Recent Publications
Edo Y. Birati: Clinical outcomes of intravenous iron therapy in patients with heart failure and iron deficiency: Meta-analysis and trial sequential analysis of randomized clinical trials (J Cardiol . )
Iron deficiency in patients with heart failure (HF) is underdiagnosed and undertreated. The role of intravenous (IV) iron is well-established to improve quality of life measures. Emerging evidence also supports its role in preventing cardiovascular events in patients with HF.
Julie Carmel, Linoy Mia Frankiensztajn, Omry Koren, Evan Elliott: Multi-level analysis of the gut-brain axis shows autism spectrum disorder-associated molecular and microbial profiles (Nat Neurosci . )
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by heterogeneous cognitive, behavioral and communication impairments. Disruption of the gut-brain axis (GBA) has been implicated in ASD although with limited reproducibility across studies. In this study, we developed a Bayesian differential ranking algorithm to identify ASD-associated molecular and taxa profiles across 10 cross-sectional microbiome datasets and 15 other datasets, including dietary patterns, metabolomics, cytokine profiles and human brain gene expression profiles.
Yair Blumberg: Respiratory gas kinetics in patients with congestive heart failure during recovery from peak exercise (Clinics (Sao Paulo) .)
Cardiopulmonary Exercise Testing (CPX) is essential for the assessment of exercise capacity for patients with Chronic Heart Failure (CHF). Respiratory gas and hemodynamic parameters such as Ventilatory Efficiency (VE/VCO2 slope), peak oxygen uptake (peak VO2), and heart rate recovery are established diagnostic and prognostic markers for clinical populations. Previous studies have suggested the clinical value of metrics related to respiratory gas collected during recovery from peak exercise, particularly recovery time to 50% (T1/2) of peak VO2. The current study explores these metrics in detail during recovery from peak exercise in CHF.
Nomy Dickman, Basem Hijazi, ,Abraham O. Samson, and Lea Even: Tutors Matter: The Relationship between Medical Students’ Satisfaction from Their Tutor and Their Overall Satisfaction from Clinical Rotations (Int. Med. Educ.)
Medical students are required to complete a number of clinical rotations in hospital departments, affiliated with the Azrieli Faculty of Medicine, under the supervision of a department tutor. Our experience shows that departments receiving good scores typically also receive good feedback for their tutor. Accordingly, our aim was to assess the tutor contribution to students’ overall satisfaction from clinical rotations in hospital departments across northern Israel.
Keren Agay-Shay: Invited Perspective: Air Pollution and Congenital Heart Defects (CHDs)-a Summary of Two Decades and Future Direction in Research (Environ Health Perspect .)
Congenital heart defects (CHDs), also called congenital heart anomalies or malformations, are defined as structural abnormalities of the heart or great vessels. Globally, CHDs caused 217,000 deaths in 2019. Prevalence of CHDs increased from 1 per 220 live births in 1970–1974 to 1 per 106 live births in 2010-2017.
The etiology of CHDs is largely unknown. Numerous biological pathways have been suggested to explain how criteria air pollutants might affect the placenta and embryonic development.
Sondra Turjeman, Omry Koren: Ordering taxa in image convolution networks improves microbiome-based machine learning accuracy (Gut Microbes .)
The human gut microbiome is associated with a large number of disease etiologies. As such, it is a natural candidate for machine-learning-based biomarker development for multiple diseases and conditions. The microbiome is often analyzed using 16S rRNA gene sequencing or shotgun metagenomics. However, several properties of microbial sequence-based studies hinder machine learning (ML), including non-uniform representation, a small number of samples compared with the dimension of each sample, and sparsity of the data, with the majority of taxa present in a small subset of samples. We show here using a graph representation that the cladogram structure is as informative as the taxa frequency. We then suggest a novel method to combine information from different taxa and improve data representation for ML using microbial taxonomy. iMic (image microbiome) translates the microbiome to images through an iterative ordering scheme, and applies convolutional neural networks to the resulting image. We show that iMic has a higher precision in static microbiome gene sequence-based ML than state-of-the-art methods.
Shemy Carasso: Urgent transcatheter edge-to-edge repair for severe mitral regurgitation with flail leaflet in critically Ill patients (Front Cardiovasc Med .)
Degenerative mitral valve disease (DMR) is a common valvular disorder, with flail leaflets due to ruptured chordae representing an extreme variation of this pathology. Ruptured chordae can present as acute heart failure which requires urgent intervention. While mitral valve surgery is the preferred mode of intervention, many patients have significantly elevated surgical risk and are sometimes considered inoperable. We aim to characterize patients with ruptured chordae undergoing urgent transcatheter edge-to-edge repair (TEER), and to analyze their clinical and echocardiographic outcomes.
Sondra Turjeman, Omry Koren: The intersection of undernutrition, microbiome, and child development in the first years of life (Nat Commun . )
Undernutrition affects about one out of five children worldwide. It is associated with impaired growth, neurodevelopment deficits, and increased infectious morbidity and mortality. Undernutrition, however, cannot be solely attributed to a lack of food or nutrient deficiency but rather results from a complex mix of biological and environmental factors. Recent research has shown that the gut microbiome is intimately involved in the metabolism of dietary components, in growth, in the training of the immune system, and in healthy development. In this review, we look at these features in the first three years of life, which is a critical window for both microbiome establishment and maturation and child development. We also discuss the potential of the microbiome in undernutrition interventions, which could increase efficacy and improve child health outcomes.
Changes in Quality of Life Following SARS-CoV-2 Infection Among Jewish and Arab Populations in Israel: A Cross-Sectional Study (Int J Public Health . )
The long-term impact of COVID-19 on health inequalities is under-researched. We investigated changes in health-related inequalities following SARS-CoV-2 infection between the Jewish majority and the Arab/Druze minority in Israel.
(Jelte Elsinga, Paul Kuodi, Haneen Shibli, Yanay Gorelik, Hiba Zayyad, Ofir Wertheim, Kamal Abu Jabal, Amiel Dror, Saleh Nazzal, Daniel Glikman, Michael Edelstein)
Naaem Simaan, Karine Wiegler Beiruti: Characteristics of Multiple Acute Concomitant Cerebral Infarcts Involving Different Arterial Territories (J Clin Med . )
Multiple acute concomitant cerebral infarcts (MACCI) are relatively uncommon. Data regarding the characteristics and outcomes of patients with MACCI are lacking. We, therefore, aimed to characterize the clinical features of MACCI.
Mohammad Adawi: Ankylosing spondylitis is associated with increased prevalence of valvular heart diseases: a cross-sectional population-based study (Postgrad Med J . )
Ankylosing spondylitis (AS) is a chronic inflammatory arthritis primarily affecting the sacroiliac joint and axial skeleton with associated extra-articular involvement including cardiovascular system disease including aortic valve disease with variable reported prevalence. The aim of this study is to determine the prevalence of heart valve disorders in AS patients.
Ohad Ronen: Artificial Intelligence in Head and Neck Cancer: A Systematic Review of Systematic Reviews (Adv Ther .)
Several studies have emphasized the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) and its subfields, such as machine learning (ML), as emerging and feasible approaches to optimize patient care in oncology. As a result, clinicians and decision-makers are faced with a plethora of reviews regarding the state of the art of applications of AI for head and neck cancer (HNC) management. This article provides an analysis of systematic reviews on the current status, and of the limitations of the application of AI/ML as adjunctive decision-making tools in HNC management.
Amani Daoud, Ohad Ronen: Decline in emergency department visits during the COVID-19 quarantine (Am J Emerg Med . )
Emergency department (ED) visits can be divided into urgent and non-urgent. A delay in seeking medical help, especially in urgent cases, can lead to fatal consequences, along with a higher rate of complications and morbidity. Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic spread led to restrictions and eventually quarantines. We investigated the impact of the COVID-19 spread and quarantine on ED visits rates comparing to parallel periods in preceding years (2013-2019). In addition, we compared this decrease to holidays and weekends, times in which a decrease in ED visits is seen.
Ory Wiesel: A Novel Urine Test Biosensor Platform for Early Lung Cancer Detection (Biosensors (Basel) . )
This paper offers a first instructive clinical platform utilizing VOC's in urine for detection of lung cancer using the innovative BSP to deal with the pressing need for an early lung cancer detection test tool.