UW Neurological Surgery Recent PubMed Publications

BACKGROUND: Venous air embolism (VAE) is a rare neurosurgical complication that occurs when air is trapped in a large, exposed vein and there is a pressure gradient that drives the air embolus from the surgical site to the right heart. This case highlights the identification and management of intraoperative VAE during transsphenoidal surgery. Additional discussion is provided on pathophysiology and best practices for reducing risk of occurrence.

CONCLUSIONS: Delirium remains a prevalent issue in Canadian ICUs, with variability in assessment and management strategies. Gaps in family engagement and pediatric-specific protocols persist. Addressing barriers like staff shortages and lack of training is critical to improving care.

GRP78, a molecular chaperone primarily located in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), has recently been discovered to translocate into the nucleus of stressed and cancer cells where it assumes a new function reprogramming the transcriptome. This study explores the requirements of GRP78 nuclear translocation and its transcriptional activity and investigates the role of ER-associated degradation in the process. We show that the ER-processed, mature form of GRP78 is the major form of nuclear GRP78 and...

The substantia nigra pars compacta (SNpc), a midbrain region enriched with dopaminergic neurons projecting to the dorsal striatum, is essential for motor control and has been implicated in respiratory modulation. In Parkinson's disease (PD) models, the loss of SNpc dopaminergic neurons correlates with baseline respiratory deficits, suggesting a potential link between dopaminergic dysfunction and respiratory impairments. To explore this, we used adult transgenic mice (Vglut(2)^(cre) Ai6 and...

Cerebral arteriovenous malformations (AVMs) are congenital vascular anomalies that can lead to severe complications, including hemorrhage and neurological deficits. This study compares the outcomes of microsurgical resection and stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) for SM grade I and II AVMs. Out of a large multicenter registry, we identified 180 matched patients with SM grade I and II AVMs treated with either microsurgical resection or SRS between 2010 and 2023. The primary outcomes were AVM...

Genetic knockout (KO) models are valuable tools for understanding biological functions and disease mechanisms. KO models in rats have fallen behind those in mice which limits advances in areas where rats have advantages because they can perform more complex cognitive tasks. Two widely used rat strains are Sprague Dawley (SD) and Long Evans (LE). Creating conditional KO models requires crossing Floxed and Cre lines with the constructs of interest but if they are on different genetic backgrounds,...

Tick bites and tick-related diseases are on the rise. Diagnostic tests that identify well-characterised tick-borne pathogens (TBPs) possess limited capacity to address the causation of symptoms associated with poorly characterised tick-related illnesses, such as debilitating symptom complexes attributed to ticks (DSCATT) in Australia. Identification of local signals in tick-bitten skin that can be detected systemically in blood would have both clinical (diagnostic or prognostic) and research...

The bacterial skin disease tenacibaculosis, caused by Tenacibaculum species, affects numerous economically important marine fish, including salmonids. This study reports the ability of three Tenacibaculum maritimum strains, belonging to different molecular O-AGC types, and a single Tenacibaculum dicentrarchi strain to induce tenacibaculosis in farmed Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha, Walbaum 1792) in Aotearoa New Zealand. Naïve Chinook salmon were exposed to T. maritimum (2 × 10⁸...

Transcranially delivered diagnostic ultrasound (tDUS) applied to the human brain can modulate those brains such that they became more receptive to external stimulation relative to sham ultrasound exposure. Here, we sought to directly measure the effect of tDUS on mouse brain activity subjected to an external stimulation-a blinking light. Using electrocorticography, we observed a substantial increase in median brain activity due to tDUS plus a blinking light relative to baseline and relative to...

The prevalence of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is 9.8 % in U.S. children. Several variants of Latrophiln-3 (LPHN-3) are associated with ADHD. Using CRISPR/Cas9 we deleted exon 3 in rats to create a global Lphn3 knockout. These rats are hyperactive, startle hyper-reactive, impulsive, and have impaired working, spatial, and egocentric learning and memory. Deltamethrin (DLM) is a widely used pyrethroid insecticide. Several epidemiological studies report an increase in ADHD...

Seizures occur in 20-45% of patients with cerebral arteriovenous malformations (AVMs) and can potentially influence their quality of life. Some studies have suggested risk factors influencing their development, but the evidence is limited to small cohorts. To analyze seizure presentation and factors influencing seizure development in patients with cerebral AVMs using a multi-institutional consortium. Retrospective multicenter registry from multiple centers in North America and Europe of patients...

Nitric oxide (NO) is a bioactive gas that is known to control many physiological processes. In human parenchymal cells, the function of iNOS-derived NO is incompletely understood. Here, we used RNA-seq to examine the role of iNOS-derived NO in the control of gene expression in a human lung epithelial cell line treated with inflammatory cytokines. iNOS-derived NO restricted the expression of genes involved in immune signaling, including the immune-related genes CXCL9 and E-selectin that were not...

CONCLUSION: This study provided a deep-learning model based on CTA for irregular shape classification and size measurement of UIAs with high accuracy and external validity. The model can be used to improve reader performance.

Accumulating evidence of heterogeneous long-term outcomes after traumatic brain injury (TBI) has challenged longstanding approaches to TBI outcome classification that are largely based on global functioning. A lack of studies with clinical and biomarker data from individuals living with chronic (>1 year post-injury) TBI has precluded refinement of long-term outcome classification ontology. Multimodal data in well-characterized TBI cohorts is required to understand the clinical phenotypes and...

The primary cause of death from opioid overdose is opioid-induced respiratory depression (OIRD), characterized by severe suppression of respiratory rate, destabilized breathing patterns, hypercapnia, and heightened risk of apnea. The retrotrapezoid nucleus (RTN), a critical chemosensitive brainstem region in the rostral ventrolateral medullary reticular formation contains Phox2b ^(+) /Neuromedin-B ( Nmb ) propriobulbar neurons. These neurons, stimulated by CO (2) /H ^(+) , regulate breathing to...

MOTIVATION: Longitudinal pathogen genotyping data from individual hosts can uncover strain-specific infection dynamics and their relationships to disease and intervention, especially in the malaria field. An important use case involves distinguishing newly incident from pre-existing (persistent) strains, but implementation faces statistical challenges relating to individual samples containing multiple strains, strains sharing alleles, and markers dropping out stochastically during the genotyping...

CONCLUSION: Strong support from staff and providers consistently differentiated between clinics with increased OUD treatment across both outcomes in the PROUD trial from those without. OUD programs should consider increasing support across clinic roles.

INTRODUCTION: The impact of multiple feeding arteries on clinical outcomes of cerebral arteriovenous malformations (AVMs) is not well understood. This study aims to compare outcomes between AVMs with multiple versus single feeding arteries.

CONCLUSIONS: With the addition of TPIT staining, the diagnosis of silent corticotroph PitNETs increased substantially versus those defined by ACTH immunostaining alone. Regardless of hormone status, these tumors continue to exhibit high rates of extrasellar growth and high rates of recurrence/progression.

CONCLUSION: AVMs in eloquent brain areas present higher risks of complications and lower obliteration rates, emphasizing the need for cautious, individualized treatment planning. Within the eloquent group, embolization increased the risk of complications, while surgery and radiosurgery showed comparable functional outcomes at last follow-up and complication rates with higher complete obliteration rates in surgery. These findings highlight the importance of location in AVM management and support...