#clinical research.
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kimberlabtron · 7 months ago
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Digital Refractometer LDRF-A12 is a benchtop unit used to measure refractive index of transparent or translucent solid, liquid substances and also to measure percent of sugar in solutions. Features LCD display, auto-correction mode, tough prism, interface for printer etc. to ensure accurate measurements. It is used in medical laboratories, chemical laboratories, microbiology, clinical research, hydrology, food processing etc.
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reasonsforhope · 1 year ago
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Story from the Washington Post here, non-paywall version here.
Washington Post stop blocking linksharing and shit challenge.
"The young woman was catatonic, stuck at the nurses’ station — unmoving, unblinking and unknowing of where or who she was.
Her name was April Burrell.
Before she became a patient, April had been an outgoing, straight-A student majoring in accounting at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore. But after a traumatic event when she was 21, April suddenly developed psychosis and became lost in a constant state of visual and auditory hallucinations. The former high school valedictorian could no longer communicate, bathe or take care of herself.
April was diagnosed with a severe form of schizophrenia, an often devastating mental illness that affects approximately 1 percent of the global population and can drastically impair how patients behave and perceive reality.
“She was the first person I ever saw as a patient,” said Sander Markx, director of precision psychiatry at Columbia University, who was still a medical student in 2000 when he first encountered April. “She is, to this day, the sickest patient I’ve ever seen.” ...
It would be nearly two decades before their paths crossed again. But in 2018, another chance encounter led to several medical discoveries...
Markx and his colleagues discovered that although April’s illness was clinically indistinguishable from schizophrenia, she also had lupus, an underlying and treatable autoimmune condition that was attacking her brain.
After months of targeted treatments [for lupus] — and more than two decades trapped in her mind — April woke up.
The awakening of April — and the successful treatment of other people with similar conditions — now stand to transform care for some of psychiatry’s sickest patients, many of whom are languishing in mental institutions.
Researchers working with the New York state mental health-care system have identified about 200 patients with autoimmune diseases, some institutionalized for years, who may be helped by the discovery.
And scientists around the world, including Germany and Britain, are conducting similar research, finding that underlying autoimmune and inflammatory processes may be more common in patients with a variety of psychiatric syndromes than previously believed.
Although the current research probably will help only a small subset of patients, the impact of the work is already beginning to reshape the practice of psychiatry and the way many cases of mental illness are diagnosed and treated.
“These are the forgotten souls,” said Markx. “We’re not just improving the lives of these people, but we’re bringing them back from a place that I didn’t think they could come back from.” ...
Waking up after two decades
The medical team set to work counteracting April’s rampaging immune system and started April on an intensive immunotherapy treatment for neuropsychiatric lupus...
The regimen is grueling, requiring a month-long break between each of the six rounds to allow the immune system to recover. But April started showing signs of improvement almost immediately...
A joyful reunion
“I’ve always wanted my sister to get back to who she was,” Guy Burrell said.
In 2020, April was deemed mentally competent to discharge herself from the psychiatric hospital where she had lived for nearly two decades, and she moved to a rehabilitation center...
Because of visiting restrictions related to covid, the family’s face-to-face reunion with April was delayed until last year. April’s brother, sister-in-law and their kids were finally able to visit her at a rehabilitation center, and the occasion was tearful and joyous.
“When she came in there, you would’ve thought she was a brand-new person,” Guy Burrell said. “She knew all of us, remembered different stuff from back when she was a child.” ...
The family felt as if they’d witnessed a miracle.
“She was hugging me, she was holding my hand,” Guy Burrell said. “You might as well have thrown a parade because we were so happy, because we hadn’t seen her like that in, like, forever.”
“It was like she came home,” Markx said. “We never thought that was possible.”
...After April’s unexpected recovery, the medical team put out an alert to the hospital system to identify any patients with antibody markers for autoimmune disease. A few months later, Anca Askanase, a rheumatologist and director of the Columbia Lupus Center,who had been on April’s treatment team, approached Markx. “I think we found our girl,” she said.
Bringing back Devine
When Devine Cruz was 9, she began to hear voices. At first, the voices fought with one another. But as she grew older, the voices would talk about her, [and over the years, things got worse].
For more than a decade, the young woman moved in and out of hospitals for treatment. Her symptoms included visual and auditory hallucinations, as well as delusions that prevented her from living a normal life.
Devine was eventually diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, which can result in symptoms of both schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. She also was diagnosed with intellectual disability.
She was on a laundry list of drugs — two antipsychotic medications, lithium, clonazepam, Ativan and benztropine — that came with a litany of side effects but didn’t resolve all her symptoms...
She also had lupus, which she had been diagnosed with when she was about 14, although doctors had never made a connection between the disease and her mental health...
Last August, the medical team prescribed monthly immunosuppressive infusions of corticosteroids and chemotherapy drugs, a regime similar to what April had been given a few years prior. By October, there were already dramatic signs of improvement.
“She was like ‘Yeah, I gotta go,’” Markx said. “‘Like, I’ve been missing out.’”
After several treatments, Devine began developing awareness that the voices in her head were different from real voices, a sign that she was reconnecting with reality. She finished her sixth and final round of infusions in January.
In March, she was well enough to meet with a reporter. “I feel like I’m already better,” Devine said during a conversation in Markx’s office at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, where she was treated. “I feel myself being a person that I was supposed to be my whole entire life.” ...
Her recovery is remarkable for several reasons, her doctors said. The voices and visions have stopped. And she no longer meets the diagnostic criteria for either schizoaffective disorder or intellectual disability, Markx said...
Today, Devine lives with her mother and is leading a more active and engaged life. She helps her mother cook, goes to the grocery store and navigates public transportation to keep her appointments. She is even babysitting her siblings’ young children — listening to music, taking them to the park or watching “Frozen 2” — responsibilities her family never would have entrusted her with before her recovery.
Expanding the search for more patients
While it is likely that only a subset of people diagnosed with schizophrenia and psychotic disorders have an underlying autoimmune condition, Markx and other doctors believe there are probably many more patients whose psychiatric conditions are caused or exacerbated by autoimmune issues...
The cases of April and Devine also helped inspire the development of the SNF Center for Precision Psychiatry and Mental Health at Columbia, which was named for the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, which awarded it a $75 million grant in April. The goal of the center is to develop new treatments based on specific genetic and autoimmune causes of psychiatric illness, said Joseph Gogos, co-director of the SNF Center.
Markx said he has begun care and treatment on about 40 patients since the SNF Center opened. The SNF Center is working with the New York State Office of Mental Health, which oversees one of the largest public mental health systems in America, to conduct whole genome sequencing and autoimmunity screening on inpatients at long-term facilities.
For “the most disabled, the sickest of the sick, even if we can help just a small fraction of them, by doing these detailed analyses, that’s worth something,” said Thomas Smith, chief medical officer for the New York State Office of Mental Health. “You’re helping save someone’s life, get them out of the hospital, have them live in the community, go home.”
Discussions are underway to extend the search to the 20,000 outpatients in the New York state system as well. Serious psychiatric disorders, like schizophrenia, are more likely to be undertreated in underprivileged groups. And autoimmune disorders like lupus disproportionately affect women and people of color with more severity.
Changing psychiatric care
How many people ultimately will be helped by the research remains a subject of debate in the scientific community. But the research has spurred excitement about the potential to better understand what is going on in the brain during serious mental illness...
Emerging research has implicated inflammation and immunological dysfunction as potential players in a variety of neuropsychiatric conditions, including schizophrenia, depression and autism.
“It opens new treatment possibilities to patients that used to be treated very differently,” said Ludger Tebartz van Elst, a professor of psychiatry and psychotherapy at University Medical Clinic Freiburg in Germany.
In one study, published last year in Molecular Psychiatry, Tebartz van Elst and his colleagues identified 91 psychiatric patients with suspected autoimmune diseases, and reported that immunotherapies benefited the majority of them.
Belinda Lennox, head of the psychiatry department at the University of Oxford, is enrolling patients in clinical trials to test the effectiveness of immunotherapy for autoimmune psychosis patients.
As a result of the research, screenings for immunological markers in psychotic patients are already routine in Germany, where psychiatrists regularly collect samples from cerebrospinal fluid.
Markx is also doing similar screening with his patients. He believes highly sensitive and inexpensive blood tests to detect different antibodies should become part of the standard screening protocol for psychosis.
Also on the horizon: more targeted immunotherapy rather than current “sledgehammer approaches” that suppress the immune system on a broad level, said George Yancopoulos, the co-founder and president of the pharmaceutical company Regeneron.
“I think we’re at the dawn of a new era. This is just the beginning,” said Yancopoulos."
-via The Washington Post, June 1, 2023
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chronicsymptomsyndrome · 6 months ago
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Clinical studies be like
1 billion random boys were tested. results show that 0% of girls are autistic* 👍
1 billion autistic males were tested. results show that 0% of autistics are female* 👍
1 billion minors were tested. results show ADHD stops at age 18, often to be replaced by plain laziness* 👍
*certified😎 totally credible source✨ we are pros🤓 with coats🥼
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millenniallust4death · 5 months ago
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This July, my mom and I are stepping up for a great cause! We're participating in the Multiple Myeloma March, organized by Myeloma Canada. We are committing to walking 200,000 steps around our charming (and often sweltering!) town of Wheatley, Ontario. We'd be thrilled if you would consider supporting our modest goal of raising $392. As a token of our appreciation, every donor will receive a special Martin and GSD postcard (if you feel comfortable sharing your address with me). Check out the donation link below —thank you for your generosity! ❤️
Donate: https://shorturl.at/u84HL
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unbfacts · 29 days ago
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stuckinapril · 10 months ago
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me stoically navigating my way through drama bc bigger things are ahead and it’s not my fault people are dumb
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gomzdrawfr · 1 year ago
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Im going to be quite busy since uni started and I have to do my placements and research papers, so I won't be doodling as much as before </3 but today I bring you this :)
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eclecticopposition · 1 year ago
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seeing personality disorder discussion on the dashboard. the impulse to share all the self-therapy books and tools we have has never been stronger
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grison-in-space · 4 months ago
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the best thing about conferences hosted at your home institution is getting to have the entire experience of stumbling in bewilderment towards an unfamiliar alumnus building and repeatedly getting lost... all while being intensely cognizant that you are no more than half a mile from your usual daily parking spot.
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sillyfreakx5 · 1 month ago
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if everyone i know keeps insisting I'm autistic I'm gonna snap and transautistic myself. just you fucking wait.
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knifekris · 3 months ago
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every day i struggle to make choices
#i should invest into some kind of education but cant make up my mind#mostly because options suck#i cant do trades unless my body sucks less which is sad because id love to be an electrician#cant even think about getting a pilots license cuz im not passing the med cert#i think id rather die than be a med assistant actually#working clinics at all makes me nervous tbh but probably where im headed in the short term#surgical tech would be cool but i cant do a Real program while working full-time#which is what limits most of my choices#i need to find more paid training programs i guess#if i had to pick a miserable but fulfilling job id go into education itself#but the teaching profession has always been in a downward spiral esp as of late#i dont want healthcare because i hate seeing dysfunctional glorified murder machines grinding around and around endlessly#acute care sucks id rather be in an icu for function but then im depressed because our patients are always dying#it was better as a phleb but this hospital doesnt have phleb and like i said im nervous about clinics#but i need to fucking commit to outpatient phlebotomy i think :/#the most fun ive had at a job ever#i wish i had more widely applicable skills but i cant be an emt/para even just for the training#because half of it is unpaid and the other half you pay for#and again#a job NOTORIOUS for being exhausting dangerous and traumatizing#if i was 17 again and wasnt escaping the tar pit of my mother id go for an english degree and i wouldnt even regret it#thinking about school in terms of a job i have to have forever vs for the sake of learning is so different#id like to know everything. i wanna read and write forever. and do research and have real technical skills that help people#im still riding off of the high of getting 5 ccs off of an oncology patient who desperately needed a port#they were able to run like seven tests off of it#i had to use a couple ped tubes#she only had to get poked Once and barely noticed it bc the doc team came in and im so happy i made her admission that muvh easier#labs are so miserable#checking back on the blood and seeing all of the results came through made me more pleased than anything else in the world
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contagious-watermelon · 2 months ago
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hey. you should start HRT.
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biblically-accurate-soup · 7 months ago
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academia hates me specifically for my neurodivergent swag but at the end of the day i’m sipping a fancy little cocktail at a fancy big hotel on their dime so. i get the last laugh
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stuckinapril · 10 months ago
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There will not be a single moment next week in which I’m not running around doing something
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wheelchairtetris · 4 months ago
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I need to stop watching medical dramas. It hurts to see doctors trying everything they can to figure out someone's symptoms when that really doesn't happen in the real world.
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cbirt · 1 year ago
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Large Language Models (LLMs) have emerged as dynamic tools with the ability to transform the landscape of biological research in a world driven by data and technology. These advanced AI models, including well-known names like BERT and GPT, are not confined to linguistics but have found their way into the complex realm of biology. In this article, let’s explore the potential of LLMs in addressing pressing biological challenges, such as drug discovery, disease diagnosis, genomics, and more.
What are Large Language Models?
ChatGPT, along with similar models, has gained widespread attention and adoption. Many people even integrate it into their daily routines. What makes ChatGPT and similar models remarkable? These LLMs represent a facet of artificial intelligence (AI) specifically formulated to understand, process, and even create “human-like” text. Developers construct them using transformers—a type of neural network—as their architecture; they pre-train these on copious amounts of textual data to assimilate the patterns, structures, and nuances inherent in human language.
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