BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic sparked a surge of research publications spanning epidemiology, basic science, and clinical science. Thanks to the digital revolution, large data sets are now accessible, which also enables real-time epidemic tracking. However, despite this, academic faculty and their trainees have been struggling to access comprehensive clinical data. To tackle this issue, we have devised a clinical data repository that streamlines research processes and promotes interdisciplinary collaboration.
OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to present an easily accessible up-to-date database that promotes access to local COVID-19 clinical data, thereby increasing efficiency, streamlining, and democratizing the research enterprise. By providing a robust database, a broad range of researchers (faculty and trainees) and clinicians from different areas of medicine are encouraged to explore and collaborate on novel clinically relevant research questions.
METHODS: A research platform, called the Yale Department of Medicine COVID-19 Explorer and Repository (DOM-CovX), was constructed to house cleaned, highly granular, deidentified, and continually updated data from over 18,000 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 from January 2020 to January 2023, across the Yale New Haven Health System. Data across several key domains were extracted including demographics, past medical history, laboratory values during hospitalization, vital signs, medications, imaging, procedures, and outcomes. Given the time-varying nature of several data domains, summary statistics were constructed to limit the computational size of the database and provide a reasonable data file that the broader research community could use for basic statistical analyses. The initiative also included a front-end user interface, the DOM-CovX Explorer, for simple data visualization of aggregate data. The detailed clinical data sets were made available for researchers after a review board process.
RESULTS: As of January 2023, the DOM-CovX Explorer has received 38 requests from different groups of scientists at Yale and the repository has expanded research capability to a diverse group of stakeholders including clinical and research-based faculty and trainees within 15 different surgical and nonsurgical specialties. A dedicated DOM-CovX team guides access and use of the database, which has enhanced interdepartmental collaborations, resulting in the publication of 16 peer-reviewed papers, 2 projects available in preprint servers, and 8 presentations in scientific conferences. Currently, the DOM-CovX Explorer continues to expand and improve its interface. The repository includes up to 3997 variables across 7 different clinical domains, with continued growth in response to researchers\' requests and data availability.
CONCLUSIONS: The DOM-CovX Data Explorer and Repository is a user-friendly tool for analyzing data and accessing a consistently updated, standardized, and large-scale database. Its innovative approach fosters collaboration, diversity of scholarly pursuits, and expands medical education. In addition, it can be applied to other diseases beyond COVID-19.

Dermatomycosis, including tinea pedis and onychomycosis, is frequently encountered in routine medical care in Japan. Identifying the risk factors for tinea pedis and onychomycosis development is important to encourage hospital visits by patients who may have these diseases but who are not undergoing any treatment. This approach may lead to the prevention of disease progression and the spread of infections to others. Risk factors for onychomycosis development have been reported both in and outside of Japan. However, most of the risk factors were identified based on a multicenter, questionnaire survey study and included evidence obtained from unclear or inconsistent diagnostic criteria for tinea pedis, onychomycosis, and identified risk factors. The current study analyzed the risk factors for developing tinea pedis and onychomycosis in real-world practice in Japan using a single-center, large-scale database that included the data of patients managed with consistent diagnostic criteria at the Podiatry Center of Juntendo University Hospital. A total of 2476 patients (1012 males, 1464 females) with a mean age of 63.4 years were included. Among these patients, 337 (13.6%) had tinea pedis and 346 (14.0%) had onychomycosis. A total of 259 patients (~ 75% of each patient population) had both diseases concomitantly. Multivariate logistic regression analysis adjusted for the possible risk factors of age (per 10 years), sex, diabetes, dialysis, visual impairment, ulcer history, lower-limb ischemia (LLI), and diabetic peripheral neuropathy (DPN) revealed that advanced age, male sex, diabetes, and LLI were independent risk factors for the development of tinea pedis. In addition, DPN was an independent risk factor for developing onychomycosis. We believe that these data are useful for identifying patients who are at high risk of developing tinea pedis and onychomycosis, which may result in disease prevention and suppression in real-world clinical practice in Japan.

Molecular chaperones, such as heat shock proteins (HSPs), have attracted attention as molecules involved in malignant events in cancers and are potential therapeutic targets and biomarkers for tumor therapy. Furthermore, mutations in chaperones can significantly impact cancer risk and prognosis. Bioinformatics is a particularly useful method for developing biomarkers as a practical consideration for the immediate clinical application of data. Many large-scale databases and portals on cancer genome are nowadays publicly available, including the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC); The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), renamed as Genomic Data Commons (GDC); Catalogue of Somatic Mutations in Cancer (COSMIC); and Cancer Cell Line Encyclopedia (CCLE). Referring to these databases, advanced web portals are publicized, including cBioPortal, Human Protein Atlas (HPA), Kaplan-Meier (KM) plotter, Gene Expression Profiling Interactive Analysis 2 (GEPIA2), Genomics of Drug Sensitivity in Cancer (GDSC), and Dependency Map (DepMap). Here, we assemble these databases and portals to clarify what is available and useful for current cancer research and provide protocols to utilize the HPA, KM plotter, and GEPIA2 for studies on chaperone genes in cancer patients. Utilizing these portals will reveal the correlation between tumor subtype-specific high expression of chaperone genes and patient prognosis. Our protocols are useful to increase systematic awareness of chaperones and find new biomarkers for diagnosis and prognosis and new targets for anticancer drugs.

The local regional similarity of fingerprints has always been a hot issue in the field of fingerprint research. With the increasing size of ten-print databases, the appearance of close non-matches (CNMs) in automatic fingerprint identification system (AFIS) candidate lists has attracted increasing attention from forensic science departments worldwide. In this study, three categories (high-, medium-, and low-level) of standards for CNMs were established and 60 whorl samples were marked with different numbers of minutiae to explore the occurrence and influencing factors of CNMs in AFIS candidate lists based on a ten million people database. The results showed that all prints could be found with their corresponding CNMs. The average occurrence rate of CNMs for every query was 52.7% in the top 100 lists, and the most similar CNM was exactly the same in the local area of 12 coincidence points. CNMs appeared more in the middle and lower parts of the central region of the whorl. Moreover, shorter C2C distances and the same finger number and hand led to more CNMs being inspected. CNMs with higher similarity required a more extensive regional area and smaller minutiae density. We concluded that CNMs have a high occurrence rate in large-scale databases and many factors are closely related to them. Fingerprint examiners and researchers need to strengthen their understanding of CNMs to avoid the occurrence of misidentification like the Madrid bombings.

Background: Information on prescriptions of oral analgesics for the treatment of pain is beneficial. However, there have been few reports on the prescription status of oral analgesics from a nation-wide, large-scale prescription database in Japan. Research design and methods: The authors analyzed the prescription data of 2,042,302 patients prescribed oral analgesics in 2017. The numbers/proportions of patients prescribed oral analgesics, adherence with approved doses, co-prescription patterns, dose changes, drug adherence, and treatment-discontinuation rates were evaluated. Results: Loxoprofen was prescribed to 32.5% of the patients, followed by celecoxib, prescribed to 16.0% of patients. Acetaminophen and pregabalin were prescribed to 10.5% and 9.4% of patients, respectively. Many analgesics were prescribed at lower doses than the approved doses. The most frequently used concomitant medication was pregabalin. For duloxetine and pregabalin, high proportions of patients were prescribed these drugs for > 90 days. Conclusions: Loxoprofen was the most prescribed of the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs in Japan. The information obtained provides an overview of prescribed oral analgesics in Japan and could be useful for potential research into prescribed oral analgesics in the future.