Pedagogical and Personal Experiences Motivating Indigenous Students to Pursue Medical Studies

When it comes to accessibility to healthcare and medical education, inequalities prevail within ethnically diverse populations, especially among Indigenous Peoples. The main objective of this qualitative study was to explore how Indigenous female medical students’ motivations played a role in their pursuit of a medical career. We use the Self-Determination theory to frame this study and conduct individual open-ended interviews with four female Indigenous students’ regarding their motivational sources for applying to medical school. We provide an illustrative scenario for each identified motivational source through a thematic analysis. Results revealed two main sources of motivations: (Jones et al., Acad Med, 2019, 94 (4), 512–519) pedagogical experiences (i.e., contextual factors at school, academic interests, and opportunities) and (Sloof et al., Med Educ, 2021, 55 (5), 653) personal experiences (i.e., family support and influence, and future career prospects). Indigenous students’ personal experiences were more prevalent and described autonomous forms of motivations, whereas sources of motivation that were pedagogically oriented reflected more controlled forms of motivations. Different types of motivations can be useful, but not sufficient for the tipping point when the time comes for medical school applications. Learning about specialized Indigenous streams for admissions played the most influential role in students’ decision-making to pursue medical studies. Promoting the visibility of the Indigenous stream coupled with the identification of different forms of motivation could be informative when outlining evidence-based recommendations with the aim of improving inequalities within the health professions.

Socio-medical Studies of Individuals Self-treating With Helminths Provide Insight Into Clinical Trial Design for Assessing Helminth Therapy

The virtually complete loss of intestinal worms, known as helminths, from Western society has resulted in elimination of a range of helminth-induced morbidities. Unfortunately, that loss has also led to inflammation-associated deficiencies in immune function, ultimately contributing to widespread pandemics of allergies, autoimmunity, and neuropsychiatric disorders. Several socio-medical studies have examined the effects of intentional reworming, or self-treatment with helminths, on a variety of inflammation-related disorders. In this study, the latest results from ongoing socio-medical studies are described. The results point toward two important factors that appear to be overlooked in some if not most clinical trials. Specifically, (a) the method of preparation of the helminth can have a profound effect on its therapeutic efficacy, and (b) variation between individuals in the effective therapeutic dosage apparently covers a 10-fold range, regardless of the helminth used. These results highlight current limits in our understanding of the biology of both hosts and helminths, and suggest that information from self-treatment may be critical for clinical evaluation of the benefits and limits of helminth therapy.

Reality jurisprudence and its impact on legalizing matrimonial property

This research paper discusses the jurisprudence of reality and the reality of legalizing matrimonial property, along with expected familial problems upon application of matrimonial property. It concludes that it is prohibited to legalize or codify matrimonial property. The necessity of establishing research centers that follow the fatwa institutions or academies. It is no longer sufficient for understanding reality to follow up on social, historical, political, and possibly economic and medical studies subject to jurisprudence research. Rather, it has gone beyond that into the necessity of engaging realistic critical study.

Medical Students’ Perspective and Knowledge of Asymptomatic Hyperuricemia and Gout Management: A Cross-Sectional Study

The prevalence and incidence of gout doubled from 1990 to 2017. Therefore, we can expect that a number of doctors have come across a patient with gout in their daily practice. Hence, we wanted to investigate how familiar our medical students, as future medical professionals, are with gout. This cross-sectional survey included Medical Studies students from the two largest universities in Croatia: the University of Split School of Medicine, and the University of Zagreb School of Medicine, and included a total of 221 fifth or sixth year medical students. Most students gave correct answers to questions about treatment approach and non-pharmacological interventions in asymptomatic hyperuricemia (>80%). Less than 3% of all students agreed they knew enough about care for patients with asymptomatic hyperuricemia, whereas almost 15% thought they were well familiar with care for gout patients. Less than 8% of students considered their school education adequate on both topics, and less than 2% were aware of the existence of EULAR guidelines. Physicians lacking in the latest knowledge on the pathophysiology of gout, the influence of lifestyle, and genetic factors limits their ability to properly manage gout. With increasing prevalence, gout should be more represented in medical students’ education.

A Study on the Possible Diagnosis of Parkinson’s Disease on the Basis of Facial Image Analysis

One of the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease is the occurrence of problems with the expression of emotions on the face, called facial masking, facial bradykinesia or hypomimia. Recent medical studies show that this symptom can be used in the diagnosis of this disease. In the presented study, the authors, on the basis of their own research, try to answer the question of whether it is possible to build an automatic Parkinson’s disease recognition system based on the face image. The research used image recordings in the field of visible light and infrared. The material for the study consisted of registrations in a group of patients with Parkinson’s disease and a group of healthy patients. The patients were asked to express a neutral facial expression and a smile. In the detection, both geometric and holistic methods based on the use of convolutional network and image fusion were used. The obtained results were assessed quantitatively using statistical measures, including F1score, which was a value of 0.941. The results were compared with a competitive work on the same subject. A novelty of our experiments is that patients with Parkinson’s disease were in the so-called ON phase, in which, due to the action of drugs, the symptoms of the disease are reduced. The results obtained seem to be useful in the process of early diagnosis of this disease, especially in times of remote medical examination.

Integration of radiation oncology teaching in medical studies by German medical faculties due to the new licensing regulations

The new Medical Licensing Regulations 2025 (Ärztliche Approbationsordnung, ÄApprO) will soon be passed by the Federal Council (Bundesrat) and will be implemented step by step by the individual faculties in the coming months. The further development of medical studies essentially involves an orientation from fact-based to competence-based learning and focuses on practical, longitudinal and interdisciplinary training. Radiation oncology and radiation therapy are important components of therapeutic oncology and are of great importance for public health, both clinically and epidemiologically, and therefore should be given appropriate attention in medical education. This report is based on a recent survey on the current state of radiation therapy teaching at university hospitals in Germany as well as the contents of the National Competence Based Learning Objectives Catalogue for Medicine 2.0 (Nationaler Kompetenzbasierter Lernzielkatalog Medizin 2.0, NKLM) and the closely related Subject Catalogue (Gegenstandskatalog, GK) of the Institute for Medical and Pharmaceutical Examination Questions (Institut für Medizinische und Pharmazeutische Prüfungsfragen, IMPP). The current recommendations of the German Society for Radiation Oncology (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Radioonkologie, DEGRO) regarding topics, scope and rationale for the establishment of radiation oncology teaching at the respective faculties are also included.

Metadata Schema for Managing Digital Data and Images of Thai Human Skulls

This research was aimed at developing metadata that meets international standards for the purpose of managing digital data and images of Thai human skulls for medical studies. The research was conducted by applying the Metadata Lifecycle Model of the Metadata Architecture and Application Team. The model comprises four steps: requirement assessment and content analysis, identification of metadata requirements, metadata schema development, and metadata service and evaluation. The research outcome was a metadata schema composed of four modules, seven data element sets, and 29 pieces of data, each of which had six sets of property descriptions. Metadata evaluation conducted by three specialists in the field of anatomy and forensic medicine and three experts in the field of information science and metadata through free retrieval based on the Continuum of Metadata Quality in four aspects revealed that the experts were satisfied with the quality of metadata at a very high level: 100% for completeness, accuracy, and accessibility, and 94% for conformance to expectations. The developed metadata contain details that can be used to describe the characteristics of human skulls, with consideration taken in the development of the language used, retrieval, access, data exchange, and sharing. Thus, this novel metadata schema can be of use in management of digital data and images of human skulls for the purposes of medical studies, i.e., human anatomy and forensic anthropology.

Drug Repurposing for Alzheimer’s Disease Based on Protein-Protein Interaction Network

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is known as a critical neurodegenerative disorder. It worsens as symptoms concerning dementia grow severe over the years. Due to the globalization of Alzheimer’s disease, its prevention and treatment are vital. This study proposes a method to extract substantial gene complexes and then introduces potential drugs in Alzheimer’s disease. To this end, a protein-protein interaction (PPI) network was utilized to extract five meaningful gene complexes functionally interconnected. An enrichment analysis to introduce the most important biological processes and pathways was accomplished on the obtained genes. The next step is extracting the drugs related to AD and introducing some new drugs which may be helpful for this disease. Finally, a complete network including all the genes associated with each gene complex group and genes’ target drug was illustrated. For validating the proposed potential drugs, Connectivity Map (CMAP) analysis was accomplished to determine target genes that are up- or downregulated by proposed drugs. Medical studies and publications were analyzed thoroughly to introduce AD-related drugs. This analysis proves the accuracy of the proposed method in this study. Then, new drugs were introduced that can be experimentally examined as future work. Raloxifene and gentian violet are two new drugs, which have not been introduced as AD-related drugs in previous scientific and medical studies, recommended by the method of this study. Besides the primary goal, five bipartite networks representing the genes of each group and their target miRNAs were constructed to introduce target miRNAs.