CONCLUSIONS: Persons with HIV demonstrated higher odds of receiving COVID-19 therapeutics than persons without HIV. However, persistent racial and ethnic inequities in treatment uptake were evident.

Aging drives a progressive decline in vascular health, undermining endothelial function, neurovascular coupling (NVC), and blood-brain barrier (BBB) integrity, three processes essential for maintaining cerebral perfusion and cognitive resilience. Central to these age-related deficits is mitochondrial dysfunction, which disrupts redox balance, bioenergetics, and nutrient-sensing pathways within vascular cells, thereby promoting oxidative stress, impaired mitophagy, mitochondrial fragmentation,...

Clostridioides difficile remains a common source of nosocomial infection resulting in a wide range of clinical outcomes and for which there is no vaccine and limited therapeutic options. C. difficile Toxin B (TcdB)-specific IgG is the best correlate of protection against severe and recurrent disease. However, there are very few therapeutic IgG fully human monoclonal antibodies (hmAbs) that have shown efficacy thus far. We therefore hypothesized that the memory B cell (Bmem) compartment of...

The test-negative design (TND) has become a widely used observational study design for evaluating vaccine effectiveness (VE), especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Traditionally, TND has often been viewed as a variant of the case-control study, with its analysis largely limited to logistic regression models. In this paper, we first establish that TND can be framed as a special case of a cohort study, thereby opening the door to a wider range of analytical approaches. We then introduce the...

CONCLUSIONS: We have conceptualised two immune mediator-informed indexes, the LCRII that predicts SLE from months to years before clinical presentation, and the LDAII that analogously predicts active disease in SLE to distinguish patients who would benefit from early intervention.

Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (hEDS) is a complex, underdiagnosed connective tissue disorder characterized by widespread symptoms affecting multiple organ systems. Recent clinical observations suggest that individuals with hEDS may be at increased risk for persistent symptoms following COVID-19, commonly referred to as Long COVID. Using data from over 23 million patients across the United States, we examined associations between hEDS, COVID-19 infection, Long COVID, and related chronic...

Age-related dysfunction of the central nervous system, including cognitive impairment and visual disorders, is a major concern for the aging population, affecting health span and quality of life. Age-related vascular dysfunction in the central nervous system includes an increase in blood-brain or blood-retina barrier permeability, an increase in vascular fragility, and impaired neurovascular coupling, contributing to cognitive impairment and vision loss. While these pathologies occur in the...

Prediabetes increases oxidative stress and the risk of type 2 diabetes and related cardiovascular diseases. Previous trials have shown antioxidant-rich strawberries improve this risk, but effects on antioxidant markers are inconclusive. This 28-week randomized controlled crossover trial evaluated the effects of freeze-dried strawberries (FDS) on fasting glucose, serum antioxidant status, and vascular inflammation in adults with prediabetes not on glucose-lowering medications. Participants were...

CONCLUSIONS: This study suggests that, for similarly injured patients, massive transfusion, airway management, hemorrhage control via laparotomy, and other cardiac procedures performed at TTCs explain most of the observed survival benefit for patients treated at TTCs.

CONCLUSIONS: The study identifies novel associations between surfactant protein gene SNPs and ROP risk that may impact protein structure, function in the retinal vasculature.