Publications by authors named "Alexandria Hughes"

Serial blood and mucosal samples were characterized for 102 participants enrolled a median of 7.0 days after coronavirus disease 2019 diagnosis. Mucosal RNA was detectable for a median of 31.

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COVID-19 disproportionately affects people experiencing homelessness or incarceration. While homelessness or incarceration alone may not impact vaccine effectiveness, medical comorbidities along with social conditions associated with homelessness or incarceration may impact estimated vaccine effectiveness. COVID-19 vaccines reduce rates of hospitalization and death; vaccine effectiveness (VE) against severe outcomes in people experiencing homelessness or incarceration is unknown.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of COVID-19 booster doses in preventing hospitalizations and emergency department visits, providing insight for public health policies.
  • Data was collected from over 1.2 million adults at five health systems during the Omicron variant's rise, showing that approximately 37% received a booster dose.
  • The median number needed to vaccinate (NNV) to prevent one hospitalization was 205, with lower NNV for adults aged 65 and older and those with health conditions, indicating booster effectiveness varies by age and health status.
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Having a formal onboarding procedure for new lab members can lead to a happier and more productive working environment.

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Building a functional nervous system requires the coordinated actions of many glial cells. In the vertebrate central nervous system (CNS), oligodendrocytes myelinate neuronal axons to increase conduction velocity and provide trophic support. Myelination can be modified by local signaling at the axon-myelin interface, potentially adapting sheaths to support the metabolic needs and physiology of individual neurons.

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During development, oligodendrocytes contact and wrap neuronal axons with myelin. Similarly to neurons and synapses, excess myelin sheaths are produced and selectively eliminated, but how elimination occurs is unknown. Microglia, the resident immune cells of the central nervous system, engulf surplus neurons and synapses.

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Vesicular release from neurons promotes myelin sheath growth on axons. Oligodendrocytes express proteins that allow dendrites to respond to vesicular release at synapses, suggesting that axon-myelin contacts use similar communication mechanisms as synapses to form myelin sheaths. To test this, we used fusion proteins to track synaptic vesicle localization and membrane fusion in zebrafish during developmental myelination and investigated expression and localization of PSD95, a dendritic post-synaptic protein, within oligodendrocytes.

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Chondrocytes of the growth plate undergo apoptosis during the process of endochondral ossification, as well as during the progression of osteoarthritis. Although the regulation of this process is not completely understood, alterations in the precisely orchestrated programmed cell death during development can have catastrophic results, as exemplified by several chondrodystrophies which are frequently accompanied by early onset osteoarthritis. Understanding the mechanisms that underlie chondrocyte apoptosis during endochondral ossification in the growth plate has the potential to impact the development of therapeutic applications for chondrodystrophies and associated early onset osteoarthritis.

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In this study, we evaluated 275 empirical studies from Journal of Marital and Family Therapy and Family Process from 2010 to 2015 on their use of theory, and compared our findings to those of a similar previous analysis (Hawley & Geske, 2000). Overall, theory seems to have become much better incorporated in empirical family therapy research, with only 16.4% of the articles not using theory in either their introductory or discussion sections.

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Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is the hepatic manifestation of metabolic syndrome. It affects 20%-30% of the US population, and it is increasing worldwide. Recently, the role of lipid-rich maternal gestational nutrition in spurring the development of NAFLD among offspring has been indicated.

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