Digital Commons Network^™

Higher Procedural Volumes Are Associated With Faster Treatment Times, Better Functional Outcomes, And Lower Mortality In Patients Undergoing Endovascular Treatment For Acute Ischemic Stroke, Raul G. Nogueira, Diogo C. Haussen, Eric E. Smith, Jie-Lena Sun, Ying Xian, Brooke Alhanti, Rosalia Blanco, Brian Mac Grory, Mohamed F. Doheim, Ameer E. Hassan

School of Medicine Publications

Objective We aimed to characterize the association of hospital procedural volumes with outcomes among acute ischemic stroke (AIS) patients undergoing endovascular therapy (EVT).

Methods This was a retrospective, observational cohort study using data prospectively collected from January 1, 2016, to December 31, 2019, in the Get With The Guidelines-Stroke registry. Participants were derived from a cohort of 60,727 AIS patients treated with EVT within 24 hours at 626 hospitals. The primary cohort excluded patients with pretreatment NIHSS6 hours, and inter-hospital transfers. There were two secondary cohorts: (1) EVT metrics cohort: excluded patients with missing data on time from door-to-arterial-puncture; (2) …

Diminished Tmem100 Expression In A Newborn With Acinar Dysplasia And A Novel Tbx4 Variant: A Case Report, Przemyslaw Szafranski, Silvia Patrizi, Tomasz Gambin, Bushra Afzal, Emily Schlotterbeck, Justyna A Karolak, Gail Deutsch, Drucilla Roberts, Paweł Stankiewicz

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Acinar dysplasia (AcDys) of the lung is a rare lethal developmental disorder in neonates characterized by severe respiratory failure and pulmonary arterial hypertension refractory to treatment. Recently, abnormalities of TBX4-FGF10-FGFR2-TMEM100 signaling regulating lung development have been reported in patients with AcDys due to heterozygous single-nucleotide variants (SNVs) or copy-number variant (CNV) deletions involving TBX4, FGF10, or FGFR2. Here, we describe a female neonate who died at 4 hours of life due to severe respiratory distress related to AcDys diagnosed by postmortem histopathologic evaluation. Genomic analyses revealed a novel deleterious heterozygous missense variant c.728A>C (p.Asn243Thr) in TBX4 that arose …

Explaining And Correcting Trade Imbalances Between The Northern And Southern Eurozone: An Empirical Investigation, Ioannis Litsios, Keith Pilbeam

Plymouth Business School

In this paper we take a novel approach to examining the trade imbalances between the Southern Eurozone countries and the Northern Eurozone countries by aggregating them into a Southern Group and Northern Group. We then explore three possible causes of the trade imbalances, which are the fiscal channel, the investment channel and the competitiveness channel. We find that all three channels are important in explaining the emergence and correction of trade imbalances. In particular, we find that an increase in fiscal deficits in the North are twice as effective in reducing trade imbalances than fiscal consolidation in the South. By …

The Real Game Of Thrones: The War Of The Roses, 1453-1487, Gonzalo M. Flores

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Investigation Of Autosegmentation Techniques On T2-Weighted Mri For Off-Line Dose Reconstruction In Mr-Linac Workflow For Head And Neck Cancers, Brigid A Mcdonald, Carlos E Cardenas, Nicolette O'Connell, Sara Ahmed, Mohamed A Naser, Kareem A Wahid, Jiaofeng Xu, Dan Thill, Raed J Zuhour, Shane Mesko, Alexander Augustyn, Samantha M Buszek, Stephen Grant, Bhavana V Chapman, Alexander F Bagley, Renjie He, Abdallah S R Mohamed, John Christodouleas, Kristy K Brock, Clifton D Fuller

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Background: In order to accurately accumulate delivered dose for head and neck cancer patients treated with the Adapt to Position workflow on the 1.5T magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-linear accelerator (MR-linac), the low-resolution T2-weighted MRIs used for daily setup must be segmented to enable reconstruction of the delivered dose at each fraction.

Purpose: In this pilot study, we evaluate various autosegmentation methods for head and neck organs at risk (OARs) on on-board setup MRIs from the MR-linac for off-line reconstruction of delivered dose.

Methods: Seven OARs (parotid glands, submandibular glands, mandible, spinal cord, and brainstem) were contoured on 43 images by …

Pathologic Processing Of Lung Cancer Resection Specimens After Neoadjuvant Therapy, Annikka Weissferdt, Cheuk H Leung, Heather Lin, Boris Sepesi, William N William, Stephen G Swisher, Tina Cascone, J Jack Lee, Abujiang Pataer

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Neoadjuvant treatment of non-small cell lung cancer challenges the traditional processing of pathology specimens. Induction therapy before resection allows evaluation of the efficacy of neoadjuvant agents at the time of surgery. Many clinical trials use pathologic tumor response, measured as major pathologic response (MPR, ≤10% residual viable tumor [RVT]) or complete pathologic response (CPR, 0% RVT) as a surrogate of clinical efficacy. Consequently, accurate pathologic evaluation of RVT is crucial. However, pathologic assessment has not been uniform, which is particularly true for sampling of the primary tumor, which instead of the traditional processing, requires different tissue submission because the focus …

Evaluation Of Ion Chamber Response For Applications In Electron Flash Radiotherapy, Kevin Liu, Shannon Holmes, Brian Hooten, Emil Schüler, Sam Beddar

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Ion chambers are required for calibration and reference dosimetry applications in radiation therapy (RT). However, exposure of ion chambers in ultra-high dose rate (UHDR) conditions pertinent to FLASH-RT leads to severe saturation and ion recombination, which limits their performance and usability. The purpose of this study was to comprehensively evaluate a set of commonly used commercially available ion chambers in RT, all with different design characteristics, and use this information to produce a prototype ion chamber with improved performance in UHDR conditions as a first step toward ion chambers specific for FLASH-RT. The Advanced Markus and Exradin A10, A26, and …

Gut Microbiome And Hepatic Transcriptomic Determinants Of Hcc Development In Mice With Metabolic Dysfunction-Associated Steatohepatitis, Lillian I Dolapchiev, Kristyn A Gonzales, Lorenzo R Cruz, Mihai Gagea, Heather L Stevenson, Suet-Ying Kwan, Laura Beretta

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Purpose: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) related to metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) is often diagnosed at a late stage, and its incidence is increasing. Predictive biomarkers are therefore needed to identify individuals at high risk of HCC. We aimed to characterize the gut microbiome and hepatic transcriptome associated with HCC development in female mice with hepatocyte-deletion of Pten (HepPten -). These mice present with large variations in HCC development, making them a powerful model for biomarker discovery.

Methods & results: Sequencing of stool 16S and hepatic RNA was performed on a first set of mice. Among all liver histology …

Quantifying The Effect Of 4-Dimensional Computed Tomography-Based Deformable Dose Accumulation On Representing Radiation Damage For Patients With Locally Advanced Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer Treated With Standard-Fractionated Intensity-Modulated Radiation Therapy, Yulun He, Guillaume Cazoulat, Carol Wu, Stina Svensson, Lusmeralis Almodovar-Abreu, Bastien Rigaud, Emma Mccollum, Christine Peterson, Zachary Wooten, Dong Joo Rhee, Peter Balter, Julianne Pollard-Larkin, Carlos Cardenas, Laurence Court, Zhongxing Liao, Radhe Mohan, Kristy Brock

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Purpose: The aim of this study was to investigate the dosimetric and clinical effects of 4-dimensional computed tomography (4DCT)-based longitudinal dose accumulation in patients with locally advanced non-small cell lung cancer treated with standard-fractionated intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT).

Methods and materials: Sixty-seven patients were retrospectively selected from a randomized clinical trial. Their original IMRT plan, planning and verification 4DCTs, and ∼4-month posttreatment follow-up CTs were imported into a commercial treatment planning system. Two deformable image registration algorithms were implemented for dose accumulation, and their accuracies were assessed. The planned and accumulated doses computed using average-intensity images or phase images were …

Predicting Suicidality In Late-Life Depression By 3d Convolutional Neural Network And Cross-Sample Entropy Analysis Of Resting-State Fmri, Chemin Lin, Chih-Mao Huang, Wei Chang, You-Xun Chang, Ho-Ling Liu, Shu-Hang Ng, Huang-Li Lin, Tatia Mei-Chun Lee, Shwu-Hua Lee, Shun-Chi Wu

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

BACKGROUND: Predicting suicide is a pressing issue among older adults; however, predicting its risk is difficult. Capitalizing on the recent development of machine learning, considerable progress has been made in predicting complex behavior such as suicide. As depression remained the strongest risk for suicide, we aimed to apply deep learning algorithms to identify suicidality in a group with late-life depression (LLD).

METHODS: We enrolled 83 patients with LLD, 35 of which were non-suicidal and 48 were suicidal, including 26 with only suicidal ideation and 22 with past suicide attempts, for resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Cross-sample entropy (CSE) analysis …

Jointtracker: Real-Time Inertial Kinematic Chain Tracking With Joint Position Estimation, Bertram Taetz, Michael Lorenz, Markus Miezal, Didier Stricker, Gabriele Bleser-Taetz

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

In-field human motion capture (HMC) is drawing increasing attention due to the multitude of application areas. Plenty of research is currently invested in camera-based (markerless) HMC, with the advantage of no infrastructure being required on the body, and additional context information being available from the surroundings. However, the inherent drawbacks of camera-based approaches are the limited field of view and occlusions. In contrast, inertial HMC (IHMC) does not suffer from occlusions, thus being a promising approach for capturing human motion outside the laboratory. However, one major challenge of such methods is the necessity of spatial registration. Typically, during a predefined …

Insights Into The Assembly And Regulation Of The Bacterial Divisome, Todd A Cameron, William Margolin

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

The ability to split one cell into two is fundamental to all life, and many bacteria can accomplish this feat several times per hour with high accuracy. Most bacteria call on an ancient homologue of tubulin, called FtsZ, to localize and organize the cell division machinery, the divisome, into a ring-like structure at the cell midpoint. The divisome includes numerous other proteins, often including an actin homologue (FtsA), that interact with each other at the cytoplasmic membrane. Once assembled, the protein complexes that comprise the dynamic divisome coordinate membrane constriction with synthesis of a division septum, but only after overcoming …

Probing Membrane-Associated Cytoskeletal Oligomers Of The Bacterial Divisome By Electron Microscopy And Tomography, Bo Hu, William Margolin

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

The cell division machinery or "divisome" of many bacteria, including Escherichia coli, contains homologs of tubulin (FtsZ) and actin (FtsA) that interact with each other to promote the synthesis of septal peptidoglycan. FtsA oligomers have an essential role as a track for tethering dynamically treadmilling FtsZ protofilaments to the cytoplasmic membrane. Other bacterial cytoskeletal oligomers such as MreB also assemble on and move along the membrane. Structures of these oligomers on membranes in vitro may mimic their behavior in the cell. Here, we describe a protocol to visualize FtsA oligomeric structures on membranes and their interactions with FtsZ protofilaments using …

A Signal Injection Attack Against Zero Involvement Pairing And Authentication For The Internet Of Things, Isaac Ahlgren, Jack West, Kyuin Lee, George K. Thiruvathukal, Neil Klingensmith

Computer Science: Faculty Publications and Other Works

Zero Involvement Pairing and Authentication (ZIPA) is a promising technique for auto-provisioning large networks of Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices. In this work, we present the first successful signal injection attack on a ZIPA system. Most existing ZIPA systems assume there is a negligible amount of influence from the unsecured outside space on the secured inside space. In reality, environmental signals do leak from adjacent unsecured spaces and influence the environment of the secured space. Our attack takes advantage of this fact to perform a signal injection attack on the popular Schurmann & Sigg algorithm. The keys generated by the adversary with …

Attention-Aware With Stacked Embedding For Sentiment Analysis Of Student Feedback Through Deep Learning Techniques, Shanza Zafar Malik, Khalid Iqbal, Muhammad Sharif, Yaser Ali Shah, Amaad Khalil, M. Abeer Irfan, Joanna Rosak-Szyrocka

Research Outputs: 2025-Present

Automatic polarity prediction is a challenging assessment issue. Even though polarity assessment is a critical topic with many existing applications, it is probably not an easy challenge and faces several difficulties in natural language processing (NLP). Public polling data can give useful information, and polarity assessment or classification of comments on Twitter and Facebook may be an effective approach for gaining a better understanding of user sentiments. Text embedding techniques and models related to the artificial intelligence field and sub-fields with differing and almost accurate parameters are among the approaches available for assessing student comments. Existing state-of-the-art methodologies for sentiment …

Preclinical Study And Parallel Phase Ii Trial Evaluating Antisense Stat3 Oligonucleotide And Checkpoint Blockade For Advanced Pancreatic, Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer And Mismatch Repair-Deficient Colorectal Cancer, Chad Tang, Genevieve P Hartley, Coline Couillault, Ying Yuan, Heather Lin, Courtney Nicholas, Anupallavi Srinivasamani, James Dai, Ecaterina E Ileana Dumbrava, Siqing Fu, Daniel D Karp, Aung Naing, Sarina A Piha-Paul, Jordi Rodon Ahnert, Shubham Pant, Vivek Subbiah, Timonthy A Yap, Apostolia M Tsimberidou, Paola Guerrero, Sarah Dhebat, Theresa Proia, Michael A Curran, David S Hong

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Objective: To evaluate signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3) inhibition we conducted a co-clinical trial testing danvatirsen, a STAT3 antisense oligonucleotide (ASO) and checkpoint inhibition in conjunction with preclinical experiments.

Methods and analysis: Orthotopically implanted pancreatic cancer (pancreatic adenocarcinoma (PDAC)) was treated with STAT3 ASO with immune checkpoint inhibition. Tumour infiltrating immune cell populations were characterised via flow cytometry. In vitro experiments evaluated STAT3 inhibition in pancreatic stellate cells (PSCs) and myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSCs).A phase II trial employing a Simon II stage design tested the clinical efficacy of danvatirsen and durvalumab in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), …

The Use Of Mr-Guided Radiation Therapy For Head And Neck Cancer And Recommended Reporting Guidance, Brigid A Mcdonald, Riccardo Dal Bello, Clifton D Fuller, Panagiotis Balermpas

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Although magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has become standard diagnostic workup for head and neck malignancies and is currently recommended by most radiological societies for pharyngeal and oral carcinomas, its utilization in radiotherapy has been heterogeneous during the last decades. However, few would argue that implementing MRI for annotation of target volumes and organs at risk provides several advantages, so that implementation of the modality for this purpose is widely accepted. Today, the term MR-guidance has received a much broader meaning, including MRI for adaptive treatments, MR-gating and tracking during radiotherapy application, MR-features as biomarkers and finally MR-only workflows. First studies …

Voluntary Wheel Running Prevents Formation Of Membrane Attack Complexes And Myelin Degradation After Peripheral Nerve Injury, Suzanne M Green-Fulgham, Michael J Lacagnina, Kendal F Willcox, Jiahe Li, Michael E Harland, Adriano Polican Ciena, Igor R Correia Rocha, Jayson B Ball, Renee A Dreher, Younus A Zuberi, Joseph M Dragavon, Marucia Chacur, Steven F Maier, Linda R Watkins, Peter M Grace

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Regular aerobic activity is associated with a reduced risk of chronic pain in humans and rodents. Our previous studies in rodents have shown that prior voluntary wheel running can normalize redox signaling at the site of peripheral nerve injury, attenuating subsequent neuropathic pain. However, the full extent of neuroprotection offered by voluntary wheel running after peripheral nerve injury is unknown. Here, we show that six weeks of voluntary wheel running prior to chronic constriction injury (CCI) reduced the terminal complement membrane attack complex (MAC) at the sciatic nerve injury site. This was associated with increased expression of the MAC inhibitor …

Multi-Task Learning With High-Dimensional Noisy Images, Xin Ma, Suprateek Kundu

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Recent medical imaging studies have given rise to distinct but inter-related datasets corresponding to multiple experimental tasks or longitudinal visits. Standard scalar-on-image regression models that fit each dataset separately are not equipped to leverage information across inter-related images, and existing multi-task learning approaches are compromised by the inability to account for the noise that is often observed in images. We propose a novel joint scalar-on-image regression framework involving wavelet-based image representations with grouped penalties that are designed to pool information across inter-related images for joint learning, and which explicitly accounts for noise in high-dimensional images via a projection-based approach. In …

Bayesian Optimal Designs For Multi-Arm Multi-Stage Phase Ii Randomized Clinical Trials With Multiple Endpoints, Guillaume Mulier, Sylvie Chevret, Ruitao Lin, Lucie Biard

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

There is a growing need to evaluate of multiple competing drugs in phase II trials where the number of patients is often limited, and simultaneous assessment of both efficacy and toxicity is crucial. To avoid the waste of research resources, it is indeed more efficient to screen multiple drugs at once in a platform phase II setting. We aim to adapt the Bayesian optimal phase II (BOP2) design to multi-arm trials for both uncontrolled and controlled settings. The binary efficacy and toxicity endpoints are modeled by a Dirichlet distribution as a vector of four outcomes. Posterior marginal distributions at each …

On The Relative Conservativeness Of Bayesian Logistic Regression Method In Oncology Dose-Finding Studies, Cheng-Han Yang, Guanghui Cheng, Ruitao Lin

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

The Bayesian logistic regression method (BLRM) is a widely adopted and flexible design for finding the maximum tolerated dose in oncology phase I studies. However, the BLRM design has been criticized in the literature for being overly conservative due to the use of the overdose control rule. Recently, a discussion paper titled "Improving the performance of Bayesian logistic regression model with overall control in oncology dose-finding studies" in Statistics in Medicine has proposed an overall control rule to address the "excessive conservativeness" of the standard BLRM design. In this short communication, we discuss the relative conservativeness of the standard BLRM …

Does Varicocele Repair Improve Conventional Semen Parameters? A Meta-Analytic Study Of Before-After Data, Rossella Cannarella, Rupin Shah, Taha Abo-Almagd Abdel-Meguid Hamoda, Florence Boitrelle, Ramadan Saleh, Murat Gul, Amarnath Rambhatla, Parviz Kavoussi, Tuncay Toprak, Ahmed M Harraz, Edmund Ko, Gökhan Çeker, Damayanthi Durairajanayagam, Noora Alkahidi, Shinnosuke Kuroda, Andrea Crafa, Ralf Henkel, Gianmaria Salvio, Berk Hazir, Mahsa Darbandi, Marion Bendayan, Sara Darbandi, Marco Falcone, Nicolas Garrido, Raghavender Kosgi, Raneen Sawaid Kaiyal, Keshab Karna, Nguyen Ho Vinh Phuoc, Ponco Birowo, Giovanni M Colpi, Jean De La Rosette, Germar-Michael Pinggera, Quang Nguyen, Armand Zini, Wael Zohdy, Rajender Singh, Pallavi Saini, Sidney Glina, Haocheng Lin, Taymour Mostafa, Cesar Rojas-Cruz, Mohamed Arafa, Aldo E Calogero, Fotios Dimitriadis, Priyank Kothari, Vilvapathy Senguttuvan Karthikeyan, Keisuke Okada, Koji Chiba, Ates Kadıoglu, Baris Altay, Tahsin Turunc, Birute Zilaitiene, Fatih Gokalp, Aram Adamyan, Darren Katz, Eric Chung, Tiago Cesar Mierzwa, Daniel Suslik Zylbersztejn, Gustavo Marquesine Paul, Nikolaos Sofikitis, Ioannis Sokolakis, Vineet Malhotra, Sakti Ronggowardhana Brodjonegoro, Ricky Adriansjah, Akira Tsujimura, Toshiyasu Amano, Giancarlo Balercia, Imad Ziouziou, Isaac Ardianson Deswanto, Marlon Martinez, Hyun Jun Park, Mustafa Emre Bakırcıoglu, Erman Ceyhan, Kaan Aydos, Jonathan Ramsay, Suks Minhas, Manaf Al Hashimi, Ramy Abou Ghayda, Nicholas Tadros, Puneet Sindhwani, Christopher C K Ho, Rinaldo Indra Rachman, Marcelo Rodriguez Pena, Ahmad Motawi, Arun Karthik Ponnusamy, Satish Dipankar, Azwar Amir, Saleh Binsaleh, Ege Can Serefoglu, Ravi Banthia, Kareim Khalafalla, Ari Basukarno, Nguyen Hoai Bac, Karun Singla, Rafael F Ambar, Konstantinos Makarounis, Shivam Priyadarshi, Gede Wirya Kusuma Duarsa, Widi Atmoko, Sunil Jindal, Eko Arianto, Hamed Akhavizadegan, Haitham El Bardisi, Ohad Shoshany, Gian Maria Busetto, Mohamad Moussa, Mounir Jamali, Mohamed S Al-Marhoon, Mikhail Ruzaev, Hasan M A Farsi, Shingai Mutambirwa, Dong Sup Lee, Deniz Kulaksiz, Yu-Sheng Cheng, Abderrazak Bouzouita, Selcuk Sarikaya, Hussein Kandil, Georgios Tsampoukas, Ala'a Farkouh, Kasonde Bowa, Missy Savira, Nasser Mogharabian, Tan V Le, Maruto Harjanggi, Dang Tuan Anh, Tran Quang Tien Long, Mohammad Ayodhia Soebadi, Lukman Hakim, Marko Tanic, Umut Cagin Ari, Firuza R Parikh, Gokhan Calik, Vinod Kv, Gyem Dorji, Andri Rezano, Osvaldo Rajmil, Dung Mai Ba Tien, Yiming Yuan, Juan Francisco Lizarraga-Salas, Balantine Eze, Kay Seong Ngoo, Joe Lee, Umut Arslan, Ashok Agarwal, Global Andrology Forum

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Purpose: The purpose of this meta-analysis is to study the impact of varicocele repair in the largest cohort of infertile males with clinical varicocele by including all available studies, with no language restrictions, comparing intra-person conventional semen parameters before and after the repair of varicoceles.

Materials and methods: The meta-analysis was performed according to PRISMA-P and MOOSE guidelines. A systematic search was performed in Scopus, PubMed, Cochrane, and Embase databases. Eligible studies were selected according to the PICOS model (Population: infertile male patients with clinical varicocele; Intervention: varicocele repair; Comparison: intra-person before-after varicocele repair; Outcome: conventional semen parameters; Study type: …

Diet-Stimulated Marrow Adiposity Fails To Worsen Early, Age-Related Bone Loss, Cody Mcgrath, Sarah E Little-Letsinger, Gabriel M Pagnotti, Buer Sen, Zhihui Xie, Gunes Uzer, Guniz B Uzer, Xiaopeng Zong, Martin A Styner, Janet Rubin, Maya Styner

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Introduction: Longitudinal effect of diet-induced obesity on bone is uncertain. Prior work showed both no effect and a decrement in bone density or quality when obesity begins prior to skeletal maturity. We aimed to quantify long-term effects of obesity on bone and bone marrow adipose tissue (BMAT) in adulthood.

Methods: Skeletally mature, female C57BL/6 mice (n = 70) aged 12 weeks were randomly allocated to low-fat diet (LFD; 10% kcal fat; n = 30) or high-fat diet (HFD; 60% kcal fat; n = 30), with analyses at 12, 15, 18, and 24 weeks (n = 10/group). Tibial microarchitecture was analyzed …

Pet Image Denoising Based On Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Model, Kuang Gong, Keith Johnson, Georges El Fakhri, Quanzheng Li, Tinsu Pan

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Purpose: Due to various physical degradation factors and limited counts received, PET image quality needs further improvements. The denoising diffusion probabilistic model (DDPM) was a distribution learning-based model, which tried to transform a normal distribution into a specific data distribution based on iterative refinements. In this work, we proposed and evaluated different DDPM-based methods for PET image denoising.

Methods: Under the DDPM framework, one way to perform PET image denoising was to provide the PET image and/or the prior image as the input. Another way was to supply the prior image as the network input with the PET image included …

Rare Genomic Copy Number Variants Implicate New Candidate Genes For Bicuspid Aortic Valve, Steven G Carlisle, Hasan Albasha, Hector I Michelena, Anna Sabate-Rotes, Lisa Bianco, Julie De Backer, Laura Muiño Mosquera, Anji T Yetman, Malenka M Bissell, Maria Grazia Andreassi, Ilenia Foffa, Dawn S Hui, Anthony Caffarelli, Yuli Y Kim, Dongchuan Guo, Rodolfo Citro, Margot De Marco, Justin T Tretter, Kim L Mcbride, Dianna M Milewicz, Simon C Body, Siddharth K Prakash, Ebav Investigators, Bavcon Investigators

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Bicuspid aortic valve (BAV), the most common congenital heart defect, is a major cause of aortic valve disease requiring valve interventions and thoracic aortic aneurysms predisposing to acute aortic dissections. The spectrum of BAV ranges from early onset valve and aortic complications (EBAV) to sporadic late onset disease. Rare genomic copy number variants (CNVs) have previously been implicated in the development of BAV and thoracic aortic aneurysms. We determined the frequency and gene content of rare CNVs in EBAV probands (n = 272) using genome-wide SNP microarray analysis and three complementary CNV detection algorithms (cnvPartition, PennCNV, and QuantiSNP). Unselected control …

Development And Initial Validation Of A Hospital Stress Questionnaire, Daniel M Ford, Rebecca Lawton, Elizabeth Travis, Elizabeth A Teale, Daryl B O'Connor

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

BACKGROUND: Hospitalisation can be a traumatic experience, where inpatients are exposed to an abundance of physical and psychological stressors. Evidence suggests that these hospital-related stressors negatively impact health: a phenomenon known as post-hospital syndrome. The current study aimed to identify hospital-related stressors, and to develop and provide initial validation for a new measure of in-hospital stress.

METHODS: Measure development occurred in three stages: (i) semi-structured interviews, (ii) item generation, and (iii) pilot testing. Twenty-one patients were interviewed regarding their recent hospital experiences, and a list of hospital-related stressors was produced. These stressors were compiled into a questionnaire and piloted on …

A Novel Assessment Of Whole-Mount Gleason Grading In Prostate Cancer To Identify Candidates For Radical Prostatectomy: A Machine Learning-Based Multiomics Study, Jing Ning, Clemens P Spielvogel, David Haberl, Karolina Trachtova, Stefan Stoiber, Sazan Rasul, Vojtech Bystry, Gabriel Wasinger, Pascal Baltzer, Elisabeth Gurnhofer, Gerald Timelthaler, Michaela Schlederer, Laszlo Papp, Helga Schachner, Thomas Helbich, Markus Hartenbach, Bernhard Grubmüller, Shahrokh F Shariat, Marcus Hacker, Alexander Haug, Lukas Kenner

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Purpose: This study aims to assess whole-mount Gleason grading (GG) in prostate cancer (PCa) accurately using a multiomics machine learning (ML) model and to compare its performance with biopsy-proven GG (bxGG) assessment.

Materials and Methods: A total of 146 patients with PCa recruited in a pilot study of a prospective clinical trial (NCT02659527) were retrospectively included in the side study, all of whom underwent ⁶⁸Ga-PSMA-11 integrated positron emission tomography (PET) / magnetic resonance (MR) before radical prostatectomy (RP) between May 2014 and April 2020. To establish a multiomics ML model, we quantified PET radiomics features, pathway-level genomics …

Independent Regulation Of Piezo1 Activity By Principal And Intercalated Cells Of The Collecting Duct, Kyrylo Pyrshev, Anna Atamanchuk-Stavniichuk, Mariya Kordysh, Oleg Zaika, Viktor N Tomilin, Oleh Pochynyuk

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

The renal collecting duct is continuously exposed to a wide spectrum of fluid flow rates and osmotic gradients. Expression of a mechanoactivated Piezo1 channel is the most prominent in the collecting duct. However, the status and regulation of Piezo1 in functionally distinct principal and intercalated cells (PCs and ICs) of the collecting duct remain to be determined. We used pharmacological Piezo1 activation to quantify Piezo1-mediated [Ca2+]i influx and single-channel activity separately in PCs and ICs of freshly isolated collecting ducts with fluorescence imaging and electrophysiological tools. We also employed a variety of systemic treatments to examine their consequences on Piezo1 …

Approaches To Estimate Bidirectional Causal Effects Using Mendelian Randomization With Application To Body Mass Index And Fasting Glucose, Jinhao Zou, Rajesh Talluri, Sanjay Shete

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Mendelian randomization (MR) is an epidemiological framework using genetic variants as instrumental variables (IVs) to examine the causal effect of exposures on outcomes. Statistical methods based on unidirectional MR (UMR) are widely used to estimate the causal effects of exposures on outcomes in observational studies. To estimate the bidirectional causal effects between two phenotypes, investigators have naively applied UMR methods separately in each direction. However, bidirectional causal effects between two phenotypes create a feedback loop that biases the estimation when UMR methods are naively applied. To overcome this limitation, we proposed two novel approaches to estimate bidirectional causal effects using …

Hpv Vaccination In Africa In The Covid-19 Era: A Cross-Sectional Survey Of Healthcare Providers' Knowledge, Training, And Recommendation Practices, Joel Fokom Domgue, Issimouha Dille, Sharon Kapambwe, Robert Yu, Freddy Gnangnon, Lameck Chinula, Gad Murenzi, Nomonde Mbatani, Mala Pande, Fatoumata Sidibe, Joseph Kamgno, Bangaly Traore, Hicham El Fazazi, Mamadou Diop, Pierre-Marie Tebeu, Mohenou Isidore Diomande, Fabrice Lecuru, Isaac Adewole, Marie Plante, Partha Basu, Jean-Marie Dangou, Sanjay Shete

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

INTRODUCTION: Although the burden of cervical cancer in Africa is highest, HPV vaccination coverage remains alarmingly low in this region. Providers' knowledge and recommendation are key drivers of HPV vaccination uptake. Yet, evidence about providers' knowledge and recommendation practices about the HPV vaccine against a backdrop of emerging vaccine hesitancy fueled by the COVID-19 pandemic is lacking in Africa.

METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted in 2021-2022 among healthcare providers involved in cervical cancer prevention activities in Africa. They were invited to report prior training, the availability of the HPV vaccine in their practice, whether they recommended the HPV vaccine, …