Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) is a common inherited cardiac disorder characterized by marked clinical and genetic heterogeneity. Ethnic groups underrepresented in studies may have distinctive characteristics. We sought to evaluate the clinical and genetic landscape of Russian HCM patients. A total of 193 patients (52% male; 95% Eastern Slavic origin; median age 56 years) were clinically evaluated, including genetic testing, and prospectively followed to document outcomes. As a result, 48% had obstructive HCM, 25% had HCM in family, 21% were asymptomatic, and 68% had comorbidities. During 2.8 years of follow-up, the all-cause mortality rate was 2.86%/year. A total of 5.7% received an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD), and 21% had septal reduction therapy. A sequencing analysis of 176 probands identified 64 causative variants in 66 patients (38%); recurrent variants were MYBPC3 p.Q1233* (8), MYBPC3 p.R346H (2), MYH7 p.A729P (2), TPM1 p.Q210R (3), and FLNC p.H1834Y (2); 10 were multiple variant carriers (5.7%); 5 had non-sarcomeric HCM, ALPK3, TRIM63, and FLNC. Thin filament variant carriers had a worse prognosis for heart failure (HR = 7.9, p = 0.007). In conclusion, in the Russian HCM population, the low use of ICD and relatively high mortality should be noted by clinicians; some distinct recurrent variants are suspected to have a founder effect; and family studies on some rare variants enriched worldwide knowledge in HCM.

The most validated health-related quality-of-life (HRQOL) questionnaire specific to the metastatic spine cancer population is the Spine Oncology Study Group Outcomes Questionnaire version 2 (SOSGOQ2.0). The purpose of this study was to translate and validate a Russian version of the SOSGOQ2.0.
The SOSGOQ2.0 was translated into Russian and cross-culturally adapted. In this study, 64 eligible patients completed the SOSGOQ2.0_RUS along with the EQ-5D 5 Level, SF-36 quality-of-life questionnaires, and visual analog scale for pain assessment scale (VAS). Internal consistency was measured using Cronbach\'s alpha, in which a score of 0.65 or higher is acceptable. Test-retest reliability was evaluated by examining the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC).
Included in this study were 64 Russian-speaking patients (median age 59 years) with metastatic spine disease. The most common primary tumors were breast, kidney, and prostate cancers. The overall Cronbach\'s alpha was 0.87, indicating high internal consistency. The overall ICC for the SOSGOQ2.0_RUS was 0.88 (95% CI 0.81-0.93), indicating high reliability and consistency of the measure. The physical function, pain, and mental health domains of the SF-36 moderately correlated with the same domains of the SOSGOQ2.0_RUS, with correlation coefficients ranging from 0.65 to 0.71.
The SOSGOQ2.0_RUS is a reliable and valid questionnaire for assessing the HRQOL in patients with metastatic spinal tumors. The questionnaire showed high internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and good construct validity when compared with other established questionnaires.

Many production and comprehension experiments have studied attraction errors in agreement, primarily in number (e.g., \"The key to the cabinets were rusty\"). Studies on gender agreement attraction are still sparse, especially in comprehension. We present two self-paced reading experiments on Russian focusing on the role of syncretism in this phenomenon. Russian nouns are inflected for case and number, and some forms have the same inflections (are syncretic). In several experiments on Slovak, it was shown that both head and attractor syncretism play a role for gender agreement in production. We demonstrate for the first time that this is also the case in comprehension. The role of head noun syncretism has not been analyzed in any previous comprehension studies, also for number agreement. We conclude that syncretic forms create uncertainty, which is crucial for agreement disruption. These results are better compatible with retrieval approaches to agreement attraction. We discuss the implications of our findings for the nature of the retrieval cues used to establish morphosyntactic dependencies. The question whether case marking modulates agreement attraction in comprehension has also been addressed in a study on Armenian, and it found no evidence of such influence. We offer an explanation of the conflicting findings from several studies based on the syntactic constructions they used as materials.

This study investigates the online process of reading and analyzing of sketchnotes (visual notes containing a handwritten text and drawings) on Russian language material. Using the eye-tracking method, we compared the processing of different types of sketchnotes [\"path\" (trajectory), linear, and radial] and the processing of a verbal text. Biographies of Russian writers were used as the material. In a preliminary experiment, we asked 89 college students to read the biographies and to evaluate each text or sketch using five scales (from -2 to +2). The best example for each of three formats of sketchnotes and a verbal text was chosen. In the main experiment, 21 secondary school students examined four different biographies in four different formats (three sketchnotes and a verbal text), answered to the factual and analytical questions to these texts and estimated the difficulty of each text. We measured the total dwell time, the total fixation count, the average fixation duration for each stimulus as well as for separate zones inside the sketches including verbal and non-verbal information. Our results show that readers process the information better and faster while reading sketchnotes than a verbal text. In the trajectory sketchnotes, the readers followed the order of elements aimed by the author of the sketchnotes better than in the radial and linear sketchnotes. The analysis of participants\' eye movements while processing the stimuli made it possible to propose several recommendations for creating effective sketchnotes.

BACKGROUND: Persons of African and Middle-Eastern origin living in European countries have a high prevalence of type 2 diabetes, accompanied by high prevalence of obesity among women but not always among men. The aim of this study was to examine whether there are differences in the association between anthropometric measures and glucose levels measured with glycated haemoglobin and fasting blood glucose among persons of migrant origin in Finland.
METHODS: Cross-sectional population-based data of the 30-64 year-old participants in the health examination of the Migrant Health and Wellbeing Study was used, selecting persons without diabetes (Russian origin n = 293, Somali origin n = 184, Kurdish origin n = 275). The reference group were non-diabetic participants in the Health 2011 Survey (n = 653), representative of the general Finnish population. Anthropometric measures included body mass index (BMI), waist circumference (WC), waist-to-height ratio (WHtR) and waist-to-hip ratio (WHR, available for Maamu Study participants only).
RESULTS: Depending on whether continuous or categorical anthropometric measures were used, age, sex and anthropometrics explained 13-18% of variation in HbA1c among persons of Russian origin, 5-10% among persons of Somali origin, 1-3% among persons of Kurdish origin and 11-13% among the general population. Also depending on whether continuous or categorical anthropometric measures were used, age, sex and anthropometrics explained 13-19% of variation in fasting blood glucose among persons of Russian origin, 15-20% among persons of Somali origin, 13-17% among persons of Kurdish origin and 16-17% among the general population. With exception for BMI, strength of the association between continuous anthropometric measures and HbA1c was significantly lower among persons of Kurdish origin compared with the general Finnish population (p = 0.044 for WC and p = 0.040 for WHtR).
CONCLUSIONS: A low degree of association between anthropometric measures and HbA1c was observed among persons of Kurdish origin. Findings of this study suggest caution is warranted when using HbA1c as a screening tool for glucose impairment among persons without diabetes in populations of diverse origin.

The Birmingham Cognitive Screen (BCoS) is designed for use with individuals who have acquired language impairment following stroke. Our goal was to develop a Russian version of the BCoS (Rus-BCoS) by translating the battery following cultural and linguistic adaptations and establishing preliminary data on its psychometric properties.
Fifty patients with left-hemisphere stroke were recruited, of whom 98% were diagnosed with mild to moderate aphasia. To check whether the Rus-BCoS provides stable and consistent scores, internal consistency, test-retest, and interrater types of reliability were determined. Eight participants with stroke and 20 neurologically intact participants were assessed twice. To inspect the discriminative power of the battery, 63 participants without brain impairment were tested with the Rus-BCoS. Additionally, the Russian version of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), Quantitative Assessment of Speech in Aphasia, and Luria\'s Neuropsychological Assessment Battery were used to examine convergent validity, sensitivity, and specificity of the Rus-BCoS.
The internal consistency as well as test-retest and interrater reliability of the Rus-BCoS satisfied criteria for the research use. Performance on a majority of tasks in the battery correlated significantly with independently validated tests that putatively measure similar cognitive processes. Critically, all patients with aphasia returned nonzero scores in at least one task in all the Rus-BCoS sections, with the exception of the Controlled Attention section where two patients with severe executive control deficits could not perform.
The Rus-BCoS shows promise as a comprehensive cognitive screening tool that can be used by clinicians working with Russian-speaking persons experiencing poststroke aphasia after much further validation and development of reliable normative standards. Given a lack of quantitative neuropsychological assessment tools in Russia, however, we contend the Rus-BCoS offers potential benefits to clinicians and patients. However, data from research studies with a broader sample of Russian speakers are needed.

The generation of regular and irregular past tense verbs has long been a testing ground for different models of inflection in the mental lexicon. Behavioral studies examined a variety of languages, but neuroimaging studies rely almost exclusively on English and German data. In our fMRI experiment, participants inflected Russian verbs and nouns of different types and corresponding nonce stimuli. Irregular real and nonce verbs activated inferior frontal and inferior parietal regions more than regular verbs did, while no areas were more activated in the opposite comparison. We explain this activation pattern by increasing processing load: a parametric contrast revealed that these regions are also more activated for nonce stimuli compared to real stimuli. A very similar pattern is found for nouns. Unlike most previously obtained results, our findings are more readily compatible with the single-system approach to inflection, which does not postulate a categorical difference between regular and irregular forms.

BACKGROUND: Multiple genetic studies have confirmed association of 8q24 variants with susceptibility to prostate cancer (CaP). However, the risk conferred in men living in Russia is unknown.
METHODS: In this work we studied the association of rs6983267, rs10090154, and rs1447295 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) with a risk of CaP development in men of Caucasoid descent living in the Siberian region of Russia. Three 8q24 SNPs were genotyped by real-time polymerase chain reaction in histologically confirmed CaP \"cases\" (n = 392) and clinically evaluated \"controls\" (n = 344). To evaluate the SNP effects on CaP susceptibility, odds ratio (OR) and confidence interval (CI) 95% were calculated. Allele and genotype frequencies in the groups were compared using logistic regression; differences were considered statistically significant if P<0.05.
RESULTS: We showed statistically significant association of the A allele of rs1447295 (OR [CI 95%] = 1.96 [1.37-2.81], P<0.0001) and the T allele of rs10090154 (OR [CI 95%] = 2.14 [1.41-3.26], P<0.0001) with CaP. The T-A rs10090154 to rs1447295 haplotype was also associated with CaP (OR [CI 95%] = 2.47 [1.59-3.85], P<0.0001). There was no significant association with the T allele of rs6983267: OR [CI 95%] = 0.9 [0.73-1.11], P> 0.05.
CONCLUSIONS: Thus, our investigation confirms the role of chromosomal region 8q24 in the development of CaP in the Russian population.