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Background: The main aim of this study was to assess the efficacy of advanced respiratory support (ARS) for acute respiratory failure in do-not-attempt cardiopulmonary resuscitation order (DNACPR) COVID-19 patients. Methods: In this single-center study, the impact of different types of ARS modality, PaO2/FiO2 (PF) ratio, clinical frailty score (CFS) and 4C score on mortality was evaluated. Results: There was no significant difference in age, type of ARS modality, PF ratio and 4C scores between those who died and those who survived. Overall survival rates/hospital discharge of patients still requiring ARS at 5 and 7 days post admission were 20 and 17%, respectively. Conclusion: Our study showed that ARS can be a useful tool in frail, elderly and high-risk COVID-19 patients irrespective of high 4C mortality score.

Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is of the most effective treatments available for treatment-resistant depression, yet it is underutilized in part due to its reputation of causing cognitive side effects in a significant number of patients. Despite intensive neuroimaging research on ECT in the past two decades, the underlying neurobiological correlates of cognitive side effects remain elusive. Because the primary ECT-related cognitive deficit is memory impairment, it has been suggested that the hippocampus may play a crucial role. In the current study, we investigated 29 subjects with longitudinal MRI and detailed neuropsychological testing in two independent cohorts (N = 15/14) to test if volume changes were associated with cognitive side effects. The two cohorts underwent somewhat different ECT study protocols reflected in electrode placements and the number of treatments. We used longitudinal freesurfer algorithms (6.0) to obtain a bias-free estimate of volume changes in the hippocampus and tested its relationship with neurocognitive score changes. As an exploratory analysis and to evaluate how specific the effects were to the hippocampus, we also calculated this relationship in 41 other areas. In addition, we also analyzed cognitive data from a group of healthy volunteers (N = 29) to assess practice effects. Our results supported the hypothesis that hippocampus enlargement was associated with worse cognitive outcomes, and this result was generalizable across two independent cohorts with different diagnoses, different electrode placements, and a different number of ECT sessions. We found, in both cohorts, that treatment robustly increased the volume size of the hippocampus (Cohort 1: t = 5.07, Cohort 2: t = 4.82; p < 0.001), and the volume increase correlated with the neurocognitive T-score change. (Cohort 1: r = −0.68, p = 0.005; Cohort 2: r = −0.58; p = 0.04). Overall, our research indicates that novel treatment methods serving to avoid hippocampal volume increase may result in a better side effect profile.

ObjectiveResting Fluorine-18 fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (FDG-PET) brain imaging and neuropsychological testing were used to investigate the usefulness of a spatial navigation task (SNT) as a performance benchmark for cognitive impairment related to anti-N-methyl D-aspartate (anti-NMDA) receptor antibodies (DNRAb) in SLE.MethodsNeuropsychological assessments, including a desktop 3-D virtual SNT, were performed on 19 SLE participants and 9 healthy control (HC) subjects. SLE participants had stable disease activity and medication doses and no history of neuropsychiatric illness or current use of mind-altering medications. Resting FDG-PET scans were obtained on all SLE participants and compared with a historical set from 25 age-matched and sex-matched HCs. Serum DNRAb titres were measured by ELISA.Results11/19 (58%) of SLE participants failed to complete the SNT (SNT−) compared with 2/9 (22%) of HCs. Compared with 7/9 (78%) in HCs, only 2/9 (22%; p=0.037) of SLE participants with high serum DNRAb titres completed the SNT, in contrast to 6/10 (60%; p=0.810) in SLE participants with low DNRAb titres. Voxel-wise comparison of FDG-PET scans between the 8 SLE participants successfully completing the SNT task (SNT+) and the 11 SNT− SLE participants revealed increased metabolism in the SNT+ participants (p<0.001) in the left anterior putamen/caudate, right anterior putamen, left prefrontal cortex (BA 9), right prefrontal cortex (BA 9/10) and left lateral and medial frontal cortex (BA 8). Compared with HCs, the SNT+ group demonstrated increased metabolism in all regions (p<0.02) except for the right prefrontal cortex (BA 9), whereas the SNT− group demonstrated either significantly decreased or similar metabolism in these seven regions.ConclusionsSNT performance is associated with serum DNRAb titres and resting glucose metabolism in the anterior putamen/caudate and frontal cortex, suggesting compensatory neural recruitment in SNT-associated regions is necessary for successful completion of the task. The SNT therefore has potential for use as a marker for SLE-mediated cognitive impairment.

Cells secrete numerous bioactive molecules essential for the function of healthy organisms. However, there are no scalable methods to link individual cell secretions to their transcriptional state. By developing and using secretion encoded single-cell sequencing (SEC-seq), which exploits hydrogel nanovials to capture individual cells and their secretions, we simultaneously measured the secretion of vascular endothelial growth factor A (VEGF-A) and the transcriptome for thousands of individual mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs). We found that VEGF-A secretion is heterogeneous across the cell population and lowly correlated with the VEGFA transcript level. While there is a modest population-wide increase in VEGF-A secretion by hypoxic induction, highest VEGF-A secretion across normoxic and hypoxic culture conditions occurs in a subpopulation of MSCs characterized by a unique gene expression signature. Taken together, SEC-seq enables the identification of specific genes involved in the control of secretory states, which may be exploited for developing means to modulate cellular secretion for disease treatment.