07/28/2022

Monkeypox

To test whether monkeypox can be detected and monitored in wastewater during a period when publicly reported monkey cases in the region were increasing, we deployed digital PCR assays that target genomic DNA from the monkeypox virus in our routine, ongoing wastewater surveillance program in the Greater Bay Area of California, USA. We measured monkeypox virus DNA daily in settled solids samples from nine wastewater plants over the period of approximately 4 weeks. During that period, we detected monkeypox virus DNA in wastewater solids at nearly all the wastewater plants we routinely sample.

Diabetes

Recently the American Diabetes Association (ADA) and the European Association for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) have jointly released an expert opinion-based consensus report on precision medicine. The report defines precision diabetes medicine as “an approach to optimize the diagnosis, prediction, prevention, or treatment of diabetes by integrating multidimensional data, accounting for individual differences”, and it is characterized by six categories; precision diagnosis, precision therapeutics, precision prevention, precision treatment, precision prognosis and precision monitoring. Precision medicine in diabetes utilizes the individual’s unique genetic makeup, environment or context data (that can be collected from clinical records, wearable technology, genomics and other ‘omics data) and allows one to appreciate individual characteristics, differences, circumstances and preferences

Prostate Cancer

Machine Learning

Deep learning (DL) from electronic health records holds promise for disease prediction, but systematic methods for learning from simulated longitudinal clinical measurements have yet to be reported. We compared nine DL frameworks using simulated body mass index (BMI), glucose, and systolic blood pressure trajectories, independently isolated shape and magnitude changes, and evaluated model performance across various parameters (e.g., irregularity, missingness).

Coronavirus

We show that, with first-generation SARS-CoV-2 vaccines and limited physical distancing in place, a VOC’s potential future dominance is primarily driven by its infectivity, which does not always lead to an increased public health burden. However, we also show that highly immune-evading variants that become dominant, even in the case of reduced variant severity, would likely require alternative measures to avoid strain on health systems, such as strengthened physical distancing measures, novel treatments, and second-generation vaccines. Expanded vaccination, that includes a booster dose for adults and child vaccination strategies, is projected to have the biggest public health benefit for a highly infective, highly severe VOC with low immune-evading capacity.