Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Neighborhood Contexts And Oral Health Outcomes In A Pediatric Population: An Exploratory Study, Vladyslav A. Podskalniy, Sharat Chandra Pani, Jinhyung Lee, Liliani Aires Candido Vieira, Hiran Perinpanayagam

Dentistry Publications

Aims: This study aimed to explore the impacts of neighborhood-level socioeconomic contexts on the therapeutic and preventative dental quality outcome of children under 16 years. Materials and Methods: Anonymized billing data of 842 patients reporting to a university children’s dental over three years (March 2017–2020) met the inclusion criteria. Their access to care (OEVCH-A), topical fluoride application (TFL-CH-A) and dental treatment burden (TRT-CH-A) were determined by dental quality alliance (DQA) criteria. The three oral health variables were aggregated at the neighborhood level and analyzed with Canadian census data. Their partial postal code (FSA) was chosen as a neighborhood spatial unit …

Non-Thermal Atmospheric Pressure Plasma-Conditioned Root Dentin Promotes Attraction And Attachment Of Primary Human Dental Pulp Stem Cells In Real-Time Ex Vivo, Yeon Jee Yoo, Min Ji Kang, Hiran Perinpanayagam, Joo Cheol Park, Seung Ho Baek, Kee Yeon Kum

Dentistry Publications

This study investigated if non-thermal atmospheric pressure plasma (NTAPP) treatment of root dentin surfaces promotes human dental pulp stem cell (hDPSCs) adhesion. Freshly extracted human single-rooted teeth (n = 36) were decoronated and cut (first vertically, then horizontally) into root dentin slices (3 mm thick). Primary hDPSCs cultures were seeded onto slices randomly assigned to pretreatment groups (n = 9/group): NaOCl (1.5%), EDTA (17%) then NTAPP (Group I); NaOCl then NTAPP (Group II); NaOCl then EDTA (Group III); and NaOCl alone (Group IV). Cell viability and proliferation were measured using MTT assay with log-linear statistical analysis. Cell attachment and spreading …

Genetic Deletion Of Interleukin-15 Is Not Associated With Major Structural Changes Following Experimental Post-Traumatic Knee Osteoarthritis In Rats, Ermina Hadzic, Garth Blackler, Holly Dupuis, Stephen James Renaud, Christopher Thomas Appleton, Frank Beier

Bone and Joint Institute

Post-traumatic osteoarthritis (PTOA) is a degenerative joint disease, leading to articular cartilage breakdown, osteophyte formation, and synovitis, caused by an initial joint trauma. Pro-inflammatory cytokines increase catabolic activity and may perpetuate inflammation following joint trauma. Interleukin-15 (IL-15), a pro-inflammatory cytokine, is increased in OA patients, although its roles in PTOA pathophysiology are not well characterized. Here, we utilized Il15 deficient rats to examine the role of IL-15 in PTOA pathogenesis in an injury-induced model. OA was surgically induced in Il15 deficient Holtzman Sprague-Dawley rats and control wild-type rats to compare PTOA progression. Semi-quantitative scoring of the articular cartilage, subchondral bone, …

Development Of A Primary Care Pandemic Plan Informed By In-Depth Policy Analysis And Interviews With Family Physicians Across Canada During Covid-19: A Qualitative Case Study Protocol, Maria Mathews, Sarah Spencer, Lindsay Hedden, Emily Gard Marshall, Julia Lukewich, Leslie Meredith, Dana Ryan, Richard Buote, Tiffany Liu, Emily Volpe, Paul S. Gill, Bridget Ryan, Gordon Schacter, Jamie Wickett, Thomas R. Freeman, Shannon L. Sibbald, Eric Wong, Maddi Mckay, Rita Mccracken, Judith Belle Brown

Family Medicine Publications

Introduction Given the recurrent risk of respiratory illness-based pandemics, and the important roles family physicians play during public health emergencies, the development of pandemic plans for primary care is imperative. Existing pandemic plans in Canada, however, do not adequately incorporate family physicians' roles and perspectives. This policy and planning oversight has become increasingly evident with the emergence of the novel coronavirus disease, COVID-19, pandemic. This study is designed to inform the development of pandemic plans for primary care through evidence from four provinces in Canada: British Columbia, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, and Ontario. Methods and analysis We will employ …

Evaluating The Implementation Of A Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease Management Program Using The Consolidated Framework For Implementation Research: A Case Study., Stefan Paciocco, Anita Kothari, Christopher J Licskai, Madonna Ferrone, Shannon L Sibbald

Health Studies Publications

BACKGROUND: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a prevalent chronic disease that requires comprehensive approaches to manage; it accounts for a significant portion of Canada's annual healthcare spending. Interprofessional teams are effective at providing chronic disease management that meets the needs of patients. As part of an ongoing initiative, a COPD management program, the Best Care COPD program was implemented in a primary care setting. The objectives of this research were to determine site-specific factors facilitating or impeding the implementation of a COPD program in a new setting, while evaluating the implementation strategy used.

METHODS: A qualitative case study was …

Mental Health Services Provision In Primary Care And Emergency Department Settings: Analysis Of Blended Fee-For-Service And Blended Capitation Models In Ontario, Canada., Thyna Vu, Kelly K Anderson, Nibene H Somé, Amardeep Thind, Sisira Sarma

Epidemiology and Biostatistics Publications

Treating mental illnesses in primary care is increasingly emphasized to improve access to mental health services. Although family physicians (FPs) or general practitioners are in an ideal position to provide the bulk of mental health care, it is unclear how best to remunerate FPs for the adequate provision of mental health services. We examined the quantity of mental health services provided in Ontario's blended fee-for-service and blended capitation models. We evaluated the impact of FPs switching from blended fee-for-service to blended capitation on the provision of mental health services in primary care and emergency department using longitudinal health administrative data …

"We Need To Genuinely Listen To What People Tell Us They Need": Identifying How To Support Individuals Living With Mental Illness And/Or Substance Use Difficulties To Thrive Following Homelessness In London, Ontario, Carrie Marshall

Occupational Therapy Publications

While unhoused, persons who have experienced homelessness are frequently consumed with securing the necessary conditions to meet their basic needs including finding a place to stay for the night, finding food, and keeping safe. It is frequently assumed that when individuals secure a tenancy following homelessness, that their life naturally improves for the better in most or all areas of their lives. Unfortunately, recent research suggests that many individuals who secure housing after homelessness continue to live in a state of survival. While the importance of supporting individuals to secure and sustain housing cannot be understated, other aspects of a …

Rapid Microscopic Fractional Anisotropy Imaging Via An Optimized Linear Regression Formulation., N J J Arezza, D H Y Tse, C A Baron

Medical Biophysics Publications

Water diffusion anisotropy in the human brain is affected by disease, trauma, and development. Microscopic fractional anisotropy (μFA) is a diffusion MRI (dMRI) metric that can quantify water diffusion anisotropy independent of neuron fiber orientation dispersion. However, there are several different techniques to estimate μFA and few have demonstrated full brain imaging capabilities within clinically viable scan times and resolutions. Here, we present an optimized spherical tensor encoding (STE) technique to acquire μFA directly from the 2nd order cumulant expansion of the powder averaged dMRI signal obtained from direct linear regression (i.e. diffusion kurtosis) which requires fewer powder-averaged signals than …

A Novel Three-Choice Touchscreen Task To Examine Spatial Attention And Orienting Responses In Rodents, Faraj L. Haddad, Maryam Ghahremani, Cleusa De Oliveira, Ella E. Doornaert, Kevin D. Johnston, Stefan Everling, Susanne Schmid

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

Mammalian orienting behavior consists of coordinated movements of the eyes, head, pinnae, vibrissae, or body to attend to an external stimulus. The present study aimed to develop a novel operant task using a touch-screen system to measure spatial attention. In this task, rats were trained to nose-poke a light stimulus presented in one of three locations. The stimulus was presented more frequently in the center location to develop spatial attention bias toward the center stimulus. Changes in orienting responses were detected by measuring the animals’ response accuracy and latency to stimuli at the lateral locations, following reversible unilateral chemogenetic inactivation …

From Da Vinci To Definitive Diagnosis: How Training In Sports Ultrasound Harnesses Sound, Science And Skill., Jon Patricios, Michael Rossiter, Corey Cunningham, Jane Fitzpatrick, Anja Hirschmueller, Thamsanqa Mweli, Beverly Roos, Jane S Thornton

Family Medicine Publications

No abstract provided.

Comparing Household And Individual Measures Of Access Through A Food Environment Lens: What Household Food Opportunities Are Missed When Measuring Access To Food Retail At The Individual Level?, Lindsey G. Smith, Michael J. Widener, Bochu Liu, Steven Farber, Leia M. Minaker, Zachary Patterson, Kristian Larsen, Jason Gilliland

Geography & Environment Publications

Geographers and public health researchers have long been interested in social, spatial, and economic factors that drive access and exposure to food retail. A growing body of evidence draws on mobility data to capture locations accessed by individuals beyond the home address. Given that food-related activities are shared by household members and often gendered, taking an individual-level approach might limit researchers’ ability to accurately describe access to food retail. Using data that includes Global Positioning System trajectories of forty-six adults from twenty-one households in Toronto, this study compares access to food retailers at the individual and household levels and evaluates …

Development And Feasibility Of A Modified Fugl-Meyer Lower Extremity Assessment For Telerehabilitation: A Pilot Study., Sue Peters, Marcela Botero, Allison Evers, Brianna Fong, Botond Jakab, Emily Petter, Janice J Eng

Physical Therapy Publications

BACKGROUND: The majority of stroke survivors experience motor impairment which benefits from rehabilitation treatment. Telerehabilitation, remote delivery of rehabilitation services, is a possible solution providing access to rehabilitation for stroke survivors living in rural areas or in situations like the COVID-19 pandemic where face-to-face treatment may be risky. However, valid and reliable motor impairment measures have not yet been established over a telerehabilitation platform. The Fugl-Meyer (FM) lower extremity assessment is widely used clinically and in research. Thus, the aim was to develop a modified FM for telerehabilitation (FM-tele) and assess the feasibility and preliminary agreement of FM-tele scores with …

Shame On The Brain: Neural Correlates Of Moral Injury Event Recall In Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Chantelle S. Lloyd, Andrew A. Nicholson, Maria Densmore, Jean Théberge, Richard W. J. Neufeld, Rakesh Jetly, Margaret C. Mckinnon, Ruth A. Lanius

Department of Medicine Publications

Background: Moral injury (MI) is consistently associated with adverse mental healthoutcomes, including the development of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) andsuicidality. Methods: We investigated neural activation patterns associated with MI eventrecall using functional magnetic resonance imaging in participants with military andpublic safety‐related PTSD, relative to civilian MI‐exposed controls. Results: MI recall in the PTSD as compared to control group was associatedwith increased neural activation among salience network nodes involved inviscerosensory processing and hyperarousal (right posterior insula, dorsalanterior cingulate cortex; dACC), regions involved in defensive responding(left postcentral gyrus), and areas responsible for top‐down cognitive controlof emotions (left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex; dlPFC). Within …

Adopting A Conceptual Validity Framework For Testing In Speech-Language Pathology, Olivia Daub, Barbara Jane Cunningham, Marlene P. Bagatto, Andrew M. Johnson, Elaine Y. Kwok, Rachael E. Smyth, Janis Oram Cardy

Communication Sciences and Disorders Publications

Purpose Limited evidence-based guidelines for test selection continue to result in inconsistency in test use and interpretation in speech-language pathology. A major barrier is the lack of explicit and consistent adoption of a validity framework by our field. In this viewpoint, we argue that adopting the conceptual validity framework in the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing (American Educational Research Association et al., 2014) would support both the development of more meaningful and feasible clinical tests and more appropriate use and interpretation of tests in speech-language pathology. Method We describe and evaluate the (American Educational Research Association et al., 2014) …

Water-Fat Magnetic Resonance Imaging Of Adipose Tissue Compartments In The Normal Third Trimester Fetus, Stephanie A Giza, Tianna L Koreman, Simran Sethi, Michael R Miller, Debbie A Penava, Genevieve D Eastabrook, Charles A Mckenzie, Barbra De Vrijer

Obstetrics & Gynaecology Publications

BACKGROUND: Assessment of fetal adipose tissue gives information about the future metabolic health of an individual, with evidence that the development of this tissue has regional heterogeneity.

OBJECTIVE: To assess differences in the proton density fat fraction (PDFF) between fetal adipose tissue compartments in the third trimester using water-fat magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

MATERIALS AND METHODS: Water-fat MRI was performed in a 1.5-T scanner. Fetal adipose tissue was segmented into cheeks, thorax, abdomen, upper arms, forearms, thighs and lower legs. PDFF and R2* values were measured in each compartment.

RESULTS: Twenty-eight women with singleton pregnancies were imaged between 28 and …

The Time For Translation Of Mobile Brain And Body Imaging To People With Stroke Is Now, Brian Greeley, Grant Hanada, Lara A Boyd, Sue Peters

Physical Therapy Publications

No abstract provided.

Examining The Correlates Of Adolescent Food And Nutrition Knowledge, Rachel Brown, Jamie A. Seabrook, Saverio Stranges, Andrew F. Clark, Jess Haines, Colleen O’Connor, Sean Doherty, Jason A. Gilliland

Paediatrics Publications

Food literacy is a set of skills and knowledge that are integral to diet. It is common among teenagers to not have basic food literacy skills needed to consume a healthy diet. This study examined: (1) the current state of food and nutrition knowledge among adolescents 13–19 years of age in the census metropolitan area of London, ON, Canada; and (2) correlates of food knowledge and nutrition knowledge among adolescents. Data for this study were drawn from baseline youth and parent survey data collected from a larger population health intervention study. Statistical analysis of the survey data indicates that higher …

Translating Developmental Origins Of Health And Disease In Practice: Health Care Providers' Perspectives., Monica L Molinaro, Marilyn Evans, Timothy Regnault, Barbra De Vrijer

Paediatrics Publications

Currently, there is limited knowledge on how health care providers perceive and understand the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD), which may impact how they inform patients and their families throughout the perinatal period. This qualitative descriptive study explored if and how health care providers counsel on in utero programming and future health outcomes with parents, both preconception and during pregnancy. One-on-one, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 23 health care providers from varying health disciplines including obstetrics and gynaecology, midwifery, paediatrics, endocrinology and internal medicine. Audiotaped interviews were transcribed verbatim and analysed using inductive thematic analysis. Three themes were …

Producing Precarity: The Individualization Of Later Life Unemployment Within Employment Support Provision, Debbie Rudman, Rebecca Aldrich

Occupational Therapy Publications

There have been marked policy shifts within many nations towards ‘extended work lives’, with such shifts often underpinned by an assumption that individual aging citizens can make the responsible choice to prolong work and thereby avoid dependency on the state. However, possibilities for extended work lives are inequitably distributed, and older workers who become unemployed often face prolonged unemployment and barriers to obtaining sustainable employment. Drawing on findings from an ethnographic study addressing the negotiation of long-term unemployment in two North American cities, this article attends to how jobseekers aged 50 and older, employment support service providers, and organizational stakeholders …

Critically Ill Covid-19 Patients Exhibit Anti-Sars-Cov-2 Serological Responses, Mark Daley, Douglas D. Fraser, Gediminas Cepinskas, Marat Slessarev, Claudio M. Martin, Maitray A. Patel, Michael Miller, Eric K. Patterson, David B. O’Gorman, Sean E. Gill, Ian Higgins, Julius P. John, Christopher Melo, Lylia Nini, Xiaoqin Wang, Johannes Zeidler, Jorge A. Cruz-Aguado

Physiology and Pharmacology Publications

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by SARS-CoV-2, is a global health care emergency. Anti-SARS-CoV-2 serological profiling of critically ill COVID-19 patients was performed to determine their humoral response. Blood was collected from critically ill ICU patients, either COVID-19 positive (+) or COVID-19 negative (−), to measure anti-SARS-CoV-2 immunoglobulins: IgM; IgA; IgG; and Total Ig (combined IgM/IgA/IgG). Cohorts were similar, with the exception that COVID-19+ patients had a greater body mass indexes, developed bilateral pneumonias more frequently and suffered increased hypoxia when compared to COVID-19-patients (p < 0.05). The mortality rate for COVID-19+ patients was 50%. COVID-19 status could be determined by anti-SARS-CoV-2 serological responses with excellent classification accuracies on ICU day 1 (89%); ICU day 3 (96%); and ICU days 7 and 10 (100%). The importance of each Ig isotype for determining COVID-19 status on combined ICU days 1 and 3 was: Total Ig, 43%; IgM, 27%; IgA, 24% and IgG, 6%. Peak serological responses for each Ig isotype occurred on different ICU days (IgM day 13 > IgA day 17 > IgG persistently increased), with the Total Ig peaking at approximately ICU day …

Structural Alterations In Cortical And Thalamocortical White Matter Tracts After Recovery From Prefrontal Cortex Lesions In Macaques, Ramina Adam, David J. Schaeffer, Kevin Johnston, Ravi S. Menon, Stefan Everling

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

Unilateral damage to the frontoparietal network typically impairs saccade target selection within the contralesional visual hemifield. Severity of deficits and the degree of recovery have been associated with widespread network dysfunction, yet it is not clear how these behavioural and functional brain changes relate with the underlying structural white matter tracts. Here, we investigated whether recovery after unilateral prefrontal cortex (PFC) lesions was associated with changes in white matter microstructure across large-scale frontoparietal cortical and thalamocortical networks. Diffusion-weighted imaging was acquired in four male rhesus macaques at pre-lesion, week 1, and week 8-16 post-lesion when target selection deficits largely recovered. …

Integrating Numerical Cognition Research And Mathematics Education To Strengthen The Teaching And Learning Of Early Number, Zachary Hawes, Rebecca Merkley, Christine L. Stager, Daniel Ansari

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

BACKGROUND: Research into numerical cognition has contributed to a large body of knowledge on how children learn and perform mathematics. This knowledge has the potential to inform mathematics education. Unfortunately, numerical cognition research and mathematics education remain disconnected from one another, lacking the proper infrastructure to allow for productive and meaningful exchange between disciplines. The present study was designed to address this gap. AIM: This study reports on the design, implementation, and effects of a 16-week (25-hour) mathematics Professional Development (PD) model for Kindergarten to Grade 3 educators and their students. A central goal of the PD was to better …

Systematic Review On The Instruments Used For Measuring The Association Of The Level Of Multimorbidity And Clinically Important Outcomes, Eng Sing Lee, Hui Li Koh, Elaine Qiao Ying Ho, Sok Huang Teo, Fang Yan Wong, Bridget L. Ryan, Martin Fortin, Moira Stewart

Family Medicine Publications

Objectives There are multiple instruments for measuring multimorbidity. The main objective of this systematic review was to provide a list of instruments that are suitable for use in studies aiming to measure the association of a specific outcome with different levels of multimorbidity as the main independent variable in community-dwelling individuals. The secondary objective was to provide details of the requirements, strengths and limitations of these instruments, and the chosen outcomes. Methods We conducted the review according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines (PROSPERO registration number: CRD42018105297). We searched MEDLINE, Embase and CINAHL electronic databases …

Biopharmaceutical Characteristics Of Nifurtimox Tablets For Age- And Body Weight-Adjusted Dosing In Patients With Chagas Disease., Heino Stass, Ethel Feleder, Facundo Garcia-Bournissen, Johannes Nagelschmitz, Boris Weimann, Gustavo Yerino, Jaime Altcheh

Paediatrics Publications

Treatment of Chagas disease with nifurtimox requires age- and body weight-adjusted dosing, resulting in complex dosing instructions. Appropriate formulations are needed for precise and compliant dosing, especially in pediatric patients. We characterized the biopharmaceutical features of a standard nifurtimox 120-mg tablet and a 30-mg tablet developed to improve dose accuracy. Two open-label, randomized crossover studies were conducted in adult outpatients with Chagas disease. One study investigated whether 4 × 30-mg tablets and 1 × 120-mg tablet were bioequivalent and whether tablets can be administered as an aqueous slurry without affecting bioavailability. The second study investigated the effect of a high-calorie/high-fat …

Exploring Canadian Children's Social Media Use, Digital Literacy, And Quality Of Life: Pilot Cross-Sectional Survey Study, Lorie Donelle, Danica Facca, Shauna Burke, Bradley Hiebert, Emma Bender, Stephen Ling

Nursing Publications

Background: Understanding social media use and digital literacy among young Canadian children is an increasing area of concern, given the importance of digital inclusion for full and informed participation in evolving educational, civic, corporate, social, and economic spaces. Objective: The aim of this study was to explore internet and social media knowledge as well as social media use among Canadian children aged between 6 and 10 years. Methods: We conducted interview surveys with 42 children aged between 6 and 10 years who participated in an after-school health promotion program in an urban community in Southwestern Ontario to understand their digital …

Muting, Not Fragmentation, Of Functional Brain Networks Under General Anesthesia, Corson N. Areshenkoff, Joseph Y. Nashed, R. Matthew Hutchison, Melina Hutchison, Ron Levy, Douglas J. Cook, Ravi S. Menon, Stefan Everling, Jason P. Gallivan

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

© 2021 Changes in resting-state functional connectivity (rs-FC) under general anesthesia have been widely studied with the goal of identifying neural signatures of consciousness. This work has commonly revealed an apparent fragmentation of whole-brain network structure during unconsciousness, which has been interpreted as reflecting a break-down in connectivity and a disruption of the brain's ability to integrate information. Here we show, by studying rs-FC under varying depths of isoflurane-induced anesthesia in nonhuman primates, that this apparent fragmentation, rather than reflecting an actual change in network structure, can be simply explained as the result of a global reduction in FC. Specifically, …

Shared Neural Circuits For Visuospatial Working Memory And Arithmetic In Children And Adults, Anna A. Matejko, Daniel Ansari

Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications

Visuospatial working memory (VSWM) plays an important role in arithmetic problem solving, and the relationship between these two skills is thought to change over development. Even though neuroimaging studies have demonstrated that VSWM and arithmetic both recruit frontoparietal networks, inferences about common neural substrates have largely been made by comparisons across studies. Little work has examined how brain activation for VSWM and arithmetic converge within the same participants and whether there are age-related changes in the overlap of these neural networks. In this study, we examined how brain activity for VSWM and arithmetic overlap in 38 children and 26 adults. …

Acute Conceptual Disorganization In Untreated First-Episode Psychosis: A Combined Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy And Diffusion Imaging Study Of The Cingulum, Yunzhi Pan, Kara Dempster, Peter Jeon, Jean Théberge, Ali R. Khan, Lena Palaniyappan

Department of Medicine Publications

Background: Disorganized thinking is a core feature of acute psychotic episodes that is linked to social and vocational functioning. Several lines of evidence implicate disrupted cognitive control, excitatory overdrive and oxidative stress relating to the anterior cingulate cortex as mechanisms of conceptual disorganization (CD). We examined 3 candidate mechanistic markers related to CD in firstepisode psychosis: glutamate excess, cortical antioxidant (glutathione) status and the integrity of the cingulum bundle that connects regions implicated in cognitive control. Methods: We used fractional anisotropy maps from 7 T diffusion-weighted imaging to investigate the bilateral cingulum based on a probabilistic white matter atlas. We …

How Do Canadian Public Health Agencies Respond To The Covid-19 Emergency Using Social Media: A Protocol For A Case Study Using Content And Sentiment Analysis, Anita Kothari, Lyndsay Foisey, Lorie Donelle, Michael Bauer

Nursing Publications

Introduction Keeping Canadians safe requires a robust public health (PH) system. This is especially true when there is a PH emergency, like the COVID-19 pandemic. Social media, like Twitter and Facebook, is an important information channel because most people use the internet for their health information. The PH sector can use social media during emergency events for (1) PH messaging, (2) monitoring misinformation, and (3) responding to questions and concerns raised by the public. In this study, we ask: what is the Canadian PH risk communication response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the context of social media? Methods and analysis …

Biochemistry 4455g: Final Reflection, Jacklyn Krizsan

Community Engaged Learning Final Projects

No abstract provided.