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Pulmonary bacteriophage and cystic fibrosis airway mucus: friends or foes?For those born with cystic fibrosis (CF), hyper-concentrated mucus with a dysfunctional structure significantly impacts CF airways, providing a perfect environment for bacterial colonization and subsequent chronic infection. Early treatment with antibiotics limits the prevalence of bacterial pathogens but permanently alters the CF airway microenvironment, resulting in antibiotic resistance and other long-term consequences.
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Detection of bile acids in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid defines the inflammatory and microbial landscape of the lower airways in infants with cystic fibrosisCystic Fibrosis (CF) is a genetic condition characterized by neutrophilic inflammation and recurrent infection of the airways. How these processes are initiated and perpetuated in CF remains largely unknown. We have demonstrated a link between the intestinal microbiota-related metabolites bile acids and inflammation in the bronchoalveolar lavage fluid from children with stable CF lung disease.
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Switching from tobacco cigarettes in very early pregnancy: The effects of in utero e-cigarette exposure on mouse offspring neurodevelopment and behaviourElectronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) are often perceived to be safer than smoking, which has led to some women switching to e-cigarettes during pregnancy. However, the effects of switching from smoking to e-cigarettes on both pregnancy outcomes and the foetus are largely unknown. This study aimed to investigate the effects of switching from tobacco smoking to e-cigarette use in very early pregnancy on birth outcomes, neurodevelopment and behaviour of the offspring.
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Ventilatory response and stability of oxygen saturation during a hypoxic challenge in very preterm infantsPreterm infants have immature control of breathing and impaired pulmonary gas exchange. We hypothesized that infants with bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD) have a blunted ventilatory response and peripheral oxygen saturation (SpO2 ) instability during a hypoxic challenge.
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Associations between respiratory and vascular function in early childhoodThe link between respiratory and vascular health is well documented in adult populations. Impaired lung function is consistently associated with thicker arteries and higher incidence of cardiovascular disease. However, there are limited data on this relationship in young children and the studies that exist have focussed on populations at high risk of cardiorespiratory morbidity.
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Differential cell counts using center-point networks achieves human-level accuracy and efficiency over segmentationDifferential cell counts is a challenging task when applying computer vision algorithms to pathology. Existing approaches to train cell recognition require high availability of multi-class segmentation and/or bounding box annotations and suffer in performance when objects are tightly clustered.
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Health service utilisation for acute respiratory infections in infants graduating from the neonatal intensive care unit: a population-based cohort studyDespite advances in neonatal intensive care, babies admitted to Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICU) suffer from adverse outcomes. We aim to describe the longer-term respiratory infectious morbidity of infants discharged from NICU using state-wide population-based linked data in Western Australia.
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Early treatment with fluvoxamine, bromhexine, cyproheptadine, and niclosamide to prevent clinical deterioration in patients with symptomatic COVID-19: a randomized clinical trialRepurposed drugs with host-directed antiviral and immunomodulatory properties have shown promise in the treatment of COVID-19, but few trials have studied combinations of these agents. The aim of this trial was to assess the effectiveness of affordable, widely available, repurposed drugs used in combination for treatment of COVID-19, which may be particularly relevant to low-resource countries.
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Net benefit of smaller human populations to environmental integrity and individual health and wellbeingThe global human population is still growing such that our collective enterprise is driving environmental catastrophe. Despite a decline in average population growth rate, we are still experiencing the highest annual increase of global human population size in the history of our species-averaging an additional 84 million people per year since 1990.
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Immune checkpoint therapy responders display early clonal expansion of tumor infiltrating lymphocytesImmune checkpoint therapy (ICT) causes durable tumour responses in a subgroup of patients, but it is not well known how T cell receptor beta (TCRβ) repertoire dynamics contribute to the therapeutic response.