Health care articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    A personalized letter from the Medical Examiner-Coroner in Los Angeles County has proven effective at reducing opioid and benzodiazepine prescribing. Here the authors show that the introduction of if/when-then planning prompts in to the letter further reduced opioid prescribing by 12.85% and benzodiazepine prescribing by 8.32%; they were most effective for clinicians with multiple patient deaths due to accidental opioid-related overdose.

    • Jason N. Doctor
    • , Marcella A. Kelley
    •  & Emily P. Stewart

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Prelithiation can introduce controllable amounts of lithium within porous silicon, however it yields a highly reactive material unsuitable for biomedicine. In this study, the authors present a strategy to lithiate porous silicon nanowires, resulting in a biocompatible and bioresorbable material.

    • Martti Kaasalainen
    • , Ran Zhang
    •  & Ciro Chiappini

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Many diseases can display distinct brain imaging phenotypes across individuals, potentially reflecting disease subtypes. However, biological interpretability is limited if the derived subtypes are not associated with genetic drivers or susceptibility factors. Here, the authors describe a deep-learning method that links imaging phenotypes with genetic factors, thereby conferring genetic correlations to the disease subtypes.

    • Zhijian Yang
    • , Junhao Wen
    •  & Christos Davatzikos

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Bacteria in the same environment can share genetic material but the extent to which this influences development of antimicrobial resistance is unclear. Here, the authors investigate the evidence for co-evolution of antimicrobial resistance in bacteria found coexisting in animals and the environment in chicken farms and slaughterhouses in China.

    • Michelle Baker
    • , Xibin Zhang
    •  & Tania Dottorini

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Available viscoelastic models of blood flow and blood coagulation are unsuited for a cybermedical input-output type of control system application. Here the authors present validated viscoelastic coagulation models that use quickly-measurable protein concentrations to forecast slow clot strength curves for future automation.

    • Damon E. Ghetmiri
    • , Alessia J. Venturi
    •  & Amor A. Menezes

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The unequal distribution of medical resources means that bronchoscopic services are often unavailable in underdeveloped areas. Here, the authors present an AI co-pilot bronchoscope robot that features a user-friendly plug-and-play catheter and an AI-human shared control algorithm, to enable novice doctors to conduct lung examinations safely.

    • Jingyu Zhang
    • , Lilu Liu
    •  & Haojian Lu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Functional dyspepsia (FD) is a common chronic gastrointestinal disorder. Here, in a randomized, parallel-group, positive-drug, and placebo-controlled clinical trial, the authors show that supplementation with the probiotic Bifidobacterium animalis subsp. lactis BL-99 (BL-99) improves FD clinical response rate and promotes accumulation of SCFA-producing microbiota.

    • Qi Zhang
    • , Guang Li
    •  & Fazheng Ren

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Chronic spontaneous urticarial is an inflammatory skin disease which has been linked to intestinal dysbiosis. Here the authors implicate intestinal dysbiosis with the inflammatory response in a murine model of urticaria.

    • Lei Zhu
    • , Xingxing Jian
    •  & Jie Li

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Understanding how the immune system’s functionality declines with age is crucial for addressing aging-related health issues. Here, the authors demonstrate that activating TLR5 in the mucosal layer can significantly improve healthspan and longevity, suggesting a novel approach for aging interventions.

    • Jae Sung Lim
    • , Eun Jae Jeon
    •  & Kyung A Cho

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Bacillus Calmette-Guèrin vaccination prevents tuberculosis but some individuals control infection without immunization. Here the authors employ functional assessment of effector responses against mycobacteria to find that distinct gene expression profiles for pre-existing capacity to control and control induced by BCG vaccination.

    • Krista E. van Meijgaarden
    • , Wenchao Li
    •  & Simone A. Joosten

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The relation between daily meal and fasting timing with cardiovascular disease incidence remains unclear. Here, authors show that a later daily meal timing is associated with increased cardiovascular disease risk, especially in women. This study suggests that adopting earlier daily eating patterns may be beneficial for cardiovascular prevention.

    • Anna Palomar-Cros
    • , Valentina A. Andreeva
    •  & Bernard Srour

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Combined hepatocellular-cholangiocarcinomas (cHCC-CCA) are challenging to diagnose, as they exhibit features of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (ICCA). Here, the authors use deep learning to re-classify cHCC-CCA tumours into HCC or ICCA based on histopathology images.

    • Julien Calderaro
    • , Narmin Ghaffari Laleh
    •  & Jakob Nikolas Kather

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Childhood obesity remains a global epidemic. Here, using objective measurements, the authors show that sedentary time increased from 6 h/day in childhood to 9 h/day in young adulthood, and was cumulatively associated with increased total and trunk fat mass. Both light or moderate-to-vigorous physical activity similarly partly reversed risk.

    • Andrew O. Agbaje
    • , Wei Perng
    •  & Tomi-Pekka Tuomainen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Real-time MRI provides accurate navigation and targeting for neurological interventions. Here, the authors propose a deep unrolled neural network for MRI reconstruction that enables real-time monitoring of remote-controlled brain interventions and can be integrated into diagnostic scanners.

    • Zhao He
    • , Ya-Nan Zhu
    •  & Yuan Feng

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The geographic distribution of dengue has been expanding in recent decades, and Vietnam is one of the most severely affected countries. In this study, the authors use Bayesian hierarchical modelling to investigate the socio-environmental and climatic drivers of dengue incidence in Vietnam and how they vary across the country.

    • Rory Gibb
    • , Felipe J. Colón-González
    •  & Rachel Lowe

  • Comment
    | Open Access

    Endometriosis is an incurable, under-diagnosed, systemic inflammatory disease affecting millions world-wide. Common symptoms include life-impacting pain, gastrointestinal/urinary symptoms, excessive fatigue, and infertility. Global public health policies are urgently needed to promote awareness, implement multidisciplinary care, and fund research for aetiology, biomarker discovery, and effective therapies for symptoms associated with endometriosis.

    • Linda C. Giudice
    • , Andrew W. Horne
    •  & Stacey A. Missmer

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Antivirals are now available for treating COVID-19 but must be used early in the course of infection to be effective. Here, the authors use mathematical modelling to assess the potential public health impacts of antiviral use considering different levels of testing and country sociodemographic characteristics.

    • Alvin X. Han
    • , Emma Hannay
    •  & Colin A. Russell

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Determining the prevalence of Long COVID is challenging because many symptoms attributed to the syndrome could have other causes. Here, the authors estimate the prevalence of Long COVID in Scotland by comparing rates of symptoms reported by people with and without history of SARS-CoV-2 infection.

    • Claire E. Hastie
    • , David J. Lowe
    •  & Jill P. Pell

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Changes of left ventricular structure are used to predict morbidity and mortality in cardiovascular diseases. Here the authors conducted a study using advanced deep learning technology to analyze left ventricular regional wall thickness (LVRWT) in a large population, identifying 72 significant genetic loci linked to LVRWT traits.

    • Caibo Ning
    • , Linyun Fan
    •  & Xiaoping Miao

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Using AI to predict disease can improve interventions slow down or prevent disease. Here, the authors show that generative AI models built on the framework of Transformer, the model that also empowers ChatGPT, can achieve state-of-the-art performance on disease predictions based on longitudinal electronic records.

    • Zhichao Yang
    • , Avijit Mitra
    •  & Hong Yu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Acute GVHD severity grading is based on target organ assessments. Here, the authors show that data-driven grading can identify 12 distinct grades with specific aGVHD phenotypes, which are associated with clinical outcomes, and that their method outperformed conventional gradings.

    • Evren Bayraktar
    • , Theresa Graf
    •  & Amin T. Turki

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Multimorbidity—the occurrence of chronic diseases together—represents a major challenge for healthcare systems. Here, the authors characterise multimorbidity patterns in a large dataset of patients residing in southern Spain and show the unequal distribution of multimorbidity patterns along different socioeconomic areas at the local level.

    • Javier Alvarez-Galvez
    • , Esther Ortega-Martin
    •  & Jesus Carretero-Bravo

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The therapeutic benefits of biomaterials-based treatments for oral ulcer have been limited by the materials’ poor adhesion and short-time retention in oral cavity. Here, the authors report a polymer binary elastomer adhesive patch that allows water-responsive sustainable delivery of bioactive small molecules and durable adhesion to oral mucosal wounds to achieve efficient therapy of oral ulcer.

    • Chunyan Cui
    • , Li Mei
    •  & Wenguang Liu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Novel indicators of infectious disease prevalence could improve real-time surveillance and support healthcare planning. Here, the authors show that sales data for non-prescription medications from a UK high street retailer can improve the accuracy of models forecasting mortality from respiratory infections.

    • Elizabeth Dolan
    • , James Goulding
    •  & Laila J. Tata

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Post-acute COVID-19 condition is difficult to quantify because it includes a range of symptoms that may have other causes. In this study, the authors use primary care data from England and Catalonia, Spain, to estimate the incidence of the condition and identify symptoms that occur more frequently following infection than in uninfected controls.

    • Kristin Kostka
    • , Elena Roel
    •  & Annika M. Jödicke

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Pneumococcal vaccination has been shown to promote emergence of non-vaccine S. pneumoniae serotypes. Here, the authors use data from Malawi to investigate whether vaccine introduction also results in changes in metabolic, virulence, and antimicrobial resistance profiles of circulating strains.

    • Uri Obolski
    • , Todd D. Swarthout
    •  & Robert S. Heyderman

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The relationship between circadian function and frailty is not well understood. Here, the authors show that disturbances in circadian rest-activity rhythms were associated with an elevated frailty risk and faster progress of frailty in older adults.

    • Ruixue Cai
    • , Lei Gao
    •  & Peng Li

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In this study, the authors develop a mathematical modelling framework to estimate the impacts of non-pharmaceutical interventions and vaccination on COVID-19 incidence. The model accounts for changes in SARS-CoV-2 variant and population immunity, and here they use it to investigate epidemic dynamics in French Polynesia.

    • Lloyd A. C. Chapman
    • , Maite Aubry
    •  & Adam J. Kucharski

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Temporalis muscle thickness is a promising marker of lean muscle mass but has had limited utility due to its unknown normal growth trajectory and lack of standardized measurement. Here, the authors develop an automated deep learning pipeline to accurately measure temporalis muscle thickness from routine brain magnetic resonance imaging.

    • Anna Zapaishchykova
    • , Kevin X. Liu
    •  & Benjamin H. Kann

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Fetal biometry and amniotic fluid volume are essential but strenuous measurements in fetal ultrasound screening. Here, the authors show that deep learning models can automate these measurements with high accuracy, using a large and diverse dataset of Moroccan fetal ultrasound images.

    • Saad Slimani
    • , Salaheddine Hounka
    •  & El Houssine Bouyakhf

  • Comment
    | Open Access

    The superspreading that characterized SARS and now COVID-19 can be rapidly quantified; however, its implications for outbreak control were never well understood. Recent studies point to its profound impact on outbreak dynamics and prospects for effective control of a future Disease X. These insights necessitate research into the mechanisms, impact and different modes of superspreading more widely.

    • Bjarke Frost Nielsen
    • , Kim Sneppen
    •  & Lone Simonsen

  • Comment
    | Open Access

    In this Comment, the authors describe recent outbreaks of highly pathogenic avian influenza in cat shelters in Seoul, South Korea. They discuss potential routes of transmission and describe implications for surveillance of spillover infections in animals in non-agricultural settings.

    • Younjung Kim
    • , Guillaume Fournié
    •  & Pierre Nouvellet

  • Article
    | Open Access

    This study assesses the effectiveness of a second COVID-19 mRNA booster vaccine against severe disease using data from Chile. The authors find that the effectiveness of the second mRNA booster was high with a range of different background vaccination schemes, but there was evidence of waning over time.

    • Alejandro Jara
    • , Cristobal Cuadrado
    •  & Rafael Araos

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Identification of areas with risk factors for spillover of viruses from animals to humans could assist with early detection of emerging infectious diseases. In this study, the authors characterise potential risks for spillover of SARS-like viruses from bats to humans and identify geographical regions in which multiple risk factors cluster together.

    • Renata L. Muylaert
    • , David A. Wilkinson
    •  & David T. S. Hayman

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Understanding disease progression dynamics is critical for diagnostics and treatment, but capturing dynamics is difficult. Here, the authors present a method for modelling disease progression from high dimensional molecular data that enables patient stratification and high-risk disease state identification, showcased in bladder cancer.

    • Amit Frishberg
    • , Neta Milman
    •  & Shai S. Shen-Orr

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The duration of symptomatic COVID-19 and its impacts on health and quality of life are not well understood. In this study, the authors report results from a survey of ~275,000 adults in England and find that persistent COVID-19 is relatively rare but is associated with poorer mental health and health-related quality of life.

    • Christina J. Atchison
    • , Bethan Davies
    •  & Paul Elliott

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