UW Neurological Surgery Recent PubMed Publications

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common cause of dementia, with global case numbers projected to reach 153 million in 2050¹. AD is highly heritable, with twin-based heritability estimates of 60-80%². Although 1,200 causal loci are predicted to exist for AD³, approximately 80 loci have been associated with AD in two recent studies^(4,5). Low single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP)-based heritability estimates have prompted the suggestion that little further common-variant risk remains to be...

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Background/Objectives: Restoration of anterior column support in the lower thoracic spine and thoracolumbar junction can be challenging in the setting of segmental kyphosis, particularly when endplate integrity is compromised. A conformable mesh interbody implant can be introduced in a collapsed configuration through a transforaminal corridor and expanded in situ to accommodate the geometry of the prepared intervertebral space. This study evaluated early radiographic outcomes following anterior...

Supratentorial ependymomas (ST-EPNs) are aggressive pediatric brain tumors predominantly driven by the recurrent ZFTA-RELA fusion, an oncogenic chromatin regulator that establishes an aberrant transcriptional program. Although metabolic pathways modulate epigenetic regulation by controlling the availability of metabolic cofactors, how ZFTA-RELA coordinates metabolic reprogramming with epigenetic regulation is not well understood. Here, we show that ZFTA-RELA-positive ependymomas exhibit enhanced...

CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE: MRI-based lesion quantification improves prognostic discrimination relative to measures currently available to clinicians treating patients with TBI. Global functioning at 6 months is driven more by the volume than the location or connectivity of traumatic lesions. These findings support integrating MRI-based lesion quantification into clinical workflows and updated TBI classification frameworks.

Breast cancer comprises heterogeneous transcriptional states that are incompletely captured by discrete clinical or molecular subtype labels. To visualize this heterogeneity in a unified framework, we integrated bulk RNA-seq data from 2,284 patient samples across 13 studies using 18,089 protein coding genes, a harmonized processing pipeline, batch correction, consensus clustering and PaCMAP dimensionality reduction to construct an interactive breast cancer transcriptional landscape. Consensus...

CONCLUSION: This ML model stratified MMAE patients into risk groups with a 37.2-fold difference in treatment failure. High-risk patients had 59.6% failure, whereas low-risk patients had 1.6% failure. Risk stratification may improve patient selection and monitoring.

Microbial pathogens in food, water and the environment often exhibit strong seasonal patterns. Since 2000, the Food Safety and Inspection Service in the United States has collected samples of meat and poultry products and analyzed them for the presence of Salmonella. This study uses a common modeling approach to estimate the seasonal change in the proportion of test-positive samples for the four most commonly consumed meat and poultry products in the United States. While many previous studies...

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Limited access to medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD) is a major driver of the opioid overdose crisis. Jails have been slow to implement MOUD treatment, especially agonist medications (methadone, buprenorphine). Massachusetts mandated certain county jails pilot-test delivery of all FDA-approved MOUD treatments, stipulating jails continue MOUD, or initiate it prior to release, and facilitate MOUD continuation in the community post-release. The Massachusetts Justice Community Opioid...

CONCLUSION: IJV compression syndrome caused by the hypertrophic C1 transverse process is a distinct clinical condition that should be considered in patients with refractory pulsatile tinnitus or suspected venous intracranial hypertension. Computed tomography venography of head and neck along with head rotation is critical for diagnosis. Microsurgical decompression through a posterolateral far-lateral approach provides effective symptom relief and durable restoration of venous outflow.

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CONCLUSION: This Delphi consensus provides expert-driven, practice-oriented advisories codifying fitness-based selection, nutrition-forward optimization, and pragmatic toxicity management. The resulting guidance builds on current standards and provides internationally applicable consensus statements to ultimately enhance patient care.

CONCLUSIONS: Declining overall non-SUID infant mortality masked pandemic-era increases among full-term infants, postneonatal infants and deaths from external causes. These findings support prioritising preventive paediatric care and injury-prevention strategies during future public health emergencies.

CONCLUSIONS: Overall retreatment did not differ between groups, although bilateral MMAE was associated with fewer index-admission surgical rescues. These observational data identify, but do not validate, angiographically documented contralateral supply as a candidate selection marker for prospective evaluation but do not establish a benefit of bilateral treatment or support routine bilateral MMAE.

CONCLUSIONS: Bayesian-guided TDM was feasible, safe, and substantially altered tobramycin prescribing practice. It identified pwCF at risk of both inappropriate dose reduction and underexposure, supporting precision dosing in the evolving CF population.

CONCLUSION: Within the observed range, injected volume alone was not a consistent determinant of outcome and should not be a procedural target after a satisfactory angiographic endpoint. Future studies should evaluate embolic distribution, distal penetration, and vascular territory coverage.

Breathing is a fundamental motor rhythm necessary to sustain life. The rhythm and pattern of breathing arises from the coordination of a rostrocaudally extended ventral respiratory column (VRC) in the medulla. Although recurrent excitation is sufficient for rhythmic bursting in reduced in vitro preparations, comparatively less is understood about how inhibition and excitation interact with feedback circuits to generate the breathing rhythm in vivo. Here, we expand on the classical...

CONCLUSIONS: AIH, PBC, SSc, SjD and SLE represent a distinct subset of autoimmune diseases that share genetic associations with the IL12 pathway, as well as profound co-prevalence, suggesting they may have a shared etiology and may respond to the same targeted therapeutic intervention(s).

The NCCN Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology (NCCN Guidelines) for Pancreatic Adenocarcinoma provide multidisciplinary diagnostic workup, staging, and treatment recommendations for resectable, borderline resectable, unresectable, locally advanced, and metastatic disease. This article summarizes the studies and Panel discussion that serve as the rationale for comprehensive care recommendations included in the NCCN Guidelines for Pancreatic Adenocarcinoma.