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Khabre desk
Recent reporting, analysis and explainers from the clinical-research desk.
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An ETH Zurich preprint used physiological and environmental signals from 20 participants to distinguish ambient temperature, humidity and physical exertion with 94.7% Random Forest accuracy. The exploratory study is an early step toward person-centred heat monitoring and requires testing in real-world settings.
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A methylation-based blood test detected recurrence of non-viral head and neck cancer with 76.9% sensitivity and 94.6% specificity, and preceded clinical detection by a median of 131 days in 60% of cases where both occurred. Positive results were strongly associated with worse one-year survival.
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A preprint study of 1,268 South African adolescent girls found that DXA-measured body composition, particularly central fat distribution, is associated with elevated blood pressure. The findings highlight the importance of body composition balance and modifiable factors like sedentary behaviour.
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A medRxiv preprint evaluated 14 general-purpose large language models on eight schizophrenia symptoms in clinical summaries from a 704-person severe mental illness cohort. Performance was poor to moderate overall, with negative symptoms extracted less accurately than positive symptoms.
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A medRxiv systematic review and meta-analysis of three randomized controlled trials involving 519 patients found that EUS-guided choledochoduodenostomy with a lumen-apposing metal stent had higher technical success than ERCP with a self-expandable metal stent for malignant distal biliary obstruction. Procedure time and postprocedural pancreatitis risk were also lower, while clinical success and overall adverse events were comparable.
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A medRxiv preprint analyses more than 4.29 million audiograms and models human hearing as a continuous five-dimensional system rather than a set of fixed types. The secondary analysis could provide a new framework for studying hearing change, but it is not a clinical trial or treatment study.
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A medRxiv preprint reports that repeated odour cues delivered during sleep improved PTSD symptoms and accelerated treatment response when paired with 12 weeks of trauma-focused psychotherapy. The findings combine a mechanistic study in healthy participants with a randomized clinical trial.
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A medRxiv preprint analysing 12,944 participants from nationally representative cohorts in China, England and the United States found that higher estimated cardiorespiratory fitness was associated with a lower risk of developing two or more cardiometabolic conditions. The observational study suggests that a non-exercise fitness estimate may help characterise risk, but it does not establish that increasing fitness prevents these conditions.
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Whole-genome sequencing of 7,851 parent–offspring families linked distinct assisted reproductive technology procedures and parental age with de novo mutations associated with gestational duration and other birth outcomes.
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A medRxiv preprint evaluated a large-language-model pipeline for assessing risk of bias in neurological prognosis studies. Agreement with original human assessments was limited, while a small comparison suggested a similar level of agreement to that between human raters.