Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Design And Implementation Of Multicenter Pediatric And Congenital Studies With Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance: Big Data In Smaller Bodies, Michael P Dilorenzo, Simon Lee, Rahul H Rathod, Francesca Raimondi, Kanwal M Farooqi, Supriya S Jain, Margaret M Samyn, Tiffanie R Johnson, Laura J Olivieri, Mark A Fogel, Wyman W Lai, Pierangelo Renella, Andrew J Powell, Sujatha Buddhe, Caitlin Stafford, Jason N Johnson, Willem A Helbing, Kuberan Pushparajah, Inga Voges, Vivek Muthurangu, Kimberley G Miles, Gerald Greil, Colin J Mcmahon, Timothy C Slesnick, Brian M Fonseca, Shaine A Morris, Jonathan H Soslow, Lars Grosse-Wortmann, Rebecca S Beroukhim, Heynric B Grotenhuis

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) has become the reference standard for quantitative and qualitative assessment of ventricular function, blood flow, and myocardial tissue characterization. There is a preponderance of large CMR studies and registries in adults; However, similarly powered studies are lacking for the pediatric and congenital heart disease (PCHD) population. To date, most CMR studies in children are limited to small single or multicenter studies, thereby limiting the conclusions that can be drawn. Within the PCHD CMR community, a collaborative effort has been successfully employed to recognize knowledge gaps with the aim to embolden the development and initiation of high-quality, …

Abl1/2 And Ddr1 Cooperate To Stabilize Braf/Craf To Drive Erk1/2 Reactivation And Promote Mek Inhibitor Resistance In Nras-Mutant Melanomas, Anastasia Lyon

Theses and Dissertations--Pharmacology and Nutritional Sciences

This study addresses the escalating incidence of NRAS-mutant melanomas, a type of skin cancer lacking FDA-approved targeted therapies. Despite ongoing research targeting the RAF/MEK/ERK pathway, existing drugs fail to enhance progression-free survival due to acquired resistance. This project identifies a novel role for ABL1/2 and DDR1 kinases in driving drug resistance and proliferation of NRAS-mutant melanoma cells. ABL1/2 and DDR1 cooperate to promote RAF homodimerization and protein stability in order to reactivate MEK/ERK signaling to drive MEK1/2 inhibitor (MEKi) resistance and promote survival of resistant cells. By targeting ABL1/2 and DDR1 with nilotinib, a FDA-approved anti-leukemic inhibitor, we …

Erratum: Toward Standardization, Harmonization, And Integration Of Social Determinants Of Health Data: A Texas Clinical And Translational Science Award Institutions Collaboration - Corrigendum, Catherine K Craven, Linda Highfield, Mujeeb Basit, Elmer V Bernstam, Byeong Yeob Choi, Robert L Ferrer, Jonathan A Gelfond, Sandi L Pruitt, Vaishnavi Kannan, Paula K Shireman, Heidi Spratt, Kayla J Torres Morales, Chen-Pin Wang, Zhan Wang, Meredith N Zozus, Edward C Sankary, Susanne Schmidt

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

This corrects the article "Toward standardization, harmonization, and integration of social determinants of health data: A Texas Clinical and Translational Science Award institutions collaboration" in volume 8, e17.

Predicting Endothelium-Dependent Diastolic Function (Fmd)And Its Correlation With The Degree Of Coronary Artery Disease (Cad) And Plaque Vulnerability For Cardiovascular Events, Guangming Zhang, Jing Yang, Hanghang Xing, Hongning Yin, Guoqing Gu

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

OBJECTIVE: This study aims to investigate the correlation between vascular endothelium-dependent diastolic function (FMD) and the degree of coronary artery disease (CAD), plaque vulnerability, and its predictive value for cardiovascular events.

METHODS: Initially, patients (n=100) who were admitted from January 2020 to January 2021 and intended to undergo percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) were selected. Further, FMD in all patients was determined before the procedure and divided into a high-FMD group (≥4.2%) and a low-FMD group (

RESULTS: No significant differences were observed concerning general information, number of coronary arteries-associated branches, lesion type, involvement of the left main stem (LM), the …

Case Report: The Effect Of Automated Manual Lymphatic Drainage Therapy On Lymphatic Contractility In 4 Distinct Cases, Melissa B Aldrich, John C Rasmussen, Ron J Karni, Caroline E Fife, Frank Aviles, Kristen A Eckert, M Mark Melin

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

INTRODUCTION: Automated manual lymphatic drainage therapy (AMLDT) is available for home use in the form of a pneumatic mat of 16 pressurized air channels that inflate and deflate to mimic the stretch and release action of manual lymphatic drainage therapy. Four cases (a patient with complex regional pain syndrome and lymphedema, a healthy patient, a breast cancer survivor with chronic pain, and a patient with a history of abdominal surgery) underwent near-infrared fluorescence lymphatic imaging (NIRFLI) with AMLDT to evaluate the effect of AMLDT on lymphatic pumping and pain.

METHODS: Each patient received 32-36 injections of 25 μg indocyanine green …

Association Between Symptom Burden And Early Lymphatic Abnormalities After Regional Nodal Irradiation For Breast Cancer, Alison K Yoder, Tianlin Xu, Peter Youssef, Sarah Desnyder, Kathryn E Marqueen, Lynn Isales, Ruitao Lin, Benjamin D Smith, Wendy A Woodward, Michael C Stauder, Eric A Strom, Melissa B Aldrich, Simona F Shaitelman

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

PURPOSE: Dermal backflow visualized on near-infrared fluorescence lymphatic imaging (NIRF-LI) signals preclinical lymphedema that precedes the development of volumetrically defined lymphedema. We sought to evaluate whether dermal backflow correlates with patient-reported lymphedema outcomes (PRLO) surveys in breast cancer patients treated with regional nodal irradiation (RNI).

METHODS AND MATERIALS: Patients with breast cancer planned for axillary dissection and RNI prospectively underwent perometry, NIRF-LI, and PRLOs (the Lymphedema Symptom Intensity and Distress Survey [LSIDS] and QuickDASH) at baseline, after surgery, and at 6, 12, and 18 months after radiation. Clinical lymphedema was defined as an arm volume increase ≥5% over baseline. Trends …

Protein-Centric Omics Analysis Reveals Circulating Complements Linked To Non-Viral Liver Diseases As Potential Therapeutic Targets, Yingzhou Shi, Hang Dong, Shiwei Sun, Xiaoqin Wu, Jiansong Fang, Jianbo Zhao, Junming Han, Zongyue Li, Huixiao Wu, Luna Liu, Wanhong Wu, Yang Tian, Guandou Yuan, Xiude Fan, Chao Xu

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

BACKGROUND/AIMS: To evaluate the causal correlation between complement components and non-viral liver diseases and their potential use as druggable targets.

METHODS: We conducted Mendelian randomization (MR) to assess the causal role of circulating complements in the risk of non-viral liver diseases. A complement-centric protein interaction network was constructed to explore biological functions and identify potential therapeutic options.

RESULTS: In the MR analysis, genetically predicted levels of complement C1q C chain (C1QC) were positively associated with the risk of autoimmune hepatitis (odds ratio 1.125, 95% confidence interval 1.018-1.244), while complement factor H-related protein 5 (CFHR5) was positively associated with the risk …

Disentangling Accelerated Cognitive Decline From The Normal Aging Process And Unraveling Its Genetic Components: A Neuroimaging-Based Deep Learning Approach, Yulin Dai, Yu-Chun Hsu, Brisa S Fernandes, Kai Zhang, Xiaoyang Li, Nitesh Enduru, Andi Liu, Astrid M Manuel, Xiaoqian Jiang, Zhongming Zhao, Alzheimer’S Disease Neuroimaging Initiative

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

BACKGROUND: The progressive cognitive decline, an integral component of Alzheimer's disease (AD), unfolds in tandem with the natural aging process. Neuroimaging features have demonstrated the capacity to distinguish cognitive decline changes stemming from typical brain aging and AD between different chronological points.

OBJECTIVE: To disentangle the normal aging effect from the AD-related accelerated cognitive decline and unravel its genetic components using a neuroimaging-based deep learning approach.

METHODS: We developed a deep-learning framework based on a dual-loss Siamese ResNet network to extract fine-grained information from the longitudinal structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data from the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) study. …

Preparing Healthcare Education For An Ai-Augmented Future, Jiajie Zhang, Susan H Fenton

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Artificial intelligence (AI) fundamentally transforms healthcare education as a knowledge enterprise, creating a distributed cognitive system composed of the human brain, which remains relatively unchanged, and AI-based knowledge and cognitive functions, which have accelerated exponentially in scale and power. Education must focus on developing skills to collaborate with AI and on achieving outcomes like problems solved and discoveries made. Curriculum and education policies also need to adapt to this transformation.

Statins Are Rarely Prescribed For Incidentally Discovered Covert Cerebrovascular Disease: A Retrospective Cohort In A Large Electronic Health Record (Ehr) Identified Using Natural Language Processing, Lester Y Leung, Eric Puttock, David F Kallmes, Patrick Luetmer, Sunyang Fu, Chengyi X Zheng, Hongfang Liu, Wansu Chen, David M Kent

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Introduction: While incidentally discovered covert cerebrovascular diseases (id-CCD) are associated with future stroke, it is not known if patients with id-CCD are prescribed statins.

Methods: Patients age ≥50 with id-CCD on neuroimaging from 2009 to 2019 with no prior ischaemic stroke, transient ischaemic attack or dementia were identified using natural language processing in a large real-world cohort. Robust Poisson multivariable regression was used to assess statin prescription among patients without prior statins.

Results: Among 2 41 050 patients, 74 975 patients (31.1%; 4.7% with covert brain infarcts (CBI); 29.0% with white matter disease (WMD)) had id-CCD. 53.5% (95% CI 53.2 …

The Enact Network Is Acting On Housing Instability And The Unhoused Using The Open Health Natural Language Processing Toolkit, Daniel R Harris, Sunyang Fu, Andrew Wen, Alexandria Corbeau, Darren Henderson, Jordan Hilsman, David Oniani, Yanshan Wang

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Housing is an environmental social determinant of health that is linked to mortality and clinical outcomes. We developed a lexicon of housing-related concepts and rule-based natural language processing methods for identifying these housing-related concepts within clinical text. We piloted our methods on several test cohorts: a synthetic cohort generated by ChatGPT for initial infrastructure testing, a cohort with substance use disorders (SUD), and a cohort diagnosed with problems related to housing and economic circumstances (HEC). Our methods successfully identified housing concepts in our ChatGPT notes (recall = 1.0, precision = 1.0), our SUD population (recall = 0.9798, precision = 0.9898), …

Descriptor:Benchmarking Secure Neural Network Evaluation Methods For Protein Sequence Classification (Idash24), Arif Harmanci, Luyao Chen, Miran Kim, Xiaoqian Jiang

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

To uniformly test and benchmark the secure evaluation of transformer-based models, we designed the iDASH24 homomorphic encryption track dataset. The dataset comprises a protein family classification model with a transformer architecture and an example dataset that is used to build and test the secure evaluation strategies. This dataset was used in the challenge period of iDASH24 Genomic Privacy Competition, where the teams designed secure evaluation of the classification model using a homomorphic encryption scheme. Combined with the benchmarking results and companion methods, iDASH24 dataset is a unique resource that can be used to benchmark secure evaluation of neural network models.

Feasible Diet And Circadian Interventions Reduce In Vivo Progression Of Flt3-Itd-Positive Acute Myeloid Leukemia, Megan Rodriguez, Baharan Fekry, Brianna Murphy, Mary Figueroa, Tiewei Cheng, Margaret Raber, Lisa Wartenberg, Donna Bell, Lisa Triche, Karla Crawford, Huaxian Ma, Kendra Allton, Ruwaida Ahmed, Jaime Tran, Christine Ranieri, Marina Konopleva, Michelle Barton, Cesar Nunez, Kristin Eckel-Mahan, Joya Chandra

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

BACKGROUND: Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) with an internal tandem duplication in the fms-like tyrosine kinase receptor 3 gene (FLT3-ITD) is associated with poor survival, and few studies have examined the impact of modifiable behaviors, such as nutrient quality and timing, in this subset of acute leukemia.

METHODS: The influence of diet composition (low-sucrose and/or low-fat diets) and timing of diet were tested in tandem with anthracycline treatment in orthotopic xenograft mouse models. A pilot clinical study to test receptivity of pediatric leukemia patients to macronutrient matched foods was conducted. A role for the circadian protein, BMAL1 (brain and muscle ARNT-like …

Transdisciplinary Perspectives For Health Systems Science, Jiang Bian, Nan Liu, Shauna M Overgaard, Rema Padman, Peter A D Steel, Victoria Tiase, Clifford Alan Whitcomb, Jiajie Zhang, Yiye Zhang

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Health systems science uses systems thinking as part of a transdisciplinary approach that transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries. It integrates and synthesizes knowledge from multiple disciplines to address real-world problems in healthcare with pragmatic solutions. This editorial defines health systems from the perspectives of systems thinking, science, and engineering, discusses their current challenges and opportunities, and envisions how health systems science as a field can advance the continuous learning and improvement of health systems.

Prioritizing Clinically Significant Lung Cancer Somatic Mutations For Targeted Therapy Through Efficient Ngs Data Filtering System, Jinlian Wang, Hui Li, Hongfang Liu

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

In the realm of lung cancer treatment, where genetic heterogeneity presents formidable challenges, precision oncology demands an exacting approach to identify and hierarchically sort clinically significant somatic mutations. Current Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) data filtering pipelines, while utilizing various external databases for mutation screening, often fall short in comprehensive integration and flexibility needed to keep pace with the evolving landscape of clinical data. Our study introduces a sophisticated NGS data filtering system, which not only aggregates but effectively synergizes diverse data sources, encompassing genetic variants, gene functions, clinical evidence, and an extensive body of literature. This system is distinguished by a …

Sequencing Conversational Turns In Peer Interactions: An Integrated Approach For Evidence-Based Conversational Agent For Just-In-Time Nicotine Cravings Intervention, Tavleen Singh, Michael Truong, Kirk Roberts, Sahiti Myneni

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

BACKGROUND: Risky health behaviors place an enormous toll on public health systems. While relapse prevention support is integrated with most behavior modification programs, the results are suboptimal. Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) applications provide us with unique opportunities to develop just-in-time adaptive behavior change solutions.

METHODS: In this study, we present an innovative framework, grounded in behavioral theory, and enhanced with social media sequencing and communications scenario builder to architect a conversational agent (CA) specialized in the prevention of relapses in the context of tobacco cessation. We modeled peer interaction data (n = 1000) using the taxonomy of behavior …

Linking Cancer Clinical Trials To Their Result Publications, Evan Pan, Kirk Roberts

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

The results of clinical trials are a valuable source of evidence for researchers, policy makers, and healthcare professionals. However, online trial registries do not always contain links to the publications that report on their results, instead requiring a time-consuming manual search. Here, we explored the application of pre-trained transformer-based language models to automatically identify result-reporting publications of cancer clinical trials by computing dense vectors and performing semantic search. Models were fine-tuned on text data from trial registry fields and article metadata using a contrastive learning approach. The best performing model was PubMedBERT, which achieved a mean average precision of 0.592 …

Community Scientist Program Provides Bi-Directional Communication And Co-Learning Between Researchers And Community Members, Jessica Alvarado, Larkin L Strong, Birnur Buzcu-Guven, Leonetta B Thompson, Erica Cantu, Chelsea C Carrier, Chiamaka D Chukwu, Cassandra L Harris, Luz K Melendez, Crystal L Roberson, Angela M Ross, Sophia C Russell, Pablo Sanchez, Amirali Tahanan, Blair C Zdenek, Belinda M Reininger, Lorna H Mcneill

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Community involvement in research is key to translating science into practice, and new approaches to engaging community members in research design and implementation are needed. The Community Scientist Program, established at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston in 2018 and expanded to two other Texas institutions in 2021, provides researchers with rapid feedback from community members on study feasibility and design, cultural appropriateness, participant recruitment, and research implementation. This paper aims to describe the Community Scientist Program and assess Community Scientists' and researchers' satisfaction with the program. We present the analysis of the data collected from 116 Community Scientists …

New-Onset Diabetes Is A Predictive Risk Factor For Pancreatic Lesions In High-Risk Individuals: An Observational Cohort Study, Seyda Baydogan, Chirayu Mohindroo, Merve Hasanov, Maria F Montiel, Pompeyo Quesada, Irina M Cazacu, Adrianna A Luzuriaga Chavez, Maureen E Mork, Wenli Dong, Lei Feng, Y Nancy You, Banu Arun, Eduardo Vilar, Powel Brown, Matthew H G Katz, Suresh T Chari, Anirban Maitra, Eric P Tamm, Michael P Kim, Manoop S Bhutani, Florencia Mcallister

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Pancreatic cancer (PC) is the third cause of cancer-related deaths. Early detection and interception of premalignant pancreatic lesions represent a promising strategy to improve outcomes. We evaluated risk factors of focal pancreatic lesions (FPLs) in asymptomatic individuals at hereditary high risk for PC.

METHODS: This is an observational single-institution cohort study conducted over a period of 5 years. Surveillance was performed through imaging studies (EUS or magnetic resonance imaging/magnetic resonance cholangiopancreatography) and serum biomarkers. We collected demographic characteristics and used univariate and multivariate logistic regression models to evaluate associations between potential risk factors and odd ratios (ORs) …

Systemic Treatment Of Patients With Metastatic Breast Cancer: Asco Resource-Stratified Guideline Q And A, Sana Al Sukhun, Bogda Koczwara, Sarah Temin, Banu K Arun

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

The Systemic Treatment of Patients with Metastatic Breast Cancer: @ASCO Resource-Stratified Guideline Q and A presents takeways, rationale, and key recommendations based on #JCOGO full guideline for patients by menopausal and marker status.

Developing Medical Genetics In A Low-Income Country: Unveiling The Journey Of The Pakistani Society Of Medical Genetics And Genomics (Psmg), Aisha Furqan, Syed A Ahmed, Rizwan Naeem, Myla Ashfaq

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

No abstract provided.

Human Equilibrative Nucleoside Transporter 1: Novel Biomarker And Prognostic Indicator For Patients With Gemcitabine-Treated Pancreatic Cancer, Jianchun Xiao, Fangyu Zhao, Wenhao Luo, Gang Yang, Yicheng Wang, Jiangdong Qiu, Yueze Liu, Lei You, Lianfang Zheng, Taiping Zhang

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

AIM: This article aimed to find appropriate pancreatic cancer (PC) patients to treat with Gemcitabine with better survival outcomes by detecting hENT1 levels.

METHODS: We collected surgical pathological tissues from PC patients who received radical surgery in our hospital from September 2004 to December 2014. A total of 375 PC tissues and paired adjacent nontumor tissues were employed for the construction of 4 tissue microarrays (TMAs). The quality of the 4 TMAs was examined by HE staining. We performed immunohistochemistry analysis to evaluate hENT1 expression in the TMAs. Moreover, we detected hENT1 expression level and proved the role of hENT1 …

Visualsphere: A Web-Based Interactive Visualization System For Clinical Research Data, Shiwei Lin, Shiqiang Tao, Wei-Chun Chou, Guo-Qiang Zhang, Xiaojin Li

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Clinical research data visualization is integral to making sense of biomedical research and healthcare data. The complexity and diversity of data, along with the need for solid programming skills, can hinder advances in clinical research data visualization. To overcome these challenges, we introduce VisualSphere, a web-based interactive visualization system that directly interfaces with clinical research data repositories, streamlining and simplifying the visualization workflow. VisualSphere is founded on three primary component modules: Connection, Configuration, and Visualization. An end-user can set up connections to the data repositories, create charts by selecting the desired tables and variables, and render visualization dashboards generated by …

Mouse Models Of Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia And Richter Transformation: What We Have Learnt And What We Are Missing, Maria Teresa Sabrina Bertilaccio, Shih-Shih Chen

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Although the chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) treatment landscape has changed dramatically, unmet clinical needs are emerging, as CLL in many patients does not respond, becomes resistant to treatment, relapses during treatment, or transforms into Richter. In the majority of cases, transformation evolves the original leukemia clone into a diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL). Richter transformation (RT) represents a dreadful clinical challenge with limited therapeutic opportunities and scarce preclinical tools. CLL cells are well known to highly depend on survival signals provided by the tumor microenvironment (TME). These signals enhance the frequency of immunosuppressive cells with protumor function, including regulatory CD4

A Real-World Disproportionality Analysis Of Everolimus: Data Mining Of The Public Version Of Fda Adverse Event Reporting System, Bin Zhao, Yumei Fu, Shichao Cui, Xiangning Chen, Shu Liu, Lan Luo

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Background: Everolimus is an inhibitor of the mammalian target of rapamycin and is used to treat various tumors. The presented study aimed to evaluate the Everolimus-associated adverse events (AEs) through data mining of the US Food and Drug Administration Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS).

Methods: The AE records were selected by searching the FDA Adverse Event Reporting System database from the first quarter of 2009 to the first quarter of 2022. Potential adverse event signals were mined using the disproportionality analysis, including reporting odds ratio the proportional reporting ratio the Bayesian confidence propagation neural network and the empirical Bayes geometric …

Comprehensive Analysis Of Craniopharyngioma: Epidemiology, Clinical Characteristics, Management Strategies, And Role Of Radiotherapy, Amir Mushtaq, Mohsin Fayaz, Abdul Rashid Bhat, Abbas F Abdul Hussein, Gianluca Ferini, Giuseppe Emmanuele Umana, Gianluca Scalia, Feroze Ahmad Mir, Aizul Khursheed, Bipin Chaurasia

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

BACKGROUND/AIM: Craniopharyngiomas pose challenges in diagnosis and management due to their rare occurrence and diverse clinical manifestations. This study aimed to provide a comprehensive analysis of cranio-pharyngioma, including its epidemiological trends, clinical presentations, radiological characteristics, surgical interventions, and the role of radiotherapy.

PATIENTS AND METHODS: A retrospective observational study was conducted on 23 patients diagnosed with craniopharyngioma at our hospital from August 2017 to July 2019. Data regarding demographics, clinical presentation, radiological findings, surgical interventions, and adjuvant therapies were collected and analyzed.

RESULTS: Craniopharyngiomas exhibited a bimodal age distribution, with peaks in childhood and late adulthood. Clinical presentations varied between …

A Relay Velocity Model Infers Cell-Dependent Rna Velocity, Shengyu Li, Pengzhi Zhang, Weiqing Chen, Lingqun Ye, Kristopher W Brannan, Nhat-Tu Le, Jun-Ichi Abe, John P Cooke, Guangyu Wang

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

RNA velocity provides an approach for inferring cellular state transitions from single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) data. Conventional RNA velocity models infer universal kinetics from all cells in an scRNA-seq experiment, resulting in unpredictable performance in experiments with multi-stage and/or multi-lineage transition of cell states where the assumption of the same kinetic rates for all cells no longer holds. Here we present cellDancer, a scalable deep neural network that locally infers velocity for each cell from its neighbors and then relays a series of local velocities to provide single-cell resolution inference of velocity kinetics. In the simulation benchmark, cellDancer shows robust …

Linking Artificial Sweetener Intake With Kidney Function: Insights From Nhanes 2003-2006 And Findings From Mendelian Randomization Research, Zhuoling Ran, Yuxuan Zheng, Lin Yu, Yuxian Zhang, Zhenjiang Zhang, Huijie Li, Xuhan Li, Jing Song, Li Zhang, Ran Zhang, Chang Lu, Yang Gong, Jian Gong

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

BACKGROUND: The current investigation examines the association between artificial sweetener (AS) consumption and the likelihood of developing chronic kidney disease (CKD), along with its impact on kidney function.

METHODS: We utilized data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey from 2003-2006 to conduct covariance analysis and weighted adjusted logistic regression, aiming to assess the association between artificial sweetener intake and CKD risk, as well as kidney function indicators. Subsequently, we employed Mendelian randomization methods to validate the causal relationship between the intake of artificial sweeteners, CKD risk, and kidney function indicators. Instrumental variable analysis using inverse-variance weighting and Robust …

Intermittent Theta Burst Stimulation And Functional Connectivity In People Living With Hiv/Aids Who Smoke Tobacco Cigarettes: A Preliminary Pilot Study, Gopalkumar Rakesh, Thomas G Adams, Rajendra A Morey, Joseph L Alcorn, Rebika Khanal, Amanda E Su, Seth S Himelhoch, Craig R Rush

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

BACKGROUND: People living with HIV (PLWHA) smoke at three times the rate of the general population and respond poorly to cessation strategies. Previous studies examined repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) over left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (L. dlPFC) to reduce craving, but no studies have explored rTMS among PLWHA who smoke. The current pilot study compared the effects of active and sham intermittent theta-burst stimulation (iTBS) on resting state functional connectivity (rsFC), cigarette cue attentional bias, and cigarette craving in PLWHA who smoke.

METHODS: Eight PLWHA were recruited (single-blind, within-subject design) to receive one session of iTBS (n=8) over the L. …

Modernizing And Harmonizing Regulatory Data Requirements For Genetically Modified Crops-Perspectives From A Workshop, Nicholas P Storer, Abigail R Simmons, Jordan Sottosanto, Jennifer A Anderson, Ming Hua Huang, Debbie Mahadeo, Carey A Mathesius, Mitscheli Sanches Da Rocha, Shuang Song, Ewa Urbanczyk-Wochniak

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Genetically modified (GM) crops that have been engineered to express transgenes have been in commercial use since 1995 and are annually grown on 200 million hectares globally. These crops have provided documented benefits to food security, rural economies, and the environment, with no substantiated case of food, feed, or environmental harm attributable to cultivation or consumption. Despite this extensive history of advantages and safety, the level of regulatory scrutiny has continually increased, placing undue burdens on regulators, developers, and society, while reinforcing consumer distrust of the technology. CropLife International held a workshop at the 16th International Society of Biosafety Research …