Digital Commons Network^™

Self-Sampling For Human Papillomavirus Testing: Acceptability In A Us Safety Net Health System, Susan L Parker, Trisha L Amboree, Shaun Bulsara, Maria Daheri, Matthew L Anderson, Susan G Hilsenbeck, Maria L Jibaja-Weiss, Mohammed Zare, Kathleen M Schmeler, Ashish A Deshmukh, Elizabeth Y Chiao, Michael E Scheurer, Jane R Montealegre

Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy Staff Publications

Introduction: Self-sampling for human papillomavirus testing is increasingly recognized as a strategy to expand cervical cancer screening access and utilization. Acceptability is a key determinant of uptake. This study assesses the acceptability of and experiences with mailed self-sampling kits for human papillomavirus testing among underscreened patients in a safety net health system.

Methods: A nested telephone survey was administered between 2021 and 2023 to a sample (n=272) of the 2,268 participants enrolled in the Prospective Evaluation of Self-Testing to Increase Screening trial. Trial participants include patients of a safety net health system aged 30-65 years who were not up to …

Parental Descriptions Of Childhood Avoidance Symptoms After Trauma, Zoe Blair-Andrews, Alison Salloum, Stephanie Evans, Vicky Phares, Eric A Storch

Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy Staff Publications

Recognizing and diagnosing the avoidance symptom cluster of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in young children has been challenging. This study examines caregivers' descriptions of young children's avoidance reactions. By describing parents' examples of childhood avoidance, clinicians, researchers, and educators may be able to provide more specific psychoeducation which may improve identification of avoidance behaviors in young children. Caregivers (N=73) of young children (age 3-7 years) participated in a semi-structured diagnostic clinical interview prior to enrolling in a clinical trial for childhood trauma. The assessment regarding the caregiver's description of the child's avoidance was audio recorded and transcribed for a thematic …

Determining A Urinary-Specific Antibiogram And Risk Factors Of Trimethoprim/Sulfamethoxazole, Ciprofloxacin And Multidrug Resistance Among Enterobacterales In Primary Care, Marissa Valentine-King, Michael A Hansen, Roger Zoorob, Matthew Schlueter, Jennifer L Matas, Samuel E Willis, Lisa C K Danek, Kenneth Muldrew, Mohammad Zare, Forrest Hudson, Robert L Atmar, Andrew Chou, Barbara W Trautner, Larissa Grigoryan

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Background: Risk factors for ciprofloxacin or MDR in primary care urine specimens are not well defined.

Objectives: We created a primary care-specific antibiogram for Escherichia coli isolates from cases with complicated and uncomplicated urinary tract infection (UTI) and evaluated risk factors for ciprofloxacin, trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole and MDR among Enterobacterales.

Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional study to determine resistance and risk factors by collecting urine cultures from all patients (≥18 years) presenting with provider-suspected UTI at two primary care, safety-net clinics in Houston, TX, USA between November 2018 and March 2020.

Results: Among 1262 cultures, 308 cultures grew 339 uropathogens. Patients with …

Decreased Sarcoplasmic Reticulum Phospholipids In Human Skeletal Muscle Are Associated With Metabolic Syndrome, Samantha E Adamson, Sangeeta Adak, Max C Petersen, Dustin Higgins, Larry D Spears, Rong Mei Zhang, Andrea Cedeno, Alexis Mckee, Aswathi Kumar, Sudhir Singh, Fong-Fu Hsu, Janet B Mcgill, Clay F Semenkovich

2020-Current year OA Pubs

Metabolic syndrome affects more than one in three adults and is associated with increased risk of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and all-cause mortality. Muscle insulin resistance is a major contributor to the development of the metabolic syndrome. Studies in mice have linked skeletal muscle sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR) phospholipid composition to sarcoplasmic/endoplasmic reticulum Ca

Multi-View Representation Learning For Tabular Data Integration Using Inter-Feature Relationships, Sandhya Tripathi, Bradley A Fritz, Mohamed Abdelhack, Michael S Avidan, Yixin Chen, Christopher R King

2020-Current year OA Pubs

OBJECTIVE: An applied problem facing all areas of data science is harmonizing data sources. Joining data from multiple origins with unmapped and only partially overlapping features is a prerequisite to developing and testing robust, generalizable algorithms, especially in healthcare. This integrating is usually resolved using meta-data such as feature names, which may be unavailable or ambiguous. Our goal is to design methods that create a mapping between structured tabular datasets derived from electronic health records independent of meta-data.

METHODS: We evaluate methods in the challenging case of numeric features without reliable and distinctive univariate summaries, such as nearly Gaussian and …

Once-Daily Oral Berotralstat For Long-Term Prophylaxis Of Hereditary Angioedema: The Open-Label Extension Of The Apex-2 Randomized Trial, Sorena Kiani-Alikhan, H James Wedner, Et Al.

2020-Current year OA Pubs

BACKGROUND: Berotralstat is a first-line, once-daily oral plasma kallikrein inhibitor approved for prophylaxis of hereditary angioedema (HAE) attacks in patients 12 years or older.

OBJECTIVE: This analysis examined the safety and effectiveness of long-term prophylaxis with berotralstat.

METHODS: APeX-2 was a phase 3, parallel-group, multicenter trial in patients with HAE caused by C1-inhibitor deficiency (NCT03485911). Part 1 was a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled evaluation of 150 and 110 mg of berotralstat over 24 weeks. In part 2, berotralstat-treated patients continued the same treatment, and placebo-treated patients were re-randomized to 150 or 110 mg of berotralstat for 24 weeks. In part 3, …

Technical Note: Minimizing Cied Artifacts On A 0.35 T Mri-Linac Using Deep Learning, Austen N Curcuru, Deshan Yang, Hongyu An, Phillip S Cuculich, Clifford G Robinson, H Michael Gach

2020-Current year OA Pubs

BACKGROUND: Artifacts from implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs) are a challenge to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-guided radiotherapy (MRgRT).

PURPOSE: This study tested an unsupervised generative adversarial network to mitigate ICD artifacts in balanced steady-state free precession (bSSFP) cine MRIs and improve image quality and tracking performance for MRgRT.

METHODS: Fourteen healthy volunteers (Group A) were scanned on a 0.35 T MRI-Linac with and without an MR conditional ICD taped to their left pectoral to simulate an implanted ICD. bSSFP MRI data from 12 of the volunteers were used to train a CycleGAN model to reduce ICD artifacts. The data from the …

Interventional Treatment For Acute Iliofemoral Deep Venous Thrombosis, Matthew Tan, Suresh Vedantham, Sriram Narayanan, Kurosh Parsi, Alun H Davies

2020-Current year OA Pubs

No abstract provided.

Extracellular Domain Mutations Of The Egf Receptor Differentially Modulate High-Affinity And Low-Affinity Responses To Egf Receptor Ligands, Jennifer L Macdonald-Obermann, Linda J Pike

2020-Current year OA Pubs

The EGF receptor is mutated in a number of cancers. In most cases, the mutations occur in the intracellular tyrosine kinase domain. However, in glioblastomas, many of the mutations are in the extracellular ligand binding domain. To determine what changes in receptor function are induced by such extracellular domain mutations, we analyzed the binding and biological response to the seven different EGF receptor ligands in three common glioblastoma mutants-R84K, A265V, and G574V. Our data indicate that all three mutations significantly increase the binding affinity of all seven ligands. In addition, the mutations increase the potency of all ligands for stimulating …

Can Steam Be Usable As A "Plus" For Ventilation Shutdown?, A. V. Mendoza, S. Weimer, Z. Williams

Poultry Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

The American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA), preferred depopulation methods (i.e., foam, containerized gassing, and mechanical methods) can be challenging when depopulating cage and aviary commercial laying hen houses for multiple reasons. When preferred methods are not feasible or resources are unavailable, ventilation shutdown plus (VSD+) heat and/or carbon dioxide (CO₂) is approved for emergency situations. Both recognized “pluses” work but can have issues as VSD+ heat typically causes a decrease in environmental humidity and can affect PVC structures, while CO₂ can be a human safety concern and has procurement problem during emergencies. …

Assessment Of The Impact Of Humic Acids On Intestinal Microbiota, Gut Integrity, Ileum Morphometry, And Cellular Immunity Of Turkey Poults Fed An Aflatoxin B1-Contaminated Diet, Jesus A. Maguey-Gonzalez, Jing Liu, Guolong Zhang, Juan D. Latorre, Juan O. Hernandez-Ramirez, Maria De Jesus Nava-Ramirez, Roberto Señas-Cuesta, Sergio Gomez-Rosales, Maria De Lourdes Angeles, Andressa Stein, Bruno Solis-Cruz, Daniel Hernandez-Patlan, Ruben Merino-Guzman, Xochitl Hernandez-Velasco, Inkar Castellanos-Huerta, Santiago Uribe-Diaz, Alma Vazquez-Duran, Abraham Mendez-Albores, Victor Petrone-Garcia, Guillermo Tellez Jr., Billy M. Hargis, Guillermo Tellez-Isaias

Poultry Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

A recent study published data on the growth performance, relative weights of the organs of the gastrointestinal tract, liver histology, serum biochemistry, and hematological parameters for turkey poults fed an experimental diet contaminated with aflatoxin B₁ (AFB₁) and humic acids (HA) extracted from vermicompost. The negative effects of AFB₁ (250 ng AFB₁/g of feed) were significantly reduced by HA supplementation (0.25% w/w), suggesting that HA might be utilized to ameliorate the negative impact of AFB₁ from contaminated diets. The present study shows the results of the remaining variables, as an extension of …

Effect Of Heat Stress On The Hypothalamic Expression Profile Of Water Homeostasis-Associated Genes In Low- And High-Water Efficient Chicken Lines, Loujain Aloui, Elizabeth S. Greene, Travis Tabler, Kentu Lassiter, Kevin Thompson, Walter G. Bottje, Sara Orlowski, Sami Dridi

Poultry Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

With climate change, selection for water efficiency and heat resilience are vitally important. We undertook this study to determine the effect of chronic cyclic heat stress (HS) on the hypothalamic expression profile of water homeostasis-associated markers in high (HWE)- and low (LWE)-water efficient chicken lines. HS significantly elevated core body temperatures of both lines. However, the amplitude was higher by 0.5–1°C in HWE compared to their LWE counterparts. HWE line drank significantly less water than LWE during both thermoneutral (TN) and HS conditions, and HS increased water intake in both lines with pronounced magnitude in LWE birds. HWE had better …

Novel 4th-Generation Phytase Improves Broiler Growth Performance And Reduces Woody Breast Severity Through Modulation Of Muscle Glucose Uptake And Metabolism, Carrie L. Walk, Garrett J. Mullenix, Craig W. Maynard, Elizabeth S. Greene, Clay Maynard, Nelson Ward, Sami Dridi

Poultry Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

The objective of the present study was to determine the effect of a novel (4th generation) phytase supplementation as well as its mode of action on growth, meat quality, and incidence of muscle myopathies. One-day old male broilers (n = 720) were weighed and randomly allocated to 30 floor pens (24 birds/pen) with 10 replicate pens per treatment. Three diets were fed from hatch to 56- days-old: a 3-phase corn-soy based diet as a positive control (PC); a negative control (NC) formulated to be isocaloric and isonitrogenous to the PC and with a reduction in Ca and available P, …

Rico's Long Arm, Randy D. Gordon

Faculty Scholarship

RICO has for over 50 years presented something of a parlor game for lawyers, mostly because its text leaves wide latitude in interpretation. And, as is often the case with RICO, resolution of one question begets more. The Supreme Court’s recent decision in Yegiazaryan v. Smagin proves no exception. Here, the Court brought some clarity to a question left open by RJR Nabisco: viz, what must one plead and prove to satisfy the “domestic injury” requirement necessary to invoke an extraterritorial application of RICO. The Court held that a foreign plaintiff can indeed, given the right facts and circumstances, establish …

Increased Experiences Of Loneliness During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Emotional Distress And Changes In Perceived Physical And Mental Health: A Structural Equation Model, Joann Jabbari, Stephen Roll, Amy Mcqueen, Nancy Ridenour

2020-Current year OA Pubs

AIM: To explore how experiences of increased loneliness during the COVID-19 pandemic affected emotional distress and changes in perceptions of physical and mental health.

DESIGN: Cross-sectional study.

METHODS: Data from the Socio-Economic Impacts of Covid-19 Survey, a national survey administered to 5033 adults in August and September 2020 in the United States, was utilized in this study. Structural equation modelling was used to analyse the associations between increased experiences of loneliness during the pandemic, emotional distress and changes in perceptions of physical and mental health.

RESULTS: Among the 47% of participants who reported increased experiences of loneliness during the pandemic, …

Scoring System For Prediction Of Overall Survival In Patients With Renal Cell Carcinoma T3an0m0, Caio Vinícius Suartz, Maurício Dener Cordeiro, Paulo Afonso De Carvalho, Fábio Pescarmona Gallucci, Leopoldo Alves Ribeiro-Filho, Leonardo Cardili, Arjun Sivaraman, François Audenet, José Mauricio Mota, William Carlos Nahas

2020-Current year OA Pubs

OBJECTIVE: We aim to create a new score to predict postoperative overall survival in patients with nonmetastatic T3aN0 renal cell carcinoma.

METHODS: We reviewed the clinical data of adult patients who underwent radical nephrectomy for renal cell carcinoma between December 2007 and January 2022 in a single tertiary oncological institution. Clinical characteristics, clinical-pathological staging and histopathological characteristics were analysed. Survival analyses were determined using the Kaplan-Meier curve. A nomogram was established using Cox proportional hazard regression to identify the prognostic factors affecting the overall survival. The area under the curve, calibration curves and decision curve analysis were used to evaluate …

Comparing Bladder Neck Contracture Rate Between Robotic Intracorporeal And Extracorporeal Neobladder Construction, Rohit Bhatt, Dylan J. Mittauer, Joel M. Vetter, Nimrod S. Barashi, Riley Mcginnis, Kenneth G. Sands, Alexander K. Chow, Eric H. Kim

2020-Current year OA Pubs

Robot-assisted radical cystectomy (RARC) has become more accessible to surgeons worldwide, and descriptions of intracorporeal urinary diversion techniques, such as orthotopic neobladder construction, have increased. In this study, we aim to compare the rate of bladder neck contracture (BNC) formation between RARC and two different urinary diversion techniques. We retrospectively reviewed our institutional database for patients with bladder cancer who underwent RARC with intracorporeal neobladder (ICNB) construction (n = 11) or extracorporeal neobladder (ECNB) construction (n = 11) between 2012 and 2020. BNC was defined by the need for an additional surgical procedure (e.g., dilatation, urethrotomy). Patients who underwent RARC …