University School of Nashville

ABSTRACTBackgroundThe relationship between paramagnetic rim lesions (PRLs) and surrounding normally appearing white matter (NAWM) disease, potentially contributory to the associations seen between PRLs and clinical impairment, is underexplored.ObjectivesTo assess whether PRLs correlate with a greater degree of NAWM injury in early MS.MethodsPRLs were identified on susceptibility weighted imaging (SWI) of 68 newly diagnosed patients. Each PRL was paired with an anatomically matched contralateral non‐PRL (nPRL) from the same participant. Quantitative magnetization transfer imaging derived macromolecular‐to‐free pool‐size ratio (PSR) and relaxation rate of the free water pool (R1f) values were extracted and compared between PRLs and nPRLs, NAWM surrounding PRLs and nPRLs, and whole brain WM lesions and NAWM of PRL+ and PRL− people with MS (pwMS).ResultsPSR and R1f (p ≤ 0.028) values were lower in PRLs compared to nPRLs, but there were no differences in PSR and R1f (p ≥ 0.824) values between peri‐PRLs and peri‐nPRLs NAWM ROIs. PRL+ pwMS had similar PSR and R1f (p ≥ 0.267) of the whole brain NAWM, similar WM lesions PSR (p = 0.764) but lower R1f (p = 0.030) values.ConclusionsIn the early stages of MS, there is no association between PRLs and surrounding NAWM degree of injury.

Many studies of the human brain using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) lack physiological measurements, which substantially impacts the interpretation and richness of fMRI studies. Natural fluctuations in autonomic physiology, such as breathing and heart rate, provide windows into critical functions, including cognition, emotion, and health, and can heavily influence fMRI signals. Here, we developed DeepPhysioRecon, a Long-Short-Term-Memory (LSTM)-based network that decodes continuous variations in respiration amplitude and heart rate directly from whole-brain fMRI dynamics. Through systematic evaluations, we investigate the generalizability of this approach across datasets and experimental conditions. We also demonstrate the importance of including these measures in fMRI analyses. This work highlights the importance of studying brain-body interactions, proposes a tool that may enhance the efficacy of fMRI as a biomarker, and provides widely applicable open-source software.

60 to 70 million people in the US have chronic gastrointestinal (GI) disorders. Employers bear a significant economic burden for GI conditions. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of a digital digestive care program on absenteeism. Using propensity score matching between participants and nonparticipants, we evaluated sick days of public school system employees who were offered a digital digestive care program as part of their health benefits. Baseline annual sick days were comparable for the 237 participants and 400 nonparticipants. Among employees aged 50 years and older, during the intervention period, participants had significantly fewer sick days than nonparticipants (1.7 days [SD, 4.2], P = 0.02), an approximate direct salary savings of $672/employee annually. Digital digestive care is promising for decreasing sick days among older workers.

Understanding the factors contributing to sensitive parenting is crucial to optimize infant social and emotional functioning. Research has supported the association between parents' personality and parenting quality, but findings are inconsistent when examining various global personality measures. Further, it is likely that the interaction between parent-level (e.g., personality) and infant-level characteristics (e.g., temperament) are more strongly associated with caregiving quality. Most studies examining predictors of parenting quality have only included mothers, compared to fathers. The current study examined the interaction between parental personality and infant temperament and associations with parental sensitivity and intrusiveness with mothers and fathers. The participants included families (n=102) when the infants were 4, 6, and 8months old. Using parent report measures and a face-to-face play task, significant main effects of maternal behavioral inhibition on parenting behaviors were observed for mothers. A Behavioral Activation X Infant Negative Reactivity interaction predicted both maternal sensitivity and intrusiveness, whereas a Behavioral Inhibition X Infant Surgency predicted paternal intrusiveness. In summary, the results revealed support for the goodness-of-fit perspective between parents' personality and infant temperament.

Background: Allostatic load, a measure of cumulative stress-related physiologic dysregulation, is associated with major cardiovascular disease (CVD) events. However, despite evidence of familial aggregation of CVD risk factors, the impact of parental allostatic load on the onset and timing of CVD in offspring remains unknown. Hypothesis: We hypothesize that offspring of parents with lower allostatic load will have longer CVD-free survival time. Aim: To examine whether CVD-free survival in offspring is associated with parental allostatic load and potential sex-specific differences. Methods: A secondary data analysis of 6,145 offspring-mother-father trios derived from the Framingham Heart Study Original (exam 10) and Offspring Cohorts (exam 1). Allostatic load was defined as an index (0-16) of 8 variables (systolic and diastolic blood pressure, total cholesterol, HDL, LDL, total cholesterol/ HDL ratio, fasting blood glucose and body mass index). Kaplan-Meier plots, and Irwin’s restricted mean and multivariable-adjusted Cox proportional hazards regression models were used to examine sex-specific differences and the association between parental allostatic load and offspring’s CVD-free survival. Results: Parents mean age (SD) was 60.8 (8.1) and offspring’s 34.8 (10.5). 22.8% of parents (n=458) and 12.1% (n=412) of offspring had high allostatic load (>8). In a total of 118,132 person-years of follow-up among the offspring, 1060 incident CVD events occurred. The overall CVD incidence rate was 8.9 per 1000 person-years (95% confidence interval [CI] 8.4-9.5) and sons had a higher CVD incident rate than daughters (11.0 vs 7.2, p<0.001). Offspring of mothers with low allostatic load lived 4 more years free of CVD compared to offspring of mothers with high allostatic load. Similarly, offspring of fathers with low allostatic load lived 3 more years free of CVD. The hazard rate of having incident CVD among offspring of mothers and fathers with high (compared to low) allostatic load was 1.58 (1.28-1.95) and 1.39 (95% CI: 1.11-1.75), respectively. Conclusion: Parents' allostatic load has a significant impact on the cardiovascular health of their offspring, with those of mothers with high allostatic load being at a higher risk of developing CVD at a younger age.

This paper proposes a semantic framework based on software architectures for accommodating data science practices to the needs of Public Health Organizations (PHO), during the covid-19 pandemics. The goal is to create an environment suitable for deploying data science on an ad-hoc basis, upon the selection of data generated by governments, nongovernment organizations, public databases and social media, but guided by PHO own needs and expertise. It is important to run predictions, through learning technologies, which may depend on circumstances and situations relevant for PHO in the particular moment and thus enable better decision making in the time of the pandemic. The proposed software architecture relies on its deployment within integrated development environments and plug-ins/APIs towards software tools, and libraries for (a) data gathering and preprocessing, (b) predictions with learning technologies (c) reasoning with semantic technologies and (d) including human intervention to aid in understanding the situation in which PHO questions may be answered. The illustration of the proposal is uses the sentiment analysis of twitter data relevant to covid-19 and classification of tweets with machine learning.