Natasha Monga, Candise Johnson, Jeffrey R Hawley, Mitva Patel

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: breast imaging; artificial intelligence; deep learning; machine learning; mammography; breast MRI; breast ultrasound; radiology workflow; computer-aided diagnosis; computer-aided detection

Online: 23 April 2023 (12:48:48 CEST)

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Preprint ARTICLE | doi:10.20944/preprints202304.0750.v1

Relationship between Body Mass Index and Diagnosis of Overweight or Obesity in Veterans Administration Population

Onur Baser, Erdem Baser, Gabriela Maria Samayoa

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: obesity; overweight; morbid obesity; veterans; underdiagnosis; BMI

Online: 23 April 2023 (03:44:35 CEST)

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Preprint ARTICLE | doi:10.20944/preprints202304.0745.v1

Is Thoracic Kyphosis Relevant to Pain, Autonomic Nervous System Function, Disability, and Cervical Sensorimotor Control in Patients with Chronic Nonspecific Neck Pain?

Ibrahim Moustafa Moustafa, Tamer Mohamed Shousha, Ashokan Arumugam, Deed E. Harrison

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: Thoracic spine; Neck pain; Kyphosis; Sensorimotor control; Posture

Online: 23 April 2023 (03:35:29 CEST)

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There is great interest in thoracic kyphosis as it is thought to be a contributor to neck pain, neck disability, and sensorimotor control measures; though this has not been completely inves-tigated in treatment or case control studies. This case control design investigated participants with non-specific chronic neck pain. Eighty participants with a defined hyper-kyphosis (> 55°) were compared to 80 matched participants with normal thoracic kyphosis (< 55°). Participants were matched for age and neck pain duration. Hyper-kyphosis was further categorized into two distinct types: postural kyphosis (PK) and Scheuermann’s kyphosis (SK). Posture measures included formetric thoracic kyphosis and the craniovertebral angle (CVA) to assess forward head posture. Sensorimotor control was assessed by the following measures: smooth pursuit neck torsion test (SPNT), overall stability index (OSI) and left and right rotation repositioning accuracy. A measure of autonomic nervous system function included the amplitude and latency of skin sympathetic response (SSR). Differences in variable measures were examined using the Student’s t-test to compare the means of continuous variables between the two groups. Pearson correlation was used to evaluate the relationship between participant’s thoracic kyphosis magnitude (in each group separately and as an entire population) and their CVA, SPNT, OSI, head repositioning ac-curacy, and SSR latency and amplitude. Hyper-kyphosis participants had a significantly greater neck disability index compared to the normal kyphosis group (p < 0.001) with the SK group having greatest disability (p < 0.001). Statistically significant differences between the two kyphosis groups and the normal kyphosis group for all the sensorimotor measured variables were identified with the SK group having the most decreased efficiency of the measures in the hyper-kyphosis group, including: SPNT, OSI and left and right rotation repositioning accuracy. Also, there was a signif-icant difference in neurophysiological findings for SSR amplitude (entire sample of kyphosis vs. normal kyphosis, p < 0.001), but there was no significant difference for SSR latency (p = .07). The CVA was significantly greater in the hyper-kyphosis group (p < 0.001). The magnitude of the thoracic kyphosis correlated with worsening CVA (with the SK group having the smallest CVA; p < 0.001) and the magnitude of the decreased efficiency of the sensorimotor control measures and the amplitude and latency of the SSR. The PK group, overall, showed the greatest correlations between thoracic kyphosis and measured variables. Participants with hyper-thoracic kyphosis exhibited abnormal sensorimotor control and autonomic nervous system dysfunction compared to those with normal thoracic kyphosis.

Preprint ARTICLE | doi:10.20944/preprints202304.0647.v1

Use of Artificial Intelligence in Processing of COVID-19-Related Scientific Literature

Michal Ivantysyn, Dagmar Vaclavikova, Peter Musil

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: COVID-19; literature processing; AI

Online: 20 April 2023 (10:11:03 CEST)

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Preprint ARTICLE | doi:10.20944/preprints202304.0361.v1

Current Cut Points of Three Falls Risk Assessment Tools Are Inferior to Calculated Cut Points in Geriatric Evaluation and Management Units

Vivian Lee, Linda Appiah-Kubi, Sara Vogrin, Jesse Zanker, Joanna Mitropoulos

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: Falls; Falls risk assessment tools; geriatric medicine; sarcopenia

Online: 14 April 2023 (09:38:29 CEST)

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Background: Falls risk assessment tools are used in hospital inpatient settings to identify pa-tients at increased risk of falls (which may be related to muscle loss/sarcopenia) to guide and target interventions for falls prevention. In 2022, Western Health, Melbourne, Australia, intro-duced a new falls risk assessment tool, the Western Health St. Thomas’ Risk Assessment Tool (WH-STRATIFY), a modified version of The Northern Hospital’s risk tool (TNH-STRATIFY), which replaced the Peninsula Health Risk Screening Tool (PH-FRAT). Aims: To determine the predictive accuracy of three falls risk assessment tools (PH-FRAT, TNH-STRATIFY and WH-STRATIFY) on admission to Geriatric Evaluation Management (GEM) units. Method: A retrospective observational study was conducted on four GEM units. Data was col-lected on 54 consecutive patients who fell during admission and 62 randomly sampled patients who did not fall between December 2020 and June 2021. Participants were scored against three falls risk assessment tools. The event rate Youden (Youden IndexER) indices were calculated and compared using default and optimal cut points to determine which tool was most accurate for predicting falls. Results: Using default cut points to compare falls assessment tools, TNH-STRATIFY had the highest predictive accuracy (Youden IndexER = 0.20, 95% confidence interval CI = 0.07, 0.34). The PH-FRAT (Youden IndexER = 0.01 and 95% CI = -0.04, 0.05) and WH-STRATIFY (Youden IndexER = 0.00 and 95% CI = -0.04, 0.03) were statistically equivalent and not predictive of falls compared to TNH-STRATIFY. When calculated optimal cut points were applied, predictive accuracy im-proved for PH-FRAT (Cut point 17, Youden IndexER = 0.14 and 95% CI = 0.01, 0.29) and WH-STRATIFY (Cut point 7, Youden IndexER = 0.18 and 95% CI = 0.00, 0.35). Overall, all tools had low predictive accuracy for falls. Conclusion: TNH-STRATIFY had the highest predictive accuracy for falls. The predictive accu-racy of WH-STRATIFY improved and was significant when the calculated optimal cut point was applied. The optimal cut points of falls risk assessment tools should be determined and validated in different clinical settings to optimise local predictive accuracy, enabling targeted falls risk mitigation strategies and resource allocation.

Preprint REVIEW | doi:10.20944/preprints202304.0092.v1

Applying the Good Publication Practice 2022 Guidelines in the Asia-Pacific Region: A Practical Guide

Blair Hesp, Katsuhisa Arai, Namita Bose, Rachael Profit, Malvika Katariya, Jonathan Lee, Ronnie Lin, Magdalene Chu, Andrew Sakko, Hazel Fernandez

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: Asia-Pacific; Authorship; Conflict of interest; Disclosures; Ethics; Good Publication Practice; Manuscript development

Online: 6 April 2023 (11:11:37 CEST)

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Preprint ARTICLE | doi:10.20944/preprints202303.0547.v1

Robust and Fragile Determinants of the Severity of Covid-19 in Developing and Developed Countries: A Comparative Analysis

Imad A. Moosa, Ibrahim N. Khatatbeh

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: Covid-19; Infection Rate; Case Mortality Rate; Extreme Bounds Analysis; Cumulative Density Function

Online: 31 March 2023 (09:42:23 CEST)

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Preprint ARTICLE | doi:10.20944/preprints202303.0523.v1

Efficacy and Feasibility of SMS M-Health for the Detection of Adverse Events Following Immunisation (AEFIs) In re-Source-Limited Setting–The Zimbabwe Stimulated Telephone As-Sisted Rapid Safety Surveillance (Zm-STARSS) Randomised Con-Trol Trial

Priscilla Patricia Munyaradzi Nyambayo, Michael Gold, Ushma Mehta, Stephen Clark, Rumbidzai Manyevere, Libert Chirinda, Edlyne Zifamba, Tatenda Nyamandi

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: Zimbabwe Stimulated Telephone Assisted Rapid Safety Surveillance (Zm-STARSS); mHealth active participant-centred (MAPC) Adverse Events Following Immunisation(AEFI) surveillance

Online: 30 March 2023 (03:51:08 CEST)

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Abstract Introduction: The mHealth active participant centred (MAPC) adverse events following immunisation (AEFI) surveillance is a promising area for early AEFI detection resulting in risk minimisation. Passive (spontaneous) AEFI surveillance is the backbone for vaccine pharmacovigilance, but has inherent drawbacks of under reporting, and requires strengthening with active surveillance methods. The Zimbabwe stimulated telephone assisted rapid safety surveillance (Zm-STARSS) randomized controlled trial (RCT) sought to evaluate the efficacy and feasibility of AEFI detection using a short message service (SMS) and computer assisted telephone interview (CATI) approach. Method: A multicentre Zm-STARSS RCT enrolled consented adult vaccinees or parents or guardians of children receiving vaccines, including COVID-19 vaccines, at study vaccination clinics. At enrolment study participants were randomised to either SMS-CATI group or control group. SMS prompts were sent on days 0-2 and 14 post-vaccination to SMS-CATI group to ascertain if a medical event following immunisation (MEFI) had occurred. However, no SMSs were sent to the control group. SMS-CATI group who responded “Yes” to SMS prompts were interviewed by research healthcare workers (RHCWs) who completed a CATI to determine if an MEFI/AEFI had occurred whilst an AEFI in control group was determined from passive AEFI reporting channels. The primary study outcome was the AEFI detection rate in the SMS-CATI group compared to the control group. Results: A total of 704 (31%) participants responded to the SMS prompts, with 75% (528/704) indicating “No” and 25% (176/704) "Yes” to experiencing a MEFI. However, 31% (55/176) who responded “Yes” did not complete a CATI survey, but 69% (121/176) did; and 64% (77/121) of these indicated negative to AEFI experience whilst 36% (44/121) were affirmative. There were no AEFI reported in control group participants. Zm-STARSS showed promising results in that the AEFI detection rate using SMS-CATI was 2% (44/2280) on an intention to treat cohort. Conclusion: Despite the low SMS response and CATI completion rate, we demonstrated that Zm-STARSS SMS system improves AEFI detection compared to passive AEFI surveillance. We recommend cost-effective multi-channel digital approaches for holistic pharmacovigilance to improve AEFI detection in LMICs for all vaccines.

Preprint ARTICLE | doi:10.20944/preprints202303.0499.v1

VXorPUF: A Vedic Principles - Based Hybrid XOR Arbiter PUF for Robust Security in IoMT

Md Ishtyaq Mahmud, Pintu Kumar Sadhu, Venkata P. Yanambaka, Ahmed Abdelgawad

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: Internet of Medical Things; Arbiter PUF; security and privacy; physical unclonable function; machine learning; authentication framework

Online: 29 March 2023 (03:25:19 CEST)

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Preprint CASE REPORT | doi:10.20944/preprints202303.0493.v1

Acute Appendicitis Associated With COVID-19 Managed With Individualized Classical Homeopathy: A Case Report

Pooja Dhamodar, Elif Esra, Seema Mahesh, Mahesh Mallappa, George Vithoulkas

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: Appendicitis; Children; Homeopathy; Individualized Medicine; COVID-19; SARS-CoV-2

Online: 28 March 2023 (15:48:20 CEST)

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Preprint ARTICLE | doi:10.20944/preprints202303.0470.v1

Design and Development of an Intelligent Clinical Decision Support System Applied towards the Diagnosis of Suspected Obstructive Sleep Apnea Patients from the Patient’s Health Profile and Symptomatology

Manuel Casal-Guisande, Laura Ceide-Sandoval, Mar Mosteiro-Añón, María Torres-Durán, Jorge Cerqueiro-Pequeño, José-Benito Bouza-Rodríguez, Alberto Fernández-Villar, Alberto Comesaña-Campos

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: design; clinical decision support systems; intelligent systems; expert systems; Machine Learning; decision-making; medical algorithm; design science research.; obstructive sleep apnea

Online: 28 March 2023 (03:18:38 CEST)

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Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) is nowadays one of the respiratory pathologies with a higher in-cidence globally in developed countries. This situation led to an increase in the demand for medical appointments and diagnostic studies related to that condition, especially those based on poly-somnographies and cardiorespiratory polygraphies. These studies are limited in resources, causing long waiting lists with the subsequent impact on the patients’ health. Furthermore, it is necessary to mention that OSA’s symptomatology is not very specific, and it is typically present in the general population (excessive sleepiness, snore, etc.). In this regard, this paper proposes a novel intelligent clinical decision support system for the diagnosis of OSA which could be used to help medical teams, both in primary care settings and in units specialized in respiratory pathologies. The aim of the proposed system is to help discriminate the patients suspected of suffering from the pathology from those who are not. To this end, two types of information sets of heterogeneous nature are consid-ered. The first one encompasses objective data, related to the patient's health profile with infor-mation usually available in electronic health records. The second type comprises subjective data, referred to the symptomatology reported by the patient in a previous interview. To process the first group of information, a Machine Learning classification algorithm is used, Bagged Trees in this case. For processing the second information set, related with the symptomatology of the patient, a col-lection of expert systems based on fuzzy inferential systems arranged in cascade are employed. As a result, the system is able to determine two risk indicators related to the patient's risk of suffering from OSA: the Statistical Risk and the Symbolic Risk respectively. Subsequently, by interpreting both risk indicators mentioned it will be possible to determine the severity of the patients’ health, proposing a preliminary evaluation on their condition. For the initial tests of the system, a software artifact has been built using a dataset with 4,978 selected patients, suspected of suffering from OSA, from the Álvaro Cunqueiro Hospital in Vigo. The results obtained are promising, demonstrating the potential usefulness of this type of tools in medical diagnosis. Once the system has been validated with new data from clinical environments, it is considered as possible to obtain a relevant improvement in the quality of the healthcare services, and a reduction in the associated costs.

Preprint REVIEW | doi:10.20944/preprints202303.0454.v1

Bibliometric Analysis: Six Decades of Scientific Production from a Single Nationwide Institution: Instituto de Seguridad y Servicios Sociales De Los Trabajadores Del Estado (ISSSTE) from Mexico

Gerónimo Pacheco Aispuro, Ileana Belén Rojas Jácome, Carlos Alejandro Martínez Zamora, Cuauhtémoc Gil Ortiz Mejía, Christopher Mader Alba, Carlos Castillo Rangel, Alejandro Monroy Sosa, Mario Flores Vázquez, Octavio Jesús Arroyo Zavala, Rodrigo Ramos Zúñiga, Guillermo González Garibay, Gerson Ángel Alavez, Ángel Lee

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: bibliometric analysis; Scopus database; ISSSTE; Mexican scientific research; scientometrics; manu-script writing

Online: 27 March 2023 (08:48:35 CEST)

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Preprint REVIEW | doi:10.20944/preprints202303.0419.v1

Modern Paediatric Emergency Department: Potential Improvements in Light of New Evidence

Roman Kula, Stanislav Popela, Jozef Klučka, Daniela Charwátová, Jana Djakow, Petr Štourač

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: emergency; triage; guidelines; checklist; ultrasound

Online: 24 March 2023 (01:44:38 CET)

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Preprint CASE REPORT | doi:10.20944/preprints202303.0402.v1

Thrombosis of Transverse Cerebral Venous Sinus Secondary to Vaccine ChAdOx1-S (Recombinant) First Report in Southamerica

Luis Dulcey, Juan Theran, Edgar Blanco, Maria Paula Ciliberti, Laura Nathalia Gutierrez, Catalina Herran Fonseca, Juan Martinez

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: Vaccine; Coronavirus; Thrombosis; Brain

Online: 22 March 2023 (14:50:00 CET)

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Preprint REVIEW | doi:10.20944/preprints202303.0217.v1

Improving Healthcare Quality by Unifying the American Electronic Medical Record Systems. Time for Change

Roopa Kumari, Subhash Chander

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: Electronic Medical Record; American Healthcare System; Unified EMR

Online: 13 March 2023 (06:14:27 CET)

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Preprint ARTICLE | doi:10.20944/preprints202303.0191.v1

Can ChatGPT Pass the 2023 Japanese National Medical Licensing Examination?

Yudai Kaneda, Tetsuya Tanimoto, Akihiko Ozaki, Tomohiko Sato, Kenzo Takahashi

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: ChatGPT; Medical Licensing Examination; Clinical Settings; Japan

Online: 10 March 2023 (09:33:21 CET)

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Preprint ARTICLE | doi:10.20944/preprints202303.0009.v1

Integrating AI/ML Models for Patient Stratification Leveraging Omics Dataset and Clinical Biomarkers from COVID-19 Patients: A Promising Approach to Personalized Medicine

Babatunde Bello, Yogesh Naren Bundey, Roshan Bhave, Maksim Khotimchenko, Szczepan W. Baran, Kaushik Chakravarty, Jyotika Varshney

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: SARS-CoV-2; COVID-19; artificial intelligence; omics; patient stratification; risk management

Online: 1 March 2023 (03:37:48 CET)

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Preprint ARTICLE | doi:10.20944/preprints202302.0400.v1

Artificial Intelligence Use in University: should We Ban ChatGPT ?

Yaser Mohammed Al-Worafi, Andi Hermansyah, Khang Wen Goh, Long Chiau Ming

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: innovation and technology; quality education; sustainable communities; innovation and infra-structure; partnerships for the goals; sustainable education; social justice

Online: 23 February 2023 (06:44:37 CET)

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Preprint HYPOTHESIS | doi:10.20944/preprints202301.0155.v2

Benveniste’s Experiments and the So-Called “Water Memory” Phenomenon: an Example of Serendipity?

Francis BEAUVAIS

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: Water memory; High dilutions; Scientific controversy; Serendipity; Experimenter effect

Online: 23 February 2023 (02:02:39 CET)

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Preprint ARTICLE | doi:10.20944/preprints202302.0373.v1

Did Virtual Patients Help Medical Students Learn Clinical Skills? Impact Study During COVID-19

Prema Nedungadi, Romita Jina, George Mathew, Ramaraju Rudraraju, Raghu Raman

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: sustainable development; Virtual Patients; simulation; clinical skills; SDG

Online: 22 February 2023 (04:07:13 CET)

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Preprint ARTICLE | doi:10.20944/preprints202302.0250.v1

AI-Predicted mTOR Inhibitor Reduces Cancer Cell Proliferation and Extends the Lifespan of C. elegans

Tinka Vidovic, Alexander Dakhovnik, Michael R MacArthur, Collin Y. Ewald

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: AI drug discovery; mTOR; rapalog; C. elegans; cancer; longevity

Online: 15 February 2023 (02:42:57 CET)

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Preprint ARTICLE | doi:10.20944/preprints202301.0341.v1

Towards Predicting Length of Stay and Identification of Cohort Risk Factors Using Self-Attention Based Transformers and Association Mining: Covid-19 as Phenotype

Fakhare Alam, Obieda Ananbeh, Khalid Mahmood Malik, Abdulrahman Al Odayani, Ibrahim Bin Hussain, Naoufel Kaabia, Amal Al Aidaroos

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: Deep Learning; COVID-19; Clinical Informatics; Machine Learning; Transformer; Association Mining

Online: 19 January 2023 (02:00:16 CET)

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Preprint ARTICLE | doi:10.20944/preprints202301.0281.v1

Theory, Advantages, Applications and Future of Diffuse Optical Tomography

Connor Peirson

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: Inverse problem; Biomedical; Diffuse Optics; Imaging; Tomography; NIRS

Online: 16 January 2023 (09:43:02 CET)

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Preprint HYPOTHESIS | doi:10.20944/preprints202301.0155.v1

Benveniste’s Experiments and the So-Called “Water Memory” Phenomenon: an Example of Serendipity?

Francis BEAUVAIS

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: Water memory; High dilutions; Scientific controversy; Serendipity; Experimenter effect

Online: 9 January 2023 (09:06:53 CET)

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Preprint ARTICLE | doi:10.20944/preprints202212.0446.v1

Rotational Distortion and Compensation in Optical Coherence Tomography with Anisotropic Pixel Resolution

Guangying Ma, Taeyoon Son, Tobiloba Adejumo, Xincheng Yao

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: Eye movement; Image registration; Optical coherence tomography; Optical coherence tomography angiography

Online: 23 December 2022 (06:27:02 CET)

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Preprint ARTICLE | doi:10.20944/preprints202212.0356.v1

Longitudinal Registration of Chest CT Images With Radiation-Induced Lung Disease

Fan-Ya Lin, Ya-Jing Li, Chi-En Lee, Kuo-Lung Lor, Hao-Jen Wang, Yeun-Chung Chang, Chung-Ming Chen

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: Component Structure Coherence Point Drift; parenchyma change induced by radiotherapy; computed tomography; feature point sampling; regional vascular point matching; longitudinal registration

Online: 20 December 2022 (07:28:27 CET)

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Preprint ARTICLE | doi:10.20944/preprints202212.0187.v1

Optical Properties of Tissue in Near-infrared Region for NIRS-based Medical Imaging

Manob Jyoti Saikia

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: near-infrared; spectroscopy; tissue; medical imaging; diffuse optical tomography; fNIRS

Online: 12 December 2022 (03:26:45 CET)

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Preprint ARTICLE | doi:10.20944/preprints202211.0541.v1

Dispersion of Airborne Nanoparticles in a Gas-Liquid Dual-Microchannel Separated by a Porous Membrane: A Numerical Study

Zohreh Sheidaei, Pooria Akbarzadeh, Carlotta Guiducci, Navid Kashaninejad

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: lung-on-a-chip; porous membrane; gas-liquid dual-channel chip; nanoparticle; numerical simulation

Online: 29 November 2022 (07:32:29 CET)

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Recently, there has been increasing attention toward inhaled nanoparticles (NPs) to develop in-halation therapies for diseases associated with the pulmonary system and investigate the toxic ef-fects of hazardous environmental particles on human lung health. Taking advantage of microfluidic technology for cell culture applications, lung-on-a-chip devices with great potential in replicating the lung air-blood barrier (ABB) have opened new research insights in preclinical pathology and therapeutic studies associated with aerosol NPs. Surprisingly, the air interface in such devices, which makes them tremendously unique among the other common liquid-based cellular mi-crosystems and enables exposure of cultivated cells to the drug/toxic aerosols, has been largely disregarded. Accordingly, there exists a significant research gap in the comprehensive under-standing of the NPs’ dynamics in the lung-on-a-chip devices, which is momentous to control the injection of aerosols to the target area and attain a desired physiochemical efficacy. To address this research gap, a numerical parametric study is presented to provide a deep insight into the dynamic behavior of the airborne NPs in a gas-liquid dual-channel lung-on-a-chip device with a porous membrane separating the channels. A finite element multi-physics model is developed to enable a particle tracing investigation simultaneously in both air and medium phases to replicate the in vivo conditions avoiding laborious and costly experimental trials. The results include the impact of fluid flow as well as geometrical properties on the distribution, deposition, and translocation of the NPs with diameters ranging from 10 nm to 900 nm in the lung-on-a-chip. The obtained results strongly suggest the aerosol injection of NPs instead of the aqueous solution for more efficient deposition on the substrate of the air channel and higher translocation to the media channel. The current study proposes to optimize the affecting parameters to control the injection and delivery of aerosol par-ticles into the lung-on-chip device depending on the objectives of biomedical investigations and provides optimized values for some specific cases. Therefore, this study can assist scientists and researchers in complementing their experimental investigation in future preclinical studies on pulmonary pathology associated with inhaled hazardous and toxic environmental particles, as well as therapeutic studies for developing inhalation drug delivery.

Preprint ARTICLE | doi:10.20944/preprints202211.0428.v1

Reducing the Complexity of Musculoskeletal Models using Gaussian Process Emulators

Ivan Benemerito, Erica Montefiori, Alberto Marzo, Claudia Mazzà

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: statistical modelling; statistical emulators; sensitivity analysis; Gaussian Process; Sobol; musculoskeletal model

Online: 23 November 2022 (02:28:54 CET)

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Preprint ARTICLE | doi:10.20944/preprints202210.0339.v1

A Smartphone-based Low-Cost Inverted Laser Fluorescence Microscope for Disease Diagnosis

Omar Ormachea, Alex Villazón, Patricia Rodriguez, Mirko Zimic

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: low-cost fluorescence microscopy; smartphone microscopy; 3D-printed devices; laser-based microscopy

Online: 21 October 2022 (13:48:31 CEST)

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Preprint ARTICLE | doi:10.20944/preprints202210.0241.v1

ViralVar: A Web Tool for Multilevel Visualization of SARS-CoV-2 Genomes

Arghavan Alisoltani, Lukasz Jaroszewski, Adam Godzik, Arash Iranzadeh, Lacy Marie Simons, Taylor Joseph Dean, Ramon Lorenzo-Redondo, Judd Franklin Hultquist, Egon Anderson Ozer

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: evolution; mutation; genomic surveillance; SARS-CoV-2; COVID-19; ViralVar; webtool

Online: 17 October 2022 (12:59:07 CEST)

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Preprint ESSAY | doi:10.20944/preprints202210.0084.v1

The Strengths and Weaknesses of Directed Acyclic Graphs (Dags) as Cognitive, Analytical and Educational Tools for Medical Statistics

George Ellison

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: directed acyclic graph; DAG; causal inference; bias; inferential statistics; reproducibility

Online: 8 October 2022 (02:57:44 CEST)

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The origins of directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) date back to the emergence of ‘graph theory’ in the early 1700s (Biggs et al. 1986). DAGs are conceptual or literal, diagrammatic representations of causal paths between variables which are constructed – as their name suggests – on the basis of two over-riding principles: first, that all causal paths are ‘directed’ (i.e. for each pair of variables, only one can represent the cause, while the other must be its consequence); and second, that no direct cyclical paths, or indirect cyclical pathways (comprising sequences of consecutive paths) are allowed, such that no consequence can be considered its own direct or indirect cause (hence ‘acyclic’; Law et al., 2012). As such DAGs reflect the knowledge, presumptions, assumptions and/or speculation of the analyst(s) concerned regarding the causal relationships between each of the variables included therein. Current convention dictates that variables are represented as nodes/vertices, and that any causal paths between variables are represented as directed arcs/edges/lines, often in the form of arrows (see Figure 1). Although each arc indicates the presence and direction of a known/presumed/assumed/speculative causal relationship between the two variables concerned, drawing an arc does not require the sign, magnitude, precision or shape of the relationship to be known or declared (Tennant et al., 2021). In this respect, DAGs provide a simple, uncomplicated, accessible and entirely nonparametric approach for postulating causal relationships amongst any variables of interest even when these are uncertain, unknown or entirely speculative (Ellison, 2020). Nonetheless, as a result of the parametric constraints imposed by the presence/absence of possible arcs within any given DAG, these also reflect and support a number of more sophisticated statistical applications which make it possible to use DAGs to inform the design of multivariable statistical models that reflect the causal structure(s) involved – albeit without the need to know or understand the mathematical technicalities on which these are based (Lewis and Kuerbis, 2016). These features make DAGs attractive cognitive, educational and analytical tools for strengthening the epistemological, theoretical and empirical basis of causal inference, and there has been a recent proliferation in the use of DAGs across a range of applied scientific disciplines (e.g. Knight and Winship, 2013), and an associated upsurge in analytical methods training (e.g. Elwert, 2011; Gilthorpe, 2017; Hernán 2018; Roy, 2021; Hünermund, 2021). This Chapter reflects on a decade of delivering medical statistics training to undergraduate medical students at the University of Leeds between 2012-2021 in which the third year research, evaluation and special studies module (‘RESS3’) has used DAGs to support the development of applied statistical skills relevant to the extended student-selected research and evaluation projects (ESREP) students undertake in their fourth and final years (Ellison, 2021; Ellison et al., 2014a,b). Based on successive iterations of the structure and content of the RESS3 module, together with notes made during formal and informal planning and review meetings with module leads, lecturers, tutors and students, we draw on the claims and criticisms made of DAGs in the epidemiological literature to identify a number of explicit strengths (and associated, often implicit. weaknesses) that are central to their use in prediction and causal inference modelling. While using DAGs requires (and benefits from) a clear understanding of their non-parametric nature and parametric implications, the weaknesses of DAGs seem likely to reflect both: the challenges inherent in the modelling of data generating processes when these are imperfectly understood; and troublesome cognitive and heuristic tendencies common to all analytical tools – in which the tool facilitates the task in hand by reducing the necessity (and benefits of) exploring uncertainties and identifying assumptions. These, more epistemological considerations appear particularly challenging for medical undergraduates to grasp (Ellison, 2021), but also appear poorly understood by many established analysts and clinical epidemiologists (Ellison, 2020).

Preprint HYPOTHESIS | doi:10.20944/preprints202207.0181.v2

The mint versus Covid hypothesis

Chris Buck

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: COVID-19; Covid19; SARS-CoV-2; pandemic; coronavirus; Lamiaceae, perilla; sage; tea; caffeic acid

Online: 5 October 2022 (09:48:05 CEST)

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Preprint ARTICLE | doi:10.20944/preprints202210.0011.v1

Design Process of Whippletree-Like Mechanism for Versatile Gripping in Arm Prosthesis

Wildan Trusaji, Dradjad Irianto, Ardianto Satriawan, Casi Setianingsih, Erza Nurtriandari, Rachmat Zulkarnain Geosasi

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: Arm Prosthesis; Versatile Gripping; Design Process

Online: 3 October 2022 (12:59:58 CEST)

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Preprint REVIEW | doi:10.20944/preprints202209.0200.v1

A Systematic Review and Quality Evaluation of Studies on Long-Term Sequelae of COVID-19

Jorge Vásconez González, Juan S. Izquiero-Condoy, Raul Fernandez-Naranjo, Esteban Ortiz-Prado

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: sequelae; COVID-19; SARS-COV-2; long-COVID; systematic review

Online: 14 September 2022 (08:50:08 CEST)

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Preprint ARTICLE | doi:10.20944/preprints202205.0408.v2

Physician’s Hesitancy in Treating COVID-19 Patients and Its Associated Occupational Risk Factors in Indonesia: An Online Cross-Sectional Survey

Dewi Sumaryani Soemarko, Aria Kekalih, Ari Fahrial Syam, Evy Yunihastuti, Herikurniawan Herikurniawan, Mikhael Yosia

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: hesitancy; covid-19; post-covid; medical doctors; indonesia

Online: 13 September 2022 (05:13:14 CEST)

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Preprint ARTICLE | doi:10.20944/preprints202208.0255.v1

A Novel GPPAS Model: Guiding the Implementation of Antimicrobial Stewardship in Primary Care Utilising Collaboration between General Practitioners and Pharmacists

Sajal K. Saha, Karin Thursky, David C. M. Kong, Danielle Mazza

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: antimicrobial stewardship; implementation model; GP-pharmacist collaboration; primary care

Online: 15 August 2022 (10:29:33 CEST)

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Preprint ARTICLE | doi:10.20944/preprints202208.0189.v1

Performance of a Chest Radiography AI Algorithm for Detection of Missed or Mislabeled Findings: A Multicenter Study

Parisa Kaviani, Subba R. Digumarthy, Bernardo Bizzo, Bhargava Reddy, Manoj Tadepalli, Preethan Putha, Ammar Jagirdar, Shadi Ebrahimian, Mannudeep K. Kalra, Keith J. Dreyer

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: chest-X ray; sddendum; missed finding; radiology

Online: 10 August 2022 (04:17:32 CEST)

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Preprint ARTICLE | doi:10.20944/preprints202208.0183.v1

Electrodeless Heart and Respiratory Rate Estimation During Sleep Using a Single Fabric Band and Event-Based Edge Processing

Titus Jayarathna, Gaetano D. Gargiulo, Gough Y. Lui, Paul P. Breen

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: Edge computing; Textile sensors; Wearable sensors; Wireless sensors

Online: 10 August 2022 (03:15:50 CEST)

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Preprint HYPOTHESIS | doi:10.20944/preprints202207.0181.v1

Why You’ve Never Heard of the Mint Versus COVID Hypothesis: A Philosophical Perspective

Chris Buck

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: COVID-19; Covid19; SARS-CoV-2; pandemic; coronavirus; Lamiaceae, perilla; sage; tea; caffeic acid

Online: 12 July 2022 (09:22:29 CEST)

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Preprint ARTICLE | doi:10.20944/preprints202206.0131.v1

Photoplethysmogram Recording Length: Defining Minimal Length Requirement from Dynamical Characteristics

Nina Sviridova, Tiejun Zhao, Akimasa Nakano, Tohru Ikeguchi

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: photoplethysmogram; nonlinear dynamics; nonlinear time series analysis; data length assessment

Online: 9 June 2022 (02:57:47 CEST)

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Preprint ARTICLE | doi:10.20944/preprints202206.0102.v1

MiWEndo: Evaluation of a Microwave Colonoscopy Algorithm for Early Colorectal Cancer Detection in Ex Vivo Human Colon Models

Marta Guardiola, Walid Dghoughi, Roberto Sont, Alejandra Garrido, Sergi Marcoval, Luz María Neira, Ignasi Belda, Glòria Fernández-Esparrach

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: endoscopes; medical diagnostic imaging; microwave antenna arrays; microwave imaging; colorectal cancer

Online: 7 June 2022 (09:55:21 CEST)

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Preprint ARTICLE | doi:10.20944/preprints202205.0408.v1

Physician’s Hesitancy in Treating COVID-19 Patients and Its Associated Occupational Risk Factors in Indonesia: An Online Cross-Sectional Survey

Dewi Sumaryani Soemarko, Aria Kekalih, Ari Fahrial Syam, Evy Yunihastuti, Herikurniawan Herikurniawan, Mikhael Yosia

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: hesitancy; covid-19; post-covid; medical doctors; indonesia

Online: 31 May 2022 (03:26:46 CEST)

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Preprint ARTICLE | doi:10.20944/preprints202205.0357.v1

Differentiating False Positive Lesions from Clinically Significant Cancer and Normal Prostate Tissue using VERDICT MRI and Other Diffusion Models

Snigdha Sen, Vanya Valindria, Paddy J. Slator, Hayley Pye, Alistair Grey, Alex Freeman, Caroline Moore, Hayley Whitaker, Shonit Punwani, Saurabh Singh, Eleftheria Panagiotaki

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: prostate cancer; diffusion MRI; false positives; biophysical modelling; deep learning

Online: 26 May 2022 (08:30:28 CEST)

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Preprint ARTICLE | doi:10.20944/preprints202202.0338.v2

The Use of Artificial Intelligence and Deep Learning in Medical Imaging: A Nationwide Survey of Trainees in Saudi Arabia

Omar M. Wazgar, Ahmad A. Mirza, Ammar A. Almaghrabi, Roaa M. Ghandour, Sarah A. Alenizi, Khalid S. Alraddadi, Abdulrahim A. Mirza, Fayzah H. Al-Adwani, Mohammed A. Alsakkaf, Yahea Alzahrani

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: Artificial intelligence; Diagnostic imaging; Education; Radiology; Saudi Arabia

Online: 23 May 2022 (11:13:31 CEST)

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Preprint ARTICLE | doi:10.20944/preprints202204.0147.v1

Implementation and Evaluation of Two Nudges in an Electronic Prescribing System to Optimise Cost-Effective Prescribing in the Hospital

Saval Khanal, Kelly Ann Schmidtke, Usman Talat, Asif Sarwar, Ivo Vlaev

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: behaviour change technique; medicine use optimisation; nudge; prescribing behaviour

Online: 15 April 2022 (14:27:22 CEST)

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Preprint ARTICLE | doi:10.20944/preprints202204.0127.v1

CONFERD-HP: Recommendations for Reporting COmpeteNcy FramEwoRk Development in Healthcare Professions

Alan Batt, Walter Tavares, Tanya Horsley, Jessica Rich, Brett Williams, CONFERD-HP Collaborators

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: competency framework; reporting guideline; competency development

Online: 13 April 2022 (13:37:11 CEST)

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Preprint ARTICLE | doi:10.20944/preprints202204.0106.v1

Optimization of Imputation Strategies for High-Resolution Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (HR GC-MS) Metabolomics Data

Isaac Ampong, Kip D. Zimmerman, Peter W. Nathanielsz, Laura A. Cox, Michael Olivier

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: metabolomics; HR GCMS; Imputation; Missing values

Online: 12 April 2022 (09:49:42 CEST)

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Preprint REVIEW | doi:10.20944/preprints202203.0131.v1

Evolution of Therapeutic Patient Education: A Systematic Scoping Review and Scientometric Analysis

Jorge César Correia, Ahmed Waqas, Isabelle Aujoulat, Melanie J Davies, Jean-Philippe Assal, Alain Golay, Zoltan Pataky

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: Patient education; health literacy; scientometric analysis

Online: 9 March 2022 (10:06:12 CET)

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Preprint ARTICLE | doi:10.20944/preprints202202.0338.v1

The Use of Artificial Intelligence and Deep Learning in Medical Imaging: A Nationwide Survey of Trainees in Saudi Arabia

Ahmad A. Mirza, Omar M. Wazgar, Ammar A. Almaghrabi, Roaa M. Ghandour, Sarah A. Alenizi, Khalid S. Alraddadi, Abdulrahim A. Mirza, Fayzah H. Al-Adwani, Mohammed A. Alsakkaf, Yahea A. Alzahrani

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: Artificial intelligence; Diagnostic imaging; Education; Radiology; Saudi Arabia

Online: 25 February 2022 (13:52:22 CET)

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Preprint ARTICLE | doi:10.20944/preprints202201.0131.v1

Investigating the Unfavored Factors That Interfere MALDI-TOF Based AI in Predicting Antibiotic Resistance

Hsin-Yao Wang, Yu-Hsin Liu, Yi-Ju Tseng, Chia-Ru Chung, Ting-Wei Lin, Jia-Ruei Yu, Yhu-Chering Huang, Jang-Jih Lu

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus; Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption/Ionization Time-of-Flight; antibiotic susceptibility test; artificial intelligence

Online: 10 January 2022 (19:01:57 CET)

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Preprint REVIEW | doi:10.20944/preprints202112.0208.v1

An Introduction to Spiral Steroids

Fred Chasalow

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: Spiral steroids; Ionotropin; digoxin-like materials; NaK-ATPase; potassium sparing diuretics

Online: 13 December 2021 (13:35:50 CET)

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Preprint ARTICLE | doi:10.20944/preprints202112.0194.v1

Faculty Members’ Perspective on Virtual Interviews for Medical Residency Matching during the COVID-19 Crisis: A National Survey

Fadi Aljamaan, Fadia Alkhattabi, Ayman Al-Eyadhy, Ali Alhaboob, Nasser Alharbi, Adi Alherbish, Badr Almosned, Mohammed Alobaylan, Hayfa Alabdulkarim, Amr Jamal, Sami A. Alhaidar, Basim Alsaywid, Fahad A. Bashiri, Mazin Barry, Jaffar A. Al-Tawfiq, Khalid Alhasan, Mohamad-Hani Temsah

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: COVID-19; medical residency; virtual interviews; satisfaction; survey; faculty member

Online: 10 December 2021 (20:17:44 CET)

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Preprint REVIEW | doi:10.20944/preprints202107.0129.v3

A Potential Benefit of Hypochlorous Acid - Facial Sanitisation

Avis Aman Nowbuth, Josh Barrie Armstrong, Thomas Eugene Cloete, Pieter Rousseau Fourie

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: HOCl; hypochlorous; antimicrobial; antiinflammatory; SARS-CoV-2; infections; sanitisation

Online: 3 December 2021 (10:13:20 CET)

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Preprint ARTICLE | doi:10.20944/preprints202111.0188.v1

Fidelity and Adherence to a Liquefied Petroleum Gas Stove and Fuel Intervention During Gestation: The Multi-country Household Air Pollution Intervention Network (HAPIN) Randomized Controlled Trial

Ashlinn K Quinn, Kendra N Williams, Lisa M Thompson, Steven Harvey, Ricardo Piedrahita, Jiantong Wang, Casey Quinn, Ajay Pillarisetti, John P McCracken, Joshua P Rosenthal, Miles A Kirby, Anaité Diaz Artiga, Gurusamy Thangavel, Ghislaine Rosa, J Jaime Miranda, William Checkley, Jennifer L Peel, Thomas F Clasen

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: cookstoves; LPG; randomized controlled trial; adherence; fidelity; intervention

Online: 9 November 2021 (15:17:51 CET)

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Background: Clean cookstove interventions can theoretically reduce exposure to household air pollution and benefit health, but this requires near-exclusive use of the stoves, with simultaneous disuse of traditional stoves. Previous cookstove trials have reported low adoption of new stoves and/or extensive continued traditional stove use. Methods: The Household Air Pollution Intervention Network (HAPIN) trial randomized 3195 pregnant women in Guatemala, India, Peru, and Rwanda either to a liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) stove and fuel intervention (n = 1590) or to control (n = 1605). The intervention consisted of an LPG stove and two initial cylinders of LPG, free fuel refills delivered to the home, and regular behavioral messaging. We assessed intervention fidelity (delivery of the intervention as intended) and adherence (intervention use) through the end of gestation, as relevant to the first primary health outcome of the trial: infant birth weight. Fidelity and adherence were evaluated using stove and fuel delivery records, questionnaires, visual observations, and temperature-logging stove use monitors (SUMs). Results: 1585 women received the intervention, at a median (interquartile range) of 8.0 (5.0–15.0) days post-randomization and gestational age of 17.9 (15.4–20.6) weeks. Over 96% reported cooking exclusively with LPG at two follow-up visits during pregnancy. Less than 4% reported ever running out of LPG. Complete abandonment of traditional stove cooking was observed in over 67% of intervention households. 31.4% removed their traditional stoves upon receipt of the intervention, and among those who retained traditional stoves, the majority did not use them: traditional stove use was detected via SUMs on a median (interquartile range) of 0.0% (0.0%, 1.6%) of follow-up days (median follow-up = 134 days). Conclusions: Fidelity of the HAPIN intervention, as measured by stove installation, timely ongoing fuel deliveries, and behavioral reinforcement as needed, was high. Exclusive use of the intervention during pregnancy was also high.

Preprint ARTICLE | doi:10.20944/preprints202111.0112.v1

Use of Advanced Artificial Intelligence in Forensic Medicine

Andrej Thurzo, Helena Svobodová Kosnáčová, Veronika Kurilová, Silvester Kosmeľ, Radoslav Beňuš, Norbert Moravanský, Peter Kováč, Kristína Mikuš Kuracinová, Michal Palkovič, Ivan Varga

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: forensic medicine; forensic dentistry; forensic anthropology; 3D CNN; AI; deep learning; biological age determination; sex determination; 3D cephalometric; AI face estimation; growth prediction

Online: 5 November 2021 (10:00:56 CET)

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Preprint ARTICLE | doi:10.20944/preprints202111.0073.v1

Using the Data Quality Dashboard to Improve the EHDEN Network

Clair Blacketer, Erica A Voss, Frank DeFalco, Nigel Hughes, Martijn J Schuemie, Maxim Moinat, Peter Rijnbeek

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: data quality; OMOP CDM; EHDEN; healthcare data; real world data; RWD

Online: 3 November 2021 (09:12:54 CET)

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Preprint ARTICLE | doi:10.20944/preprints202111.0041.v1

The Oxygen Desaturation Measured by Optical Sensor at Fingertip but Not at the Arm Is Diminished by Continuous Positive Airway Pressure in Obstructive Sleep Apnea

Zhongxing Zhang, Ming Qi, Gordana Hügli, Ramin Khatami

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: Obstructive sleep apnea; Continuous positive airways pressure therapy; Near-infrared spectroscopy; Oxygen desaturation; Arm; Pulse oximeter

Online: 2 November 2021 (10:52:45 CET)

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Preprint ARTICLE | doi:10.20944/preprints202110.0190.v1

Sleep Habits and Disorders among School Students in the Jazan Region, Saudi Arabia

Majed Ibrahim Hakami, Ismail Abdullah Juraybi, Abdullah Ali Jaafari, Ali Mohammed Al Ibrahim, Alhassan Mahdi Kariri, Ali Mahdi Kariri, Basim Yahya Khawaji, Almonther Hussain Wassly, Siraj Omer Wali, Faris Fahad Alhejaili, Mohammed Jeraiby

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: Sleep habits; Sleep disorders; Students: Academic achievement.

Online: 13 October 2021 (08:26:58 CEST)

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Preprint ARTICLE | doi:10.20944/preprints202110.0152.v1

The Effectiveness of Intervening on Social Isolation to Reduce Mortality during Heat Waves in Aged Population: A Retrospective Ecological Study

Stefano Orlando, Claudia Mosconi, Carolina De Santo, Leonardo Emberti Gialloreti, Maria Chiara Inzerilli, Olga Madaro, Sandro Macinelli, Fausto Ciccacci, Maria Cristina Marazzi, Leonardo Palombi, Giuseppe Liotta

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: extreme weather; heat waves; anvironment and public healt; aged; older adults; social behaviour; interpersonal relation; social isolation; mortality; lonelliness

Online: 11 October 2021 (08:59:11 CEST)

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Preprint ARTICLE | doi:10.20944/preprints202110.0081.v1

Development and Validation of a Primary Care Electronic Health Record Phenotype to Study Migration and Health in the UK

Neha Pathak, Claire X Zhang, Yamina Boukari, Rachel Burns, Rohini Mathur, Arturo Gonzalez-Izquierdo, Spiros Denaxas, Pam Sonnenberg, Andrew Hayward, Robert W Aldridge

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: Migration; Health; Electronic health records

Online: 5 October 2021 (11:40:07 CEST)

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Preprint ARTICLE | doi:10.20944/preprints202109.0290.v1

Changes in Alienation in Physical Education Classes, School Happiness, and Future Healthy Life Expectancy After the COVID-19 Pandemic in Korean Adolescents

Seung-Man Lee, Jung-In Yoo, Hyun-Su Youn

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: adolescents; alienation in PE class; school happiness; future healthy life expectancy; COVID-19 pandemic

Online: 16 September 2021 (13:55:44 CEST)

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Preprint REVIEW | doi:10.20944/preprints202107.0129.v2

A Potential Benefit of Hypochlorous Acid - Facial Sanitisation

Avis Aman Nowbuth, Josh Barrie Armstrong, Thomas Eugene Cloete, Pieter Rousseau Fourie

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: HOCl; hypochlorous; antimicrobial; antiinflammatory; SARS-CoV-2; infections; sanitisation

Online: 10 September 2021 (11:05:50 CEST)

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Preprint ARTICLE | doi:10.20944/preprints202109.0115.v1

Prevalence of Health Problems Targeted by the National School-based Screening Program among Primary School Students in Saudi Arabia, 2019

Manal Matar Al Daajani, Dina Mohammed Al-Habib, Mona Hamed Ibrahim, Nora Abdulrhman Al Shewear, Yahya Mohammad Fagihi, Abrar Abdulazeem Alzaher, Amjad Alfaleh, Khaled Ibrahim Alabdulkareem

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: Health Status; National Survey; KSA; School Health; Students

Online: 7 September 2021 (09:59:44 CEST)

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Preprint ARTICLE | doi:10.20944/preprints202106.0114.v2

A Virtual Reality System for Improved Image-based Planning of Complex Cardiac Procedures

Shujie Deng, Gavin Wheeler, Nicolas Toussaint, Lindsay Munroe, Suryava Bhattacharya, Gina Sajith, Ei Lin, Eeshar Singh, Ka Yee Kelly Chu, Saleha Kabir, Kuberan Pushparajah, John M Simpson, Julia A Schnabel, Alberto Gomez

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: virtual reality; pre-operative imaging; echocardiography

Online: 18 August 2021 (10:02:51 CEST)

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Preprint ARTICLE | doi:10.20944/preprints202106.0618.v1

Validation of a Brief Screening Instrument for Chemical Intolerance in a large U.S. National Sample

Raymond F Palmer, Tatjana Walker, David Kattari, Rudy Rincon, Perales Roger, Calos Jaen, Carl Grimes, Dana R Sunblad, Claudia S Miller

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: Chemical Intolerance, Drug Intolerance, Food Intolerance, QEESI, BREESI, Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, Toxicant-induced Loss of Tolerance, Prevalence

Online: 25 June 2021 (11:49:32 CEST)

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Preprint BRIEF REPORT | doi:10.20944/preprints202106.0341.v1

Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on the Tuberculosis Case Findings of India: Exploration of the Magnitude of the Threats as Well as the Available Opportunity to Mitigate the Threats

Abhijit Dey

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: : Impact of COVID on TB; TB Notification in India; Integrated TB COVID Activity; Threats and Opportunity during COVID; Initiatives to improve TB Surveillance; TB Surveillance during COVID Pandemic

Online: 14 June 2021 (09:23:05 CEST)

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Preprint REVIEW | doi:10.20944/preprints202105.0056.v2

Literature Analysis of Artificial Intelligence in Biomedicine

Tim Hulsen

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: artificial intelligence; machine learning; deep learning; neural networks; biomedicine; healthcare; medicine; literature; PubMed; Embase

Online: 9 June 2021 (11:23:48 CEST)

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Preprint ARTICLE | doi:10.20944/preprints202106.0114.v1

A Virtual Reality System for Improved Image-based Planning of Complex Cardiac Procedures

Shujie Deng, Gavin Wheeler, Nicolas Toussaint, Lindsay Munroe, Suryava Bhattacharya, Gina Sajith, Ei Lin, Eeshar Singh, Ka Yee Kelly Chu, Saleha Kabir, Kuberan Pushparajah, John M Simpson, Julia A Schnabel, Alberto Gomez

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: virtual reality; pre-operative imaging; echocardiography

Online: 3 June 2021 (12:52:46 CEST)

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Preprint ARTICLE | doi:10.20944/preprints202105.0429.v1

Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia Detection from Microscopic Images Using Weighted Ensemble of Convolutional Neural Networks

Chayan Mondal, Md. Kamrul Hasan, Md. Tasnim Jawad, Aishwariya Dutta, Md. Rabiul Islam, Md. Abdul Awal, Mohiuddin Ahmad, Salem A. Alyami, Mohammad Ali Moni

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: Acute lymphoblastic leukemia; Deep convolutional neural networks; Ensemble image classifiers; C-NMC-2019 dataset.

Online: 19 May 2021 (07:42:23 CEST)

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Preprint REVIEW | doi:10.20944/preprints202105.0056.v1

Literature Analysis of Artificial Intelligence in Biomedicine

Tim Hulsen

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: artificial intelligence; machine learning; deep learning; neural networks; biomedicine; healthcare; medicine; literature; PubMed; Embase

Online: 5 May 2021 (12:54:40 CEST)

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Preprint REVIEW | doi:10.20944/preprints202104.0373.v1

Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of Diagnostic Accuracy of Mobile-linked Point-of-Care Diagnostics in Sub-Saharan Africa

Ernest Osei, Sphamandla Josias Nkambule, Portia Nelisiwe Vezi, Tivani P. Mashamba-Thompson

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: mHealth devices; diagnosis; accuracy; sensitivity; specificity; sub-Saharan Africa

Online: 14 April 2021 (12:27:39 CEST)

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Preprint ARTICLE | doi:10.20944/preprints202102.0448.v1

Interactive, Hands-On Training for Hospital Workers Increases Level of Special Pathogen Preparedness

Eleanor Tolf, Syra Madad

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: preparedness; special pathogens; Ebola; PPE; training

Online: 22 February 2021 (08:30:59 CET)

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Preprint ARTICLE | doi:10.20944/preprints202101.0551.v1

Epidemiology of Bovine Mastitis in Selected Major Milk Shade Districts of Arsi Zone, Ethiopia

Behailu Assefa

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: Bovine; Epidemiology; Mastitis; Prevalence; Risk factors

Online: 27 January 2021 (10:24:09 CET)

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The data for the study on the epidemiology of bovine mastitis were collected fromNovember 2015 to February 2016 to investigate the prevalence of mastitis in administrative towns of three selected districts of Arsi zone, Oromia Regional State, namely Iteya, Sagure, and Asella, Ethiopia; and to analyze the association between the risk factors and mastitis occurrence. Sample cows were selected and examined for clinical mastitis and at the same time, milk samples were evaluated both clinically and using the California Mastitis Test (CMT). Some parameters of the cows which have biological relation with this disease together with other potential risk factors were collected along with primary data collection. The analysis of the primary data showed that overall mastitis prevalence in the locations covered by the study was 28.6% of which 83.3% was subclinical, while 16.7% were clinical mastitis cases. Analysis related to the investigation of the existence of an association between risk factors and mastitis revealed that there was a significant association between the occurrence of mastitis and two of the risk factors evaluated, breed and age of the cow. The other risk factors investigated (i.e. parity, location, and lactation stage had no significant association with mastitis occurrence). Since mastitis is a complex disease that results from the interaction of different factors, it may be difficult to limit it to only some given factors. Environment and management factors and their combination may also have an additional impact on the epidemiology of the disease. A prevalence with the indicated magnitude together with the added effect of a lower level of awareness of the society about milk-associated zoonoses implies that this disease causes significant public health problems. In addition, mastitis may cause silent economic loss through unnoticed production loss along with reduced milk yield from subclinical and clinical (e.g. blind teats) cases. Due to a lack of awareness about mastitis and/or negligence, farmers in all corners of the country are suffering from economic and public health problems imposed by mastitis. This lack of awareness about mastitis-associated problems and/or negligence could be a possible reason for the use of raw milk which is a common scenario particularly in pastoral areas and the selling of adulterated milk which is becoming increasingly practiced in Ethiopia which is also true in these specific localities.

Preprint ARTICLE | doi:10.20944/preprints202010.0200.v1

A Four-Dimensional Computational Model of Dynamic Contrast-Enhanced Magnetic Resonance Imaging Measurement of Subtle Blood-Brain Barrier Leakage

Jose Bernal, Maria Valdés-Hernández, Javier Escudero, Anna Heye, Eleni Sakka, Paul Armitage, Stephen Makin, Rhian Touyz, Joanna Wardlaw, Michael Thrippleton

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: digital reference object; blood-brain barrier permeability; DCE-MRI; Spatio-temporal imaging artefacts; endothelial dysfunction; cerebral small vessel disease

Online: 9 October 2020 (12:44:33 CEST)

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Preprint COMMUNICATION | doi:10.20944/preprints202010.0005.v1

Gingival Crevicular Fluid Zinc- and Aspartyl-binding Protease Profile of Individuals with Moderate/Severe Atopic Dermatitis

Fernando Valenzuela, Javier Fernández, Marcela Aroca, Constanza Jiménez, Daniela Albers, Marcela Hernández, Alejandra Fernández

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: Enzymes, Peptide Hydrolases, Metalloproteases, Biomarkers, Gingival Crevicular Fluid, Atopic Dermatitis

Online: 1 October 2020 (08:55:12 CEST)

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Preprint ARTICLE | doi:10.20944/preprints202009.0572.v1

Clinical Trials and Reductionist Approach Preclude Cures for Chronic Diseases Due to Flawed Presumptions

Jianqing Wu, Ping Zha

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: randomized controlled clinical trials; mathematical model; binary system; statistical analysis; epidemiological model; junk science; reductionist treatments; failure of medicine

Online: 24 September 2020 (08:13:15 CEST)

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Working Paper ARTICLE

Exploring Researchers’ Contributions to the Study of Deaths from All Causes in Russia

Sally Sonia Simmons, John Elvis Hagan Jr., Bright Opoku Ahinkorah, Abdul-Aziz Seidu, Thomas Schack

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: articles; bibliometric; causes; death; diseases; journals; Russia

Online: 23 September 2020 (04:48:32 CEST)

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Preprint ARTICLE | doi:10.20944/preprints202009.0479.v1

Suboptimal Health Status of High School Students in Guangzhou, Shanxi, and Tibet, China: A Cross-Sectional Study

Gehendra Mahara, Jiazhi Liang, Zhirong Zhang, Qi Ge, Jinxin Zhang

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: suboptimal health status; associated factors; high school students; Shanxi; Guangzhou; Tibet; China

Online: 20 September 2020 (14:50:30 CEST)

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Working Paper ARTICLE

Examining the Association between Female Genital Mutilation and Early Sexual Initiation among Adolescent Girls and Young Women in Sub-Saharan Africa

Bright Opoku Ahinkorah, John Elvis Hagan Jr., Eugene Budu, Ebenezer Agbaglo, Collins Adu, Edward Kwabena Ameyaw, Prince Peprah, Pascal Agbadi, Georgina Yaa Mensah, Abdul-Aziz Seidu

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: Adolescent girls; Female genital mutilation/cutting; Global health; Sexual initiation; Sexual and reproductive health; Young women

Online: 30 August 2020 (17:28:36 CEST)

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Despite several attempts by governments and non-governmental organizations to eliminate female genital mutilation or cutting, it is puzzling that this traditional procedure is widely practiced today in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Scholarly arguments on the influence of female genital mutilation on sexual behavior up until now remain inconclusive. The current study sought to examine the association between female genital mutilation and early sexual initiation among girls and young women (AGYW) in SSA. Data from Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) of 12 SSA countries were combined. A total of 30,089 AGYW (15-24 years) who had ever had sex and had complete information on all the variables of interest were considered. The outcome variable for the study was early sexual initiation. The study employed multilevel logistic regression for the data analysis, with reported odds ratio and associated 95% confidence intervals (CIs). The overall prevalence of female genital mutilation among AGYW was 49.9%, with the highest and lowest prevalence in Guinea (95.8%) and Togo (3.3%) respectively. The prevalence of early sexual initiation was 42.4%, with the highest and lowest prevalence in Niger (59.9%) and Burkina Faso (30.6%) respectively. AGYW who had not experienced female genital mutilation were less likely to have early sexual initiation [OR= 0.74, CI= 0.70-0.78], compared to those who had experienced female genital mutilation, after controlling for significant covariates. The likelihood of early sexual initiation was high among AGYW aged 15-19 [OR=2.38, CI=2.26-2.51] but low among AGYW with secondary education [AOR=0.58, CI=0.54-0.63], those who had never married [OR=0.68, CI=0.60-0.78], those in households with richest wealth quintile [OR=0.64, CI=0.57-0.72], those who were exposed to mass media [OR=0.88, CI=0.83-0.93], and those working [OR=0.91, CI=0.87-0.96]. Not undergoing female genital mutilation in the midst of socio-economic factors (e.g., education level, household wealth) could limit AGYW from early sexual debut. These findings underscore the need for effective campaign and programs (e.g., educational programs, entrepreneurial training, micro-finance schemes) against the practice of female genital mutilation. Policy interventions (e.g., “schooling for the girl-child” initiatives) that might delay early sexual initiation among adolescent girls and young women in the midst of identified socio-economic factors should be developed.

Preprint ARTICLE | doi:10.20944/preprints202008.0415.v1

Monitoring Coronavirus COVID-19/SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic using GIS Dashboard: International and Indonesia Context

Edy Irwansyah, Widodo Budiharto, Danu Widhyatmoko, Achmad Istamar, Fepri Putra Panghurian

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: pandemic; covid-19; monitoring; GIS dashboard; emergency spatial support centre

Online: 19 August 2020 (11:48:55 CEST)

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Working Paper ARTICLE

Pervasive Lying Posture Tracking

Parastoo Alinia, Ali Samadani, Mladen Milosevic, Hassan Ghasemzadeh, Saman Parvaneh

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: lying posture tracking; traditional machine learning; ensemble classification; deep neural network models; long short-term memory sequence classification model

Online: 2 August 2020 (12:12:06 CEST)

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Automated lying-posture tracking is important in preventing bed-related disorders such as pressure injuries, sleep apnea, and lower-back pain. Prior research studied in-bed lying posture tracking using sensors of different modalities (e.g., accelerometer and pressure sensors). However, there remain significant gaps in research about how to design efficient in-bed lying posture tracking systems. These gaps can be articulated through several research questions as follows. First, can we design a single-sensor, pervasive, and inexpensive system that can accurately detect lying postures? Second, what computational models are most effective in the accurate detection of lying postures? Finally, what physical configuration of the sensor system is most effective for lying posture tracking? To answer these important research questions, in this article, we propose a comprehensive approach to design a sensor system that uses a single accelerometer along with machine learning algorithms for in-bed lying posture classification. We design two categories of machine learning algorithms based on deep learning and traditional classification with handcrafted features to detect lying postures. We also investigate what wearing sites are most effective in accurate detection of lying postures. We extensively evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithms on nine different body locations and four human lying postures using two datasets. Our results show that a system with a single accelerometer can be used with either deep learning or traditional classifiers to accurately detect lying postures. The best models in our approach achieve an F-Score that ranges from 95.2% to 97.8% with a coefficient of variation from 0.03 to 0.05. The results also identify the thighs and chest as the most salient body sites for lying posture tracking. Our findings in this article suggest that because accelerometers are ubiquitous and inexpensive sensors, they can be a viable source of information for pervasive monitoring of in-bed postures.

Preprint ARTICLE | doi:10.20944/preprints202007.0384.v1

Daily Life Benefits and Usage Characteristics of Dynamic Arm Supports in Subjects with Neuromuscular Disorders

Johannes Essers, Alessio Murgia, Anneliek Peters, Kenneth Meijer

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: neuromuscular disorders; dynamic arm support; activity monitoring; motor performance

Online: 17 July 2020 (14:17:28 CEST)

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Working Paper ARTICLE

Multiband Dual-Meander Line Antenna for Body Centric Networks Biomedical Applications by Using UMC 180 nm

Heba shawkey, Dalia Elsheakh

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: integrated antenna; meander line (ML); 5G technology; body centric networks (BCNs); WBAN; WSN; WPAN; UMC 180nm CMOS

Online: 14 July 2020 (03:31:53 CEST)

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Preprint ARTICLE | doi:10.20944/preprints202007.0267.v1

Simulation of mTBI Utilizing White Matter Properties from MRE

Amit Madhukar, Martin Ostoja-Starzewski

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: mTBI, MRI; MRE; FE model; brain wave dynamics

Online: 12 July 2020 (16:46:04 CEST)

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Preprint ARTICLE | doi:10.20944/preprints202007.0036.v1

Development and Application of a Patient Group Engagement Prioritization Tool for Use in Medical Product Development

Brian Perry, Carrie Dombeck, Jaye Bea Smalley, Bennett Levitan, David Leventhal, Bray Patrick-Lake, Linda Brennan, Kevin McKenna, Zachary Hallinan, Amy Corneli

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: patient engagement; stakeholder engagement; patient group engagement; prioritization tool; patient engagement activities

Online: 3 July 2020 (12:15:23 CEST)

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Working Paper CONCEPT PAPER

Sharing of Data from Clinical Research Projects – Guidance from the Swiss CTU Network

Brigitta Gahl, Alan Haynes, Constantin Sluka, Elise Dupuis-Lozeron, Francisca Jörger, Renate Schur, Andri Christen, Sven Trelle

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: clinical research; data sharing

Online: 28 June 2020 (19:46:40 CEST)

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Objectives: Data sharing has become a requirement of many funding bodies and is becoming a scientific standard in many disciplines. In medical research, however, data sharing can conflict with clinicians’ obligation to protect patients’ privacy. General recommendations on data sharing exist also for clinical research, but so far lack practical and Swiss-specific aspects. The objective of this document is to provide practical recommendations for all relevant aspects of data sharing in agreement with legislation in Switzerland. Methods: This document was written by members of the Swiss CTU Network, a network of academic clinical trial units. The process did not follow a formalized Delphi process. After an internal consensus round, this report is now published as pre-print for external review. A second version will incorporate external comments. We plan to publish this document as a text in progress, as we expect relevant changes in related fields such as the development of further dedicated medical repositories or methodological advances in anonymization techniques. Results: We developed principles and practical recommendations with respect to informed consent, data management plan, anonymization, data structure and format, coding of variables, metadata and documentation, version control, selection of repository, requesting and use of data. We also provide a summary of legal aspects relevant for the Swiss context. Conclusions: The intension to share data has an impact not only after a clinical trial or an observational study is completed, but also during the planning period, the conduct and the analysis phase. Clinical researchers need to be aware at the beginning of a study on how to inform patients and at least the amount of work related to preparing data for sharing, metadata, and any further documentation. This report provides details of aspects to be considered, suggests decision criteria, and provides examples and checklists, in order to support data sharing in practice.

Preprint ARTICLE | doi:10.20944/preprints202006.0338.v1

Investigating the Effects of Cerebellar Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation on Post-Stroke Overground Gait Performance: A Partial Least-Squares Regression Approach

Dhaval Solanki, Zeynab Rezaee, Anirban Dutta, Uttama Lahiri

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: Gait; Stroke; Cerebellum; Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation

Online: 28 June 2020 (10:16:17 CEST)

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Stroke often results in impaired gait, which can limit community ambulation and the quality of life. Recent works have shown the feasibility of transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) as an adjuvant treatment to facilitate gait rehabilitation. Since the cerebellum plays an essential role in balance and movement coordination, which is crucial for independent overground ambulation, so, we investigated the effects of cerebellar tDCS (ctDCS) on the post-stroke overground gait performance in chronic stroke survivors. Fourteen chronic post-stroke male subjects were recruited based on convenience sampling at the collaborating hospitals where ten subjects finally participated in the ctDCS study. We evaluated the effects of two ctDCS montages with 2mA direct current, a) optimized configuration for dentate stimulation with 3.14cm² disc anode at PO10h (10/5 EEG system) and 3.14cm² disc cathode at PO9h (10/5 EEG system), and b) optimized configuration for leg lobules VII-IX stimulation with 3.14cm² disc anode at Exx8 (electrodes defined by ROAST) and 3.14cm² disc cathode at Exx7. We found ctDCS to be acceptable by all the exposed subjects. The ctDCS intervention had an effect on the 'Normalised Step length Affected side' (p=0.1) and 'Gait Stability Ratio' (p=0.0569), which was found using Wilcoxon signed-rank test at 10% significance level. Also, ctDCS montage specific effect was found using a two-sided Wilcoxon rank-sum test at a 5% significance level for 'Step Time Affected Leg' (p=0.0257) and '%Stance Time Unaffected Leg' (p=0.0376). Moreover, the changes in the quantitative gait parameters across both the montages were found to be correlated to the mean electric field strength in the lobules based on partial least squares regression analysis (R² statistic = 0.6574) where the mean electric field strength at the cerebellar lobules, Vermis VIIIb, Ipsilesional IX, Vermis IX, Ipsilesional X, had the most loading. In conclusion, our feasibility study indicated the potential of a single session of ctDCS to contribute to the immediate improvement in the balance and gait performance in terms of gait-related indices and clinical gait measures.

Preprint ARTICLE | doi:10.20944/preprints202006.0318.v1

RepRapable Automated Open Source Bag Valve Mask-Based Ventilator

Aliaksei Petsiuk, Nagendra G. Tanikella, Samantha Dertinger, Adam Pringle, Shane Oberloier, Joshua Pearce

Subject: Medicine And Pharmacology, Other Keywords: ventilator; pandemic; ventilation; influenza pandemic; coronavirus; coronavirus pandemic; pandemic ventilator; single-limb; open source; open hardware; COVID-19; medical hardware; RepRap; 3-D printing; open source medical hardware; embedded systems; real-time operating system

Online: 26 June 2020 (17:25:16 CEST)

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Medicine and Pharmacology