Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Psychological Distress In Low-Income And Economically Marginalized Populations In India: Protective And Risk Factors, Dipti Singh, Shagufta Nasir, Juhi Sharma, Lydia Giménez-Llort, Mohammad Ghazi Shahnawaz

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Studies at the juncture of development economics and public health take on considerable responsibility in addressing inequality and related mental health distress. Mental healthcare in economically marginalized populations requires depicting the linkages between socioeconomic status and psychological distress. In the present work, a sequential mixed-methods design was used to study 190 people in such communities in India. Gender-dependent psychological distress was found according to the Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (K-10) with moderate distress in women (M = 26.30, SD = 9.15) and mild distress in men (M = 21.04, SD = 8.35). Regression analysis indicated that gender significantly predicted psychological …

Personalized Trial Ethics And Institutional Review Board Submissions

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

The ethical and regulatory oversight of any clinical activity related to human subjects is commonly determined based on its categorization as either clinical practice or research. Prominent bioethicists have criticized the traditional distinctions used to delineate these categories, calling them counterproductive and outmoded, and arguing that learning and clinical practice should be deliberately and appropriately integrated. Personalized trials represent a clinical activity with characteristics that overlap both categories, making ethical and regulatory oversight requirements less straightforward. When the primary intent of the personalized trial is to assist in the conduct of individualized patient care with an emphasis on protecting the …

Tetravalent Sars-Cov-2 S1 Subunit Protein Vaccination Elicits Robust Humoral And Cellular Immune Responses In Siv-Infected Rhesus Macaque Controllers, Gabriella E Hamlett, Ella T Rossa, Hannah Dineen, Rosalind Picard, Lee S Cohen

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

BACKGROUND: Depression during pregnancy is increasingly recognized as a worldwide public health problem. If untreated, there can be detrimental outcomes for the mother and child. Anxiety is also often comorbid with depression. Although effective treatments exist, most women do not receive treatment. Technology is a mechanism to increase access to and engagement in mental health services.

OBJECTIVE: The Guardians is a mobile app, grounded in behavioral activation principles, which seeks to leverage mobile game mechanics and in-game rewards to encourage user engagement. This study seeks to assess app satisfaction and engagement and to explore changes in clinical symptoms of depression …

Bacterial Contamination Of Platelet Products

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Transfusion of bacterially contaminated platelets, although rare, is still a major cause of mortality and morbidity despite the introduction of many methods to limit this over the past 20 years. The methods used include improved donor skin disinfection, diversion of the first part of donations, use of apheresis platelet units rather than whole-blood derived pools, primary and secondary testing by culture or rapid test, and use of pathogen reduction. Primary culture has been in use the US since 2004, using culture 24 h after collection of volumes of 4-8 mL from apheresis collections and whole-blood derived pools inoculated into aerobic …

Boosting The Electron Beam Transmittance Of Field Emission Cathode Using A Self-Charging Gate, Yurong Wang, Fangjing Hu, Liangcheng Tu, Daren Yu, Peiyi Song

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

The gate-type carbon nanotubes cathodes exhibit advantages in long-term stable emission owing to the uniformity of electrical field on the carbon nanotubes, but the gate inevitably reduces the transmittance of electron beam, posing challenges for system stabilities. In this work, we introduce electron beam focusing technique using the self-charging SiN_x/Au/Si gate. The potential of SiN_x is measured to be approximately −60 V quickly after the cathode turning on, the negative potential can be maintained as the emission goes on. The charged surface generates rebounding electrostatic forces on the following electrons, significantly focusing the electron beam on the …

Identification Of Differentially Recognized T Cell Epitopes In The Spectrum Of Tuberculosis Infection, Sudhasini Panda, Jeffrey Morgan, Catherine Cheng, Mayuko Saito, Robert H. Gilman, Nelly Ciobanu, Valeriu Crudu, Donald G. Cantazaro, Antonino Cantazaro, Timothy Rodwell, Judy S.B. Perera, Teshan Chathuranga, Bandu Gunasena, Aruna D. Desilva, Bjoern Peters, Alessandro Sette, Cecilia S. Linderstam Arlehamn

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications and Presentations

There is still incomplete knowledge of which Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) antigens can trigger distinct T cell responses at different stages of infection. Here, a proteome-wide screen of 20,610 Mtb-derived peptides in 21 patients mid-treatment for active tuberculosis (ATB) reveals IFNγ-specific T cell responses against 137 unique epitopes. Of these, 16% are recognized by two or more participants and predominantly derived from cell wall and cell processes antigens. There is differential recognition of antigens, including TB vaccine candidate antigens, between ATB participants and interferon-gamma release assay (IGRA + /−) individuals. We developed an ATB-specific peptide pool (ATB116) consisting of epitopes exclusively …

Ubr5 Promotes Antiviral Immunity By Disengaging The Transcriptional Brake On Rig-I Like Receptors, Jason G Cahoon, Jian Xing, Baihai Jiao, Mark Wang, Chao Cheng, Robert E Hill, Huadong Wang, Anthony T Vella, Gong Cheng, Yanlin Wang, Penghua Wang

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

The Retinoic acid-Inducible Gene I (RIG-I) like receptors (RLRs) are the major viral RNA sensors essential for the initiation of antiviral immune responses. RLRs are subjected to stringent transcriptional and posttranslational regulations, of which ubiquitination is one of the most important. However, the role of ubiquitination in RLR transcription is unknown. Here, we screen 375 definite ubiquitin ligase knockout cell lines and identify Ubiquitin Protein Ligase E3 Component N-Recognin 5 (UBR5) as a positive regulator of RLR transcription. UBR5 deficiency reduces antiviral immune responses to RNA viruses, while increases viral replication in primary cells and mice. Ubr5 knockout mice are …

Tempo And Mode Of Gene Expression Evolution In The Brain Across Primates, Katherine Rickelton, Trisha M Zintel, Jason Pizzollo, Emily Miller, John J Ely, Mary Ann Raghanti, William D Hopkins, Patrick R Hof, Chet C Sherwood, Amy L Bauernfeind, Courtney C Babbitt

2020-Current year OA Pubs

Primate evolution has led to a remarkable diversity of behavioral specializations and pronounced brain size variation among species (Barton, 2012; DeCasien and Higham, 2019; Powell et al., 2017). Gene expression provides a promising opportunity for studying the molecular basis of brain evolution, but it has been explored in very few primate species to date (e.g. Khaitovich et al., 2005; Khrameeva et al., 2020; Ma et al., 2022; Somel et al., 2009). To understand the landscape of gene expression evolution across the primate lineage, we generated and analyzed RNA-seq data from four brain regions in an unprecedented eighteen species. Here, we …

Association Of Genetic Variation In Col11a1 With Adolescent Idiopathic Scoliosis, Hao Yu, Lilian Antunes, Christina A Gurnett, Et Al.

2020-Current year OA Pubs

Adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS) is a common and progressive spinal deformity in children that exhibits striking sexual dimorphism, with girls at more than fivefold greater risk of severe disease compared to boys. Despite its medical impact, the molecular mechanisms that drive AIS are largely unknown. We previously defined a female-specific AIS genetic risk locus in an enhancer near the

Simultaneous Detection Of Helicobacter Pylori Infection Comparing Between White Light And Image-Enhanced Endoscopy, Soonthorn Chonprasertsuk, Sith Siramolpiwat, Patommatat Bhanthumkomol, Pongjarat Nunanan, Navapan Issariyakulkarn, Varocha Mahachai, Yoshio Yamaoka, Ratha-Korn Vilaichone

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

BACKGROUND: Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) is associated with gastric cancer. Early and accurate diagnosis of H. pylori infection can reduce risk of gastric cancer. Conventional white light imaging (WLI) and image-enhanced endoscopic (IEE) techniques such as narrow-band imaging (NBI), linked color imaging (LCI) and blue laser imaging (BLI) plays pivotal role in H. pylori diagnosis. This study aimed to determine diagnostic performance of real-time endoscopy between WLI and other IEE techniques for diagnosis of H. pylori infection.

METHODS: This prospective study compared endoscopic images by gastroscopy using WLI and IEE techniques (LCI, Magnifying-BLI, and Magnifying-NBI) at Thammasat University Hospital, Thailand …

Kinematic Characteristics Of Novices’ Sprint Techniques At Maximum Velocity Phase, Saburo Nishimura, Yoshinori Kinomura

Topics in Exercise Science and Kinesiology

Topics in Exercise Science and Kinesiology Volume 5: Issue 1, Article 2, 2024. Sprint performance is a crucial aspect of achieving high performance across a range of sports. However, previous studies analyzing the sprint technique of novices have yielded disparate findings regarding effective sprint techniques. For instance, Saito and Ito (1995) found no significant difference in the maximum thigh angle of the free leg between boys aged 7 to 12 and sprinters. Conversely, Katoh et al. (2001) reported that elementary school sprinters indicated a larger maximum thigh angle of the free leg than novice elementary children. Inconsistency like this makes …

Medical School Watercooler Newsletter - January 25, 2024, Lindsey Lyle

Watercooler Newsletter

This is the January 25, 2024 edition of the Frederick P. Whiddon College of Medicine's newsletter - Watercooler.

Contents Include:

• Whiddon COM alumna returns to USA Health as hospitalist
• Meet a Med Student: Ryan McIlwain
• OB/GYN Student Interest Group hosts period product drive through Feb. 9
• Grelet presents research at mitochondria conference in Berlin

Desmoid Tumors: Current Perspective And Treatment, Ankit Mangla, Gary Schwartz

Faculty Scholarship

Desmoid tumors are rare tumors with a tendency to infiltrate locally. The lack of a standard treatment approach makes choosing the most appropriate treatment for patients challenging. Most experts recommend watchful observation for asymptomatic patients as spontaneous regression of tumor is observed in up to 20% of patients. Upfront resection of the desmoid tumor has fallen out of favor due to high morbidity and high relapse rates associated with the tumor. Systemic therapy has evolved over several decades. Where chemotherapy, hormonal therapy, and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs were used over the last several decades, tyrosine kinase inhibitors came to the forefront …

Behavioral Effects Of Novel Treatments For Pain Using Different Pathways, Danya M I Aldaghma

Theses and Dissertations

Pain is defined as an unpleasant sensation that is mostly caused by a stimulus from our surroundings. This sensation has the potential to become a significant concern, disrupting daily activities, and diminishing overall quality of life. However, it could also hold significant importance as it serves as a protective mechanism. Pain acts as an alarm system for the human body, alerting it to potentially harmful situations where tissues may be at risk of damage1. Despite the considerable advancements in pain treatment and the extensive knowledge scientists possess regarding the pathophysiology and pathways of pain, numerous medications aimed at alleviating pain …

The Durability Of Antibody Responses Of Two Doses Of High-Dose Relative To Two Doses Of Standard-Dose Inactivated Influenza Vaccine In Pediatric Hematopoietic Cell Transplant Recipients: A Multi-Center Randomized Controlled Trial., Jennifer E. Schuster, Lubna Hamdan, Daniel E. Dulek, Carrie L. Kitko, Einas Batarseh, Zaid Haddadin, Laura S. Stewart, Anna Stahl, Molly Potter, Herdi Rahman, Spyros A. Kalams, Claire E. Bocchini, Elizabeth A. Moulton, Susan E. Coffin, Monica I. Ardura, Rachel L. Wattier, Gabriela Maron, Michael Grimley, Grant Paulsen, Christopher J. Harrison, Jason L. Freedman, Paul A. Carpenter, Janet A. Englund, Flor M. Munoz, Lara Danziger-Isakov, Andrew J. Spieker, Natasha B. Halasa, Pediatric Hct Flu Study

Manuscripts, Articles, Book Chapters and Other Papers

BACKGROUND: Our previous study established a 2-dose regimen of high-dose trivalent influenza vaccine (HD-TIV) to be immunogenically superior compared to a 2-dose regimen of standard-dose quadrivalent influenza vaccine (SD-QIV) in pediatric allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplant (HCT) recipients. However, the durability of immunogenicity and the role of time post-HCT at immunization as an effect modifier are unknown.

METHODS: This phase II, multi-center, double-blinded, randomized controlled trial compared HD-TIV to SD-QIV in children 3-17 years old who were 3-35 months post-allogeneic HCT, with each formulation administered twice, 28-42 days apart. Hemagglutination inhibition (HAI) titers were measured at baseline, 28-42 days following each …

Circulating Metabolic Profile In Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis: Data From The Ipf-Pro Registry, Ross Summer, Jamie Todd, Megan Neely, L. Jason Lobo, Andrew Namen, L. Kristin Newby, Shirin Shafazand, Sally Suliman, Christian Hesslinger, Sascha Keller, Thomas Leonard, Scott M Palmer, Olga Ilkayeva, Michael Muehlbauer, Christopher Newgard, Jesse Roman

Division of Pulmonary, Allergy, and Critical Care Medicine Faculty Papers

BACKGROUND: The circulating metabolome, reflecting underlying cellular processes and disease biology, has not been fully characterized in patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF). We evaluated whether circulating levels of metabolites correlate with the presence of IPF, with the severity of IPF, or with the risk of clinically relevant outcomes among patients with IPF.

METHODS: We analyzed enrollment plasma samples from 300 patients with IPF in the IPF-PRO Registry and 100 individuals without known lung disease using a set of targeted metabolomics and clinical analyte modules. Linear regression was used to compare metabolite and clinical analyte levels between patients with IPF …

Dementia Prediction In Older Adults Using Sex-Specific Health Trajectory Clustering, Ronald C Petersen, Jennifer St Sauver, Sunghwan Sohn

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

With increasing number of people living with dementia, the problem of late diagnosis significantly impacts a person's quality of life while early signs of dementia may provide useful insights to facilitate better treatment plans. With time, this progressive neurodegenerative syndrome could progress from mild cognitive impairment to dementia. A pattern of health conditions can be characterized in unsupervised manner to help predict this progress. As a significant extension to our previous work with streaming clustering model, we consider additional information for predicting dementia onset. With empirical observations, we discover the importance of examining sex and age to predict dementia onset. …

Prevention And Potential Treatment Strategies For Respiratory Syncytial Virus, Meng-Lan He, Rui-Ting Bai, Hao Che, Jing Lin, Tian Xie, Zi Hui, Xiang-Yang Ye, Li-Wei Wang

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is a significant viral pathogen that causes respiratory infections in infants, the elderly, and immunocompromised individuals. RSV-related illnesses impose a substantial economic burden worldwide annually. The molecular structure, function, and in vivo interaction mechanisms of RSV have received more comprehensive attention in recent times, and significant progress has been made in developing inhibitors targeting various stages of the RSV replication cycle. These include fusion inhibitors, RSV polymerase inhibitors, and nucleoprotein inhibitors, as well as FDA-approved RSV prophylactic drugs palivizumab and nirsevimab. The research community is hopeful that these developments might provide easier access to knowledge and …

Learning From Non-Routine Events And Teamwork In Intensive Care Units: Challenges And Opportunities

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Patients admitted to intensive care units (ICUs) have profound and complex illnesses, often fraught with uncertainties in diagnoses, treatments, and care decisions. Clinicians often deviate from best practices to handle ICUs' myriad complexities and uncertainties. Non-routine events (NREs), defined as any aspect of care perceived by clinicians as deviations from optimal care, are latent and frequent safety threats that, if left unchecked, can be precursors to adverse events. Proper identification and analysis of NREs that represent latent safety threats have been proposed as a feasible and more effective approach for performance improvement than traditional root cause analysis for patient safety …

Literature Analysis On Ontologies Applied In Clinical Decision Support Systems, David Robinson, Timothy D Law, Christian G Nohr, Arild Faxvaag, Lior Rennert, Nina C Hubig, Ronald W Gimbel

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

No abstract provided.

Building A More Diverse Public Health Informatics Workforce: Preliminary Results

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

The US public health infrastructure has been historically underfunded, a condition that was exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. This was especially noted in the area of public health informatics. It was also acknowledged that the lack of a diverse public health workforce made it more difficult to address biases and disparities effectively. In 2021 the Office of the National Coordinator awarded $73 million to 10 awardees to develop public health informatics and technology (PHIT) workforce training. The Gaining Equity in Training for Public Health Informatics and Technology (GET PHIT) award utilizes various methods to train and engage minority and underserved …

An Icd For The Digital World: What Does The Icd-11 Research Show?

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

The 11th revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) is now available for use. A literature search was conducted to review and summarize the research conducted to date. In addition to the ease of integration into electronic health records using standard digital tools such as uniform resource identifiers and application programming interfaces, ICD-11 and the World Health Organization provided linearization for mortality and morbidity, ICD-11-MMS, promise improved backward compatibility to ICD-10; increased availability in multiple languages; greater detail for clinical use, including traditional Chinese medicine; and enhanced maintenance for continued relevance. The studies reviewed here support the superior content …

Insights On The Future Of Digital Health: An Analysis Of Twitter Posts Of Imia Fellows

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

The COVID-19 pandemic has reshaped technology-enhanced services in health and care organizations globally. As the world pivots towards a post-COVID-19 environment, it is essential to examine emerging trends amongst thought leaders in the health information technology sector. This study queried Twitter feeds of IMIA Fellows from 2013 through 2022, utilizing combinations of sentiment analysis, latent dirichlet allocation, and document analysis methods. The results provided a glimpse of positive sentiment year upon year, with the most negative sentiment prevalent in 2020, due to the onset of the pandemic. The findings from this study can be strategically used to analyze emerging trends …

Challenges In Selecting Patient-Reported Outcome Measures For Use In A Patient-Facing Technology

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) have been increasingly integrated into patient-facing technologies to engage and empower patients in cancer self-management at home. However, researchers and developers face several challenges in selecting the best-suited PROMs for patient-facing technologies, due to the complex nature of the disease, the multitude of PROMs with high psychometric quality, and the lack of clear standards for PROM utilization. In this paper, we have discussed these challenges, illustrated by breast cancer instruments.

A Quantitative Analysis Of Patient-Facing Technologies For Patient Self-Reporting

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Dramatic improvements in patient-facing technologies have demonstrated the potential to transform healthcare delivery for a 360-degree holistic view of care. A key question regarding how such technologies affect patient self-reporting still needs to be answered. This study presents the technologies and their associated key variables via quantitative analysis. Associations were found between single-platform and web-based applications (apps), Android apps and physician view, mental health disease, and user feedback. The results are intended to inform future design, development, and evaluation of patient-facing technologies. More systematic, theory-driven, framework-based design and evaluation are necessary to fully characterize the effectiveness and maintenance of patient-facing …

Exploring A Mechanism Toward Automated Feedback For Cancer Patient Self-Reporting, Yang Gong

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

"Infobuttons" spearheaded electronic health records (EHR) based decision support by offering automated knowledge resources to physicians. However, how such a mechanism could be leveraged to provide optimal resources to patients remains unanswered. Informatics approaches are expected to utilize more relevant information beyond EHR, such as patient-reported outcomes, to support clinical decisions. This pilot study is intended to explore how patient-reported outcomes version of the common terminology criteria for adverse events (PRO-CTCAE) in EHR can be incorporated and how to recommend tailored content to cancer patients via automated feedback.

A Patient-Centered Approach To Collecting And Displaying Patient Identifiers

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Patient identifiers such as name, date of birth, or gender are the first line of defense to ensure the accuracy of the health data displayed in health information exchange. Health data display is the impetus for clinical decisions and patient outcomes and directly correlates with promoting interoperability and health information exchange. Therefore, constant monitoring of quality metrics is imperative for clinical leaders to keep a pulse on what is happening within their organizations. However, the electronic health records (EHRs) designer should also take precautions to ensure the visualizations are not misleading, given that EHRs have been shown in some studies …

User-Centered Data Display For Clinicians To Diagnose And Manage Hypertension, Yang Gong

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

The accurate diagnosis and effective treatment of hypertension are hindered by challenges stemming from limited access to comprehensive blood pressure (BP) data and the need for clinical context surrounding BP readings. Using handwritten tables for home-monitored BP exacerbates issues related to integration of electronic health records (EHRs) and trend analysis. This study employs user-centered design principles to develop prototypes for BP data visualization, with the primary goal of harmonizing disparate BP data sources to empower clinicians in precise hypertension diagnosis and management.

Extracting Drug-Protein Relation From Literature Using Ensembles Of Biomedical Transformers, Liang-Chin Huang, Yan Hu, Rongbin Li, Wenjin Jim Zheng, Hua Xu

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Automatic extraction of relations between drugs/chemicals and proteins from ever-growing biomedical literature is required to build up-to-date knowledge bases in biomedicine. To promote the development of automated methods, BioCreative-VII organized a shared task - the DrugProt track, to recognize drug-protein entity relations from PubMed abstracts. We participated in the shared task and leveraged deep learning-based transformer models pre-trained on biomedical data to build ensemble approaches to automatically extract drug-protein relation from biomedical literature. On the main corpora of 10,750 abstracts, our best system obtained an F1-score of 77.60% (ranked 4th among 30 participating teams), and on the large-scale corpus of …

Editorial: The Impact Of Social Media, Gaming, And Smartphone Usage On Mental Health, Justin Thomas, Fahad Al-Beyahi, Carl Gaspar

All Works

No abstract provided.