Neurology

Predictive models for secondary epilepsy in patients with acute ischemic stroke within one year

1. Jinxin Liu
2. Haoyue He
3. Yanglingxi Wang
4. Jun Du
5. Kaixin Liang
6. Jun Xue
7. Yidan Liang
8. Peng Chen
9. Shanshan Tian
10. Yongbing Deng

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This valuable study reports machine learning models derived from large-scale data to predict the risk of post-stroke epilepsy. The evidence supporting the conclusions is convincing, although there are some validation issues (lack of cross-validation, possible bias in external validation results). The study may be of interest in the field of clinical neurology

Reviewed by eLife

Menopausal hormone therapy and the female brain: leveraging neuroimaging and prescription registry data from the UK Biobank cohort

1. Claudia Barth
2. Liisa AM Galea
3. Emily G Jacobs
4. Bonnie H Lee
5. Lars T Westlye
6. Ann-Marie G de Lange

• Curated by eLife

  eLife Assessment

  This observational study from the UK Biobank provides an important investigation into the associations between menopausal hormone therapy and brain health in a large, population-based cohort of females in the UK. A solid model of brain aging using an open source algorithm is used. While some modest adverse brain health characteristics were associated with current mHT use and older age at last use, the findings do not support a general neuroprotective effect of mHT nor severe adverse effects on the female brain. This work addresses a topic that is of grave importance since menopausal hormone therapy and its effect on the brain should be better understood in order to provide individualized effective medical support to women going through menopause.

Reviewed by eLife

Reproducible, data-driven characterization of sleep based on brain dynamics and transitions from whole-night fMRI

1. Fan Nils Yang
2. Dante Picchioni
3. Jacco A de Zwart
4. Yicun Wang
5. Peter van Gelderen
6. Jeff H Duyn

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This important work, leveraging state-of-the-art whole-night sleep EEG-fMRI methods, advances our understanding of the brain states underlying sleep and wakefulness. Despite a small sample size, the authors present convincing evidence for substates within N2 and REM sleep stages, with reliable transition structure, supporting the perspective that there are more than the five canonical sleep/wake states.

Reviewed by eLife

Identification of novel microcephaly-linked protein ABBA that mediates cortical progenitor cell division and corticogenesis through NEDD9-RhoA

1. Aurelie Carabalona
2. Henna Kallo
3. Maryanne Gonzalez
4. Liliia Andriichuk
5. Ellinoora Elomaa
6. Florence Molinari
7. Christiana Fragkou
8. Pekka Lappalainen
9. Marja W Wessels
10. Juha Saarikangas
11. Claudio Rivera

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  In this valuable study, the authors examine the role of the cytoskeletal regulatory protein Abba in governing the process of cell genesis in the developing cortex. This study provides insights into the mechanisms of microcephaly, a developmental malformation. The evidence supporting the study was felt to be solid, but the reviewers did note some technical weaknesses that limit the strength of some of the interpretations.

Reviewed by eLife

Predicting the causal relationship between polyunsaturated fatty acids and cerebral aneurysm risk from a Mendelian randomization study

1. Weijie Yu
2. Liwei Zhou
3. Chongfei Li
4. Zhenwei Lu
5. Xiaoyu Chen
6. Hao Yu
7. Xiaoyan Chen
8. Qionghui Huang
9. Zhangyu Li
10. Deyong Xiao
11. Yunyun Mei
12. Zhanxiang Wang

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  Yu and colleagues used two-sample MR to test the effect of PUFA on cerebral aneurysms. They found that genetically predicted omega-3 and DHA decreased the risk for Intracranial Aneurysm and Subarachnoid Haemorrhage. This work is useful, although the evidence is incomplete as it lacks a robust set of analyses to provide credibility to the findings.

Reviewed by eLife

Plasma extracellular vesicle synaptic proteins as biomarkers of clinical progression in patients with Parkinson’s disease

1. Chien-Tai Hong
2. Chen-Chih Chung
3. Ruan-Ching Yu
4. Lung Chan

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This useful study presents data regarding the presence of synaptic proteins in the extracellular vesicle pool present in the blood of Parkinson's patients and non-parkinson neurological outpatients, trying to correlate changes in such levels with the progression of Parkinson's symptoms. The results are semi-quantitative and preliminary, suggesting that these biomarkers could be used in the follow up of a specific group of Parkinson patients. The evidence is incomplete at this point, and more quantitative approaches are required to propose this correlation. The isolation of extracellular vesicles was appropriate as revealed by their sizes, but they are not exclusively from neuronal origin. The presented approach is not ready to be used in the clinical setting.

Reviewed by eLife

Digital wearable insole-based identification of knee arthropathies and gait signatures using machine learning

1. Matthew F Wipperman
2. Allen Z Lin
3. Kaitlyn M Gayvert
4. Benjamin Lahner
5. Selin Somersan-Karakaya
6. Xuefang Wu
7. Joseph Im
8. Minji Lee
9. Bharatkumar Koyani
10. Ian Setliff
11. Malika Thakur
12. Daoyu Duan
13. Aurora Breazna
14. Fang Wang
15. Wei Keat Lim
16. Gabor Halasz
17. Jacek Urbanek
18. Yamini Patel
19. Gurinder S Atwal
20. Jennifer D Hamilton
21. Samuel Stuart
22. Oren Levy
23. Andreja Avbersek
24. Rinol Alaj
25. Sara C Hamon
26. Olivier Harari

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This study presents a valuable dataset and tool that can aid in arthropathies' assessment, potentially enabling such evaluation to be done outside the lab. There is solid evidence supporting the comparison between the force plate and insole data, which can be strengthened by improvements in cross-validation, but the evidence for distinguishing disease signatures and elimination of walking speed as a factor is inconclusive and would need further analysis. This work will be of interest to physical therapists, clinicians, and researchers in the field of ankle/knee/hip osteoporosis and other lower limb joint diseases.

Reviewed by eLife

Symptom persistence and biomarkers in post-COVID-19/chronic fatigue syndrome – results from a prospective observational cohort

1. A. F. Legler
2. L. Meyer-Arndt
3. L. Mödl
4. C. Kedor
5. H. Freitag
6. E. Stein
7. U. Hoppmann
8. R. Rust
9. Frank Konietschke
10. A. Thiel
11. F. Paul
12. C. Scheibenbogen
13. J. Bellmann-Strobl

Reviewed by Rapid Reviews Infectious Diseases

Sleep quality, mental health and circadian rhythms during COVID lockdown – Results from the SleepQuest Study

1. Neil Carrigan
2. Alfie Wearn
3. Saba Meky
4. James Selwood
5. Hugh D. Piggins
6. Nicholas Turner
7. Rosemary Greenwood
8. Elizabeth Coulthard

Reviewed by ScreenIT

Meningoencephalitis associated with COVID-19: a systematic review

1. Ritwick Mondal
2. Upasana Ganguly
3. Shramana Deb
4. Gourav Shome
5. Subhasish Pramanik
6. Deebya Bandyopadhyay
7. Durjoy Lahiri

Reviewed by ScreenIT