Search

Nursing education is transitioning from traditional teaching to competency-based education. Additionally, more nursing courses and programs are now offered online. Scholarly writing is a powerful strategy to teach effective communication and critical thinking, both core competencies for safe and effective nursing practice. However, teaching writing online to nursing students is challenging due to a lack of research evaluating best practices, faculty time constraints, and inconsistent writing assessment. Automated essay scoring systems using artificial intelligence (AI) provide new opportunities for efficient, reliable, and valid assessment of writing skills. We used a quasi-experimental design to investigate the impact of a 14-week fully online competency-based writing course on students' self-efficacy, task value, and writing performance. The participants were master's nursing students enrolled in an existing one-semester online competency-based writing course for healthcare professionals. An AI-powered writing assessment, IntelliMetric®, and the SAWSES self-efficacy survey were administered pre- and post-intervention. The results showed statistically significant gains in self-efficacy and writing performance with large effect sizes. This study addresses the gap in nursing education regarding the assessment of online, research-based writing interventions on students' scholarly writing capacity. Recommendations include implementing a required scholarly writing course in all graduate-level nursing programs, scaffolding students' competency development with the cognitive apprenticeship model, using best practices from composition research to inform online instruction, and employing AI-powered automated essay scoring to evaluate students' writing progress and instructional efficacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mycobacterium abscessus infections have been reported as adverse events related to medical tourism. We report M. abscessus meningitis in a patient who traveled from Colorado, USA, to Mexico to receive intrathecal stem cell injections as treatment for multiple sclerosis. We also review the management of this challenging central nervous system infection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ublituximab is a novel anti-CD20 therapy developed for the treatment of patients with multiple sclerosis. It is a glycoengineered chimeric antibody with a novel epitope on CD20, with high antibody-dependent cell-mediated cytotoxicity. Maintenance doses are administered every 6 months over an hour, providing a convenient dosing regimen. The identical phase III randomized, double-blind, active comparator to teriflunomide trials ULTIMATE I and II were completed in early 2022. ULTIMATE I and II, respectively, demonstrated that ublituximab had a strong clinical effect, with annualized relapse rates of 0.08 and 0.09 or reductions of 59% and 49% over teriflunomide. In addition, in ULTIMATE I and II, radiographic efficacy similarly reduced contrast-enhancing lesions by 97% and 96% and new/enlarging T2 lesions by 92% and 90%, respectively. Although ublituximab did not decrease confirmed disability progression in a pooled analysis of both studies, there was an increase in the confirmed disability improvement. Ublituximab was well tolerated, including infusion reactions that were predominantly mild and only seen with the first infusion. Further long-term safety data, as well as relative efficacy compared with current anti-CD20 therapies, will need to be evaluated in the real-world setting if ublituximab is to be approved as expected in December 2022. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many public policies are designed to counteract commonly made decisions that result in poor health. These policies have primarily been informed by the behavioural economics of decision making. Underappreciated in this conversation has been the perspective from neuroscience, despite its recent success – and the likelihood of future progress – in advancing our understanding of the neural basis for health-related decisions. Using tobacco control as an example, we provide a concise overview of how public health policies can and should be informed by neuroscience. We propose that such input can improve policies by increasing their effectiveness, improving screening efficiency and informing relevant ethical considerations. Finally, we recognise limitations and highlight roles that key stakeholders can play in incorporating neuroscientific evidence for the benefit of public policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In vivo PET imaging studies of young-adult carriers of the apolipoprotein E ℇ4 allele (APOEℇ4), the major Alzheimer's disease (AD) susceptibility gene, have demonstrated declines in glucose metabolism in brain areas later vulnerable to AD, such as posterior cingulate cortex, decades before the possible onset of symptoms. We have previously shown in postmortem studies that such metabolic declines in AD are associated with brain regional mitochondrial dysfunction. To determine whether young adult at-risk individuals demonstrate similar mitochondrial functional decline, we histochemically assessed postmortem tissues from the posterior cingulate cortex of young-adult carriers and noncarriers of APOEℇ4. At-risk ℇ4 carriers had lower mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase activity than noncarriers in posterior cingulate cortex, particularly within the superficial cortical lamina, a pattern similar to that seen in AD patients. Except for one 34 year-old ℇ4 homozygote, the ℇ4 carriers did not have increased soluble amyloid-β, histologic amyloid-β, or tau pathology in this same region. This functional biomarker may prove useful in early detection and tracking of AD and indicates that mitochondrial mechanisms may contribute to the predisposition to AD before any evidence of amyloid or tau pathology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]