The Prevalence of Impostor Phenomenon in Medical Students in Slovenia: Effects of Gender, Year of Study, and Clinical Work Experience.

Phenomenon: Impostor syndrome (IS) is manifested in the fear of failing and being exposed as incompetent, despite exceptional professional performance. IS has been recognized in many professions, including medicine. Understanding IS prevalence and risk factors is critical to ensure the well-being of medical students and, by extension, future physicians. Approach: It was expected that IS is highly prevalent in medical students, higher in women and associated with year of study and prior clinical experience. The Clance Impostors Phenomenon Scale (CIPS) was used to collect the responses from of medical students in May 2023. Questionnaires were distributed online to both public medical faculties in Slovenia. Findings: 207 medical students (157 women, 50 men; mean age: 23.2 ± 2.6 years) completed the questionnaire (response rate = 13.1%). Women exhibited higher CIPS scores (66.0 ± 13.9) compared to men (58.8 ± 15.1) (p = 0.005). Neither age (r = 0.05; p = 0.464) nor year of study (r = 0.03; p = 0.653) was correlated with CIPS score. There were also no differences in CIPS score between students with (63.4 ± 15.2) and without (64.7 ± 13.9) prior clinical work experience (p = 0.531). Insights: The results of the present study suggest that IS can occur at any stage of medical education, with a slightly higher prevalence in women. This study contributes to the understanding of IS among medical students and calls for addressing environmental factors and taking supportive measures to mitigate the impact of IS and promote medical students' well-being and success.

Potential of molecular biophysical stimulation therapy in chronic musculoskeletal disorders: a narrative review.

Current treatment of chronic musculoskeletal diseases does not give sufficient results despite the implementation of novel drugs and techniques in orthopaedics and physical therapy. For instance, osteoporosis treatment is currently mainly limited to drug application, while the goal of osteoarthritis treatment is to mitigate pain symptoms through physical therapy. The main therapeutic principle in the management of osteoporosis is not only to increase bone mass, but also to improve bone and the cartilage quality, which depends on the biomechanical balance. Therefore, there is a strong demand for advanced technologies that would safely and non-invasively accelerate cartilage regeneration and improve bone density. Ten years ago, a new state-of-the-art technology - "Molecular biophysical stimulation therapy (MBST)", specifically nuclear magnetic resonance therapy, emerged on the medical technology market and until now, it has shown successful results in the conservative treatment of musculoskeletal disorders, including back pain. The aim of this review is to provide an integrated, synthesized overview of the current evidence of efficacy of MBST for managing chronic musculoskeletal disorders.

Electrodermal activity and heart rate variability for detection of peripheral abnormalities in type 2 diabetes: A review.

Modern medicine exhibits an upward trend towards non-invasive methods for early detection of disease and long-term monitoring of patients' health. Diabetes mellitus and its complications are a promising area for implementation of new medical diagnostic devices. One of the most serious complications of diabetes is diabetic foot ulcer. The main causes responsible for diabetic foot ulcer are ischemia caused by peripheral artery disease and diabetic neuropathy caused by polyol pathway-induced oxidative stress. Autonomic neuropathy impairs function of sweat glands, which can be measured by electrodermal activity. On the other hand, autonomic neuropathy leads to changes in heart rate variability, which is used to assess autonomic regulation of the sinoatrial node. Both methods are enough sensitive to detect pathological changes caused by autonomic neuropathy and are promising screening methods for early diagnosis of diabetic neuropathy, which could prevent the onset of diabetic ulcer.

Design of In Vitro Hair Follicles for Different Applications in the Treatment of Alopecia-A Review.

The hair research field has seen great improvement in recent decades, with in vitro hair follicle (HF) models being extensively developed. However, due to the cellular complexity and number of various molecular interactions that must be coordinated, a fully functional in vitro model of HFs remains elusive. The most common bioengineering approach to grow HFs in vitro is to manipulate their features on cellular and molecular levels, with dermal papilla cells being the main focus. In this study, we focus on providing a better understanding of HFs in general and how they behave in vitro. The first part of the review presents skin morphology with an emphasis on HFs and hair loss. The remainder of the paper evaluates cells, materials, and methods of in vitro growth of HFs. Lastly, in vitro models and assays for evaluating the effects of active compounds on alopecia and hair growth are presented, with the final emphasis on applications of in vitro HFs in hair transplantation. Since the growth of in vitro HFs is a complicated procedure, there is still a great number of unanswered questions aimed at understanding the long-term cycling of HFs without losing inductivity. Incorporating other regions of HFs that lead to the successful formation of different hair classes remains a difficult challenge.

OptoBase: A Web Platform for Molecular Optogenetics.

OptoBase is an online platform for molecular optogenetics. At its core is a hand-annotated and ontology-supported database that aims to cover all existing optogenetic switches and publications, which is further complemented with a collection of convenient optogenetics-related web tools. OptoBase is meant both for expert optogeneticists to easily keep track of the field, as well as for all researchers who find optogenetics inviting as a powerful tool to address their biological questions of interest. It is available at https://www.optobase.org . This work also presents OptoBase-based analysis of the trends in molecular optogenetics.

Mutations in NONO lead to syndromic intellectual disability and inhibitory synaptic defects.

The NONO protein has been characterized as an important transcriptional regulator in diverse cellular contexts. Here we show that loss of NONO function is a likely cause of human intellectual disability and that NONO-deficient mice have cognitive and affective deficits. Correspondingly, we find specific defects at inhibitory synapses, where NONO regulates synaptic transcription and gephyrin scaffold structure. Our data identify NONO as a possible neurodevelopmental disease gene and highlight the key role of the DBHS protein family in functional organization of GABAergic synapses.