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Background A population-based breast cancer screening programme was implemented in the Central Denmark Region in 2008–09. The objective of this registry-based study was to examine the association between socio-demographic characteristics and screening participation and to examine whether the group of non-participants can be regarded as a homogeneous group of women. Method Participation status was obtained from a regional database for all women invited to the first screening round in the Central Denmark Region in 2008–2009 (n=149,234). Participation data was linked to registries containing socio-demographic information. Distance to screening site was calculated using ArcGIS. Participation was divided into ‘participants’ and ‘non-participants’, and non-participants were further stratified into ‘active non-participants’ and ‘passive non-participants’ based on whether the woman called and cancelled her participation or was a ‘no-show’. Results The screening participation rate was 78.9%. In multivariate analyses, non-participation was associated with older age, immigrant status, low OECD-adjusted household income, high and low level education compared with middle level education, unemployment, being unmarried, distance to screening site >20 km, being a tenant and no access to a vehicle. Active and passive non-participants comprised two distinct groups with different socio-demographic characteristics, with passive non-participants being more socially deprived compared with active non-participants. Conclusion Non-participation was associated with low social status e.g. low income, unemployment, no access to vehicle and status as tenant. Non-participants were also more likely than participants to be older, single, and of non-Danish origin. Compared to active non-participants, passive non-participants were characterized by e.g. lower income and lower educational level. Different interventions might be warranted to increase participation in the two non-participant groups.

Based on 180 censored letters and two pamphlets written by psychiatric patients committed to Jydske Asyl (Asylum of Jutland) in Risskov, Denmark, between 1895 and 1920, the authors give an account of how the patients experienced their stay at the newly established mental hospital in Risskov. In the first part of the article, the authors outline central themes. The letters and pamphlets describe how a large part of the treatment at the mental hospitals involved a significant amount of coercion in various forms. In the second part of the article, they outline the mental hospital's historical context to understand the institutional context in which the patients wrote their descriptions of everyday life. The authors focus on the ideas behind the treatments the patients experienced, which involved the ideals the psychiatrists formulated when Jydske Asyl was constructed and the reality of everyday life at the mental hospital.

The intestine is a central regulator of metabolic homeostasis. Dietary inputs are absorbed through the gut, which senses their nutritional value and relays hormonal information to other organs to coordinate systemic energy balance. However, the gut-derived hormones affecting metabolic and behavioral responses are poorly defined. Here we show that the endocrine cells of the Drosophila gut sense nutrient stress through a mechanism that involves the TOR pathway and in response secrete the peptide hormone allatostatin C, a Drosophila somatostatin homolog. Gut-derived allatostatin C induces secretion of glucagon-like adipokinetic hormone to coordinate food intake and energy mobilization. Loss of gut Allatostatin C or its receptor in the adipokinetic-hormone-producing cells impairs lipid and sugar mobilization during fasting, leading to hypoglycemia. Our findings illustrate a nutrient-responsive endocrine mechanism that maintains energy homeostasis under nutrient-stress conditions, a function that is essential to health and whose failure can lead to metabolic disorders. Intestinal nutrient-sensing is important in metabolic control. Here the authors show that the gut-derived hormone Allatostatin C, a somatostatin homolog in fruit flies, links enteric nutrient sensing to behavioral and metabolic adaptations that maintain energetic homeostasis in Drosophila melanogaster.

Microbial communities have huge impacts on their ecosystems and local environments spanning from marine and soil communities to the mammalian gut. Bacteriophages (phages) are important drivers of population control and diversity in the community, but our understanding of complex microbial communities is halted by biased detection techniques. Metagenomics have provided a method of novel phage discovery independent of in vitro culturing techniques and have revealed a large proportion of understudied phages. Here, five jumbophage genomes, that were previously assembled in silico from pig faecal metagenomes, are detected and observed directly in their natural environment using a modified phageFISH approach, and combined with methods to decrease bias against large-sized phages ( e . g ., jumbophages). These phages are uncultured with unknown hosts. The specific phages were detected by PCR and fluorescent in situ hybridisation in their original faecal samples as well as across other faecal samples. Co-localisation of bacterial signals and phage signals allowed detection of the different stages of phage life cycle. All phages displayed examples of early infection, advanced infection, burst, and free phages. To our knowledge, this is the first detection of jumbophages in faeces, which were investigated independently of culture, host identification, and size, and based solely on the genome sequence. This approach opens up opportunities for characterisation of novel in silico phages in vivo from a broad range of gut microbiomes.

Ca2+-activated K+ channels have been implicated in cancer cell growth, metastasis, and tumor angiogenesis. Here we hypothesized that high mRNA and protein expression of the intermediate-conductance Ca2+-activated K+ channel, KCa3.1, is a molecular marker of clear cell Renal Cell Carcinoma (ccRCC) and metastatic potential and survival. We analyzed channel expression by qRT-PCR, immunohistochemistry, and patch-clamp in ccRCC and benign oncocytoma specimens, in primary ccRCC and oncocytoma cell lines, as well as in two ccRCC cell lines (Caki-1 and Caki-2). CcRCC specimens contained 12-fold higher mRNA levels of KCa3.1 than oncocytoma specimens. The large-conductance channel, KCa1.1, was 3-fold more highly expressed in ccRCC than in oncocytoma. KCa3.1 mRNA expression in ccRCC was 2-fold higher than in the healthy cortex of the same kidney. Disease specific survival trended towards reduction in the subgroup of high-KCa3.1-expressing tumors (p<0.08 vs. low-KCa3.1-expressing tumors). Progression-free survival (time to metastasis/recurrence) was reduced significantly in the subgroup of high-KCa3.1-expressing tumors (p<0.02, vs. low-KCa3.1-expressing tumors). Immunohistochemistry revealed high protein expression of KCa3.1 in tumor vessels of ccRCC and oncocytoma and in a subset of ccRCC cells. Oncocytoma cells were devoid of KCa3.1 protein. In a primary ccRCC cell line and Caki-1/2-ccRCC cells, we found KCa3.1-protein as well as TRAM-34-sensitive KCa3.1-currents in a subset of cells. Furthermore, Caki-1/2-ccRCC cells displayed functional Paxilline-sensitive KCa1.1 currents. Neither KCa3.1 nor KCa1.1 were found in a primary oncocytoma cell line. Yet KCa-blockers, like TRAM-34 (KCa3.1) and Paxilline (KCa1.1), had no appreciable effects on Caki-1 proliferation in-vitro. Our study demonstrated expression of KCa3.1 in ccRCC but not in benign oncocytoma. Moreover, high KCa3.1-mRNA expression levels were indicative of low disease specific survival of ccRCC patients, short progression-free survival, and a high metastatic potential. Therefore, KCa3.1 is of prognostic value in ccRCC.

Rising numbers of wolf (Canis lupus) populations make traditional, resource-intensive methods of wolf monitoring increasingly challenging and often insufficient. This study explores how wolf howls can be used as a new monitoring tool for wolves by applying Artificial Intelligence (AI) methods to detect and classify wolf howls from acoustic recordings, thereby improving the effectiveness of wolf population monitoring. Three AI approaches are evaluated: BirdNET, Yellowstone’s Cry-Wolf project system, and BioLingual. Data were collected using Song Meter SM4 (SM4) audio recorders in a known wolf territory in Klelund Dyrehave, Denmark, and manually validated to establish a ground truth of 260 wolf howls. Results demonstrate that while AI solutions currently do not achieve the complete precision or overall accuracy of expert manual analysis, they offer tremendous efficiency gains, significantly reducing processing time. BirdNET achieved the highest recall at 78.5% (204/260 howls detected), though with a low precision of 0.007 (resulting in 28,773 false positives). BioLingual detected 61.5% of howls (160/260) with 0.005 precision (30,163 false positives), and Cry-Wolf detected 59.6% of howls (155/260) with 0.005 precision (30,099 false positives). Crucially, a combined approach utilizing all three models achieved a 96.2% recall (250/260 howls detected). This suggests that while AI solutions primarily function as powerful human-aided data reduction tools rather than fully autonomous detectors, they represent a valuable, scalable, and non-invasive complement to traditional methods in wolf research and conservation, making large-scale monitoring more feasible.

Social support may have an impact on screening participation. We studied the association between social support in 2006, defined as frequencies of contacts, instrumental support and emotional support and participation in breast cancer screening in 2008-09. This population-based cohort study included 4512 women who had participated in a Health Survey in 2006 and who also were in the target group for the first round of organized breast cancer screening in the Central Denmark region in 2008-09. Women with infrequent contacts with friends and family in 2006 were more likely not to participate in screening in 2008-09 [prevalence ratio (PR) 1.69, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.26-2.26, P-value < 0.001 and PR 1.56, 95% CI 1.21-2.20, P-value < 0.001, respectively] as were women who reported not to have someone to look after her home if she was away for some time and women who reported usually not or never having someone to turn to with personal concerns (PR 1.97, 95% CI 1.53-2.54, P-value < 0.001 and PR 1.42, 95% CI 1.14-1.77, P-value = 0.002, respectively). Low social support, indicated by items in each social support attribute, was associated with non-participation in breast cancer screening in 2008-09. Targeted social interventions may, therefore, have an impact on future screening behaviour, which calls for further research.

Important insights concerning the molecular basis of skeletal muscle disuse-atrophy and aging related muscle loss have been obtained in cell culture and animal models, but these regulatory signaling pathways have not previously been studied in aging human muscle. In the present study, muscle atrophy was induced by immobilization in healthy old and young individuals to study the time-course and transcriptional factors underlying human skeletal muscle atrophy. The results reveal that irrespectively of age, mRNA expression levels of MuRF-1 and Atrogin-1 increased in the very initial phase (2-4 days) of human disuse-muscle atrophy along with a marked reduction in PGC-1α and PGC-1β (1-4 days) and a ~10% decrease in myofiber size (4 days). Further, an age-specific decrease in Akt and S6 phosphorylation was observed in young muscle within the first days (1-4 days) of immobilization. In contrast, Akt phosphorylation was unchanged in old muscle after 2 days and increased after 4 days of immobilization. Further, an age-specific down-regulation of MuRF-1 and Atrogin-1 expression levels was observed following 2 weeks of immobilization, along with a slowing atrophy response in aged skeletal muscle. Neither the immediate loss of muscle mass, nor the subsequent age-differentiated signaling responses could be explained by changes in inflammatory mediators, apoptosis markers or autophagy indicators. Collectively, these findings indicate that the time-course and regulation of human skeletal muscle atrophy is age dependent, leading to an attenuated loss in aging skeletal muscle when exposed to longer periods of immobility-induced disuse.

Assessment of balance is key to identifying individuals with postural control deficits and an increased fall risk. Subjects may compensate for their deficits by utilizing other strategies; to avoid this, it is recommended to assess postural control using a dual-task test. In most dual-task tests, it is difficult to monitor the performance in the secondary task and the individual's task prioritisation. This study evaluated a new dual-task testing approach. A convenience sample of 54 community-dwelling elderly (age 65+ years) and a reference group of 20 young participants were included in the study. They performed a test in which they could utilize cues to improve their baseline performance, provided their level of postural control allowed them residual attention capacity for this cognitive task. Significant performance differences were seen between the young and the elderly. The young group improved their performance time by 23.9% (10.7) and 7.1% (14.2) with a cue and a reverse cue, respectively, whereas the elderly failed to improve their performance time. The test was unable to distinguish between individuals within the elderly group due to a floor effect. The test reveals an individual's capacity to use cues for anticipatory postural control strategies in a dual-task setting and thereby estimates automatization of postural control. While the young subjects were capable of improving their performance during dual-task conditions, the elderly subjects apparently had no residual attentional capacity allowing them to utilize the facilitating cues. Within the elderly group, the dual-task aspects of the test added no value with respect to differentiation in the level of postural control.

Background Breast cancer screening in Denmark is organised by the health services in the five regions. Although general practitioners (GPs) are not directly involved in the screening process, they are often the first point of contact to the health care system and thus play an important advisory role. No previous studies, in a health care setting like the Danish system, have investigated the association between GPs’ attitudes towards breast cancer screening and women’s participation in the screening programme. Methods Data on women’s screening participation was obtained from the regional screening authorities. Data on GPs’ attitudes towards breast cancer screening was taken from a previous survey among GPs in the Central Denmark Region. This study included women aged 50-69 years who were registered with a singlehanded GP who had participated in the survey. Results The survey involved 67 singlehanded GPs with a total of 13,288 women on their lists. Five GPs (7%) had a negative attitude towards breast cancer screening. Among registered women, 81% participated in the first screening round. Multivariate analyses revealed that women registered with a GP with a negative attitude towards breast cancer screening were 17% (95% CI: 2-34%) more likely to be non-participants compared with women registered with a GP with a positive attitude towards breast cancer screening. Conclusion The GPs' attitudes may influence the participation rate even in a system where GPs are not directly involved in the screening process. However, further studies are needed to investigate this association.