Publications by authors named "Alicia Chen"

The alpha 1 and 2 chains of type IV collagen, encoded by the COL4A1 (MIM 120130) and COL4A2 (MIM 120090) respectively, play essential roles in the vascular basement membranes. Pathogenic variants in COL4A1/ COL4A2 are associated with autosomal dominant cerebral angiopathies. The clinical manifestations of COL4A1/COL4A2-related disorders include: aneurysms, intracerebral hemorrhage, polymicrogyria, porencephaly, heterotopia, periventricular leukomalacia, epilepsy, and neurodevelopmental disorders.

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Trigeminal neuralgia (TN) is characterized by excruciating facial pain usually caused by neurovascular compression of the trigeminal nerve roots. TN can be treated medically or invasively. Microvascular decompression is the procedure of choice and usually results in complete symptom relief.

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Article Synopsis
  • Antifungal drug resistance is a significant global health issue, prompting the need for new treatment strategies that involve understanding collateral sensitivity and cross-resistance in pathogenic fungi.
  • A study on Candida auris revealed that using collateral sensitivity-based drug cycling can effectively prevent drug resistance from developing and can help eliminate resistant sub-populations.
  • The findings indicate that incorporating collateral sensitivity into treatment decisions could lead to better antifungal therapies, as certain sensitivity trends appear consistent across different strains and resistance mechanisms.
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The purpose of this study was to develop and validate an algorithm for identifying Veterans with a history of traumatic brain injury (TBI) in the Veterans Affairs (VA) electronic health record using VA Million Veteran Program (MVP) data. Manual chart review ( = 200) was first used to establish 'gold standard' diagnosis labels for TBI ('Yes TBI' vs. 'No TBI').

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How do teachers learn about what learners already know? How do learners aid teachers by providing them with information about their background knowledge and what they find confusing? We formalize this collaborative reasoning process using a hierarchical Bayesian model of pedagogy. We then evaluate this model in two online behavioral experiments (N = 312 adults). In Experiment 1, we show that teachers select examples that account for learners' background knowledge, and adjust their examples based on learners' feedback.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study investigates the recurrence of chalazion (a common eye condition) in pediatric patients who undergo surgery, particularly focusing on the risks of multiple anesthetic exposures in children under three.
  • A review of 649 patient records over five years revealed that less than one-third experienced a recurrence after surgery, with younger age, female sex, and the number of lesions drained being significant risk factors.
  • The findings highlight the need for ophthalmologists to balance the likelihood of recurrence with the potential risks of anesthesia, especially for younger children.
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Background: Post-COVID-19 condition (colloquially known as "long COVID-19") characterized as postacute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 has no universal clinical case definition. Recent efforts have focused on understanding long COVID-19 symptoms, and electronic health record (EHR) data provide a unique resource for understanding this condition. The introduction of the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision (ICD-10) code U09.

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Teaching enables humans to impart vast stores of culturally specific knowledge and skills. However, little is known about the neural computations that guide teachers' decisions about what information to communicate. Participants (N = 28) played the role of teachers while being scanned using fMRI; their task was to select examples that would teach learners how to answer abstract multiple-choice questions.

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One of the most common cell shape changes driving morphogenesis in diverse animals is the constriction of the apical cell surface. Apical constriction depends on contraction of an actomyosin network in the apical cell cortex, but such actomyosin networks have been shown to undergo continual, conveyor belt-like contractions before the shrinking of an apical surface begins. This finding suggests that apical constriction is not necessarily triggered by the contraction of actomyosin networks, but rather can be triggered by unidentified, temporally-regulated mechanical links between actomyosin and junctions.

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Body temperature homeostasis is essential and reliant upon the integration of outputs from multiple classes of cooling- and warming-responsive cells. The computations that integrate these outputs are not understood. Here, we discover a set of warming cells (WCs) and show that the outputs of these WCs combine with previously described cooling cells (CCs) in a cross-inhibition computation to drive thermal homeostasis in larval WCs and CCs detect temperature changes using overlapping combinations of ionotropic receptors: Ir68a, Ir93a, and Ir25a for WCs and Ir21a, Ir93a, and Ir25a for CCs.

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Ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) are known to reflect emotional processing, brain neurochemistry, and brain function. Collecting and processing USV data is manual, time-intensive, and costly, creating a significant bottleneck by limiting researchers' ability to employ fully effective and nuanced experimental designs and serving as a barrier to entry for other researchers. In this report, we provide a snapshot of the current development and testing of Acoustilytix™, a web-based automated USV scoring tool.

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Quantitative analysis of thin-section CT of the chest has a growing role in the clinical evaluation and management of diffuse lung diseases. This heterogeneous group includes diseases with markedly different prognoses and treatment options. Quantitative tools can assist in both accurate diagnosis and longitudinal management by improving characterization and quantification of disease and increasing the reproducibility of disease severity assessment.

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We retrospectively examined intraoperative blood transfusion patterns at US veteran's hospitals through description of national patterns of intraoperative blood transfusion by indication for transfusion in the elderly; assessment of temporal trends in the use of intraoperative blood transfusion; and relationship of institutional use of intraoperative blood transfusion to hospital 30-day risk-adjusted postoperative mortality rates.Limited data exist on the pattern of intraoperative blood transfusion by indication for transfusion at the hospital level, and the relationship between intraoperative transfusion rates and institutional surgical outcomes.Using the Department of Veterans Affairs Surgical Quality Improvement Program database, we assigned 424,015 major noncardiac operations among elderly patients (≥65 years) in 117 veteran's hospitals, from 1997 to 2009, into groups based on indication for intraoperative blood transfusion according to literature and clinical guidelines.

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The complexity of cancer chemotherapy requires pharmacists be familiar with the complicated regimens and highly toxic agents used. This column reviews various issues related to preparation, dispensing, and administration of antineoplastic therapy, and the agents, both commercially available and investigational, used to treat malignant diseases. Questions or suggestions for topics should be addressed to Dominic A.

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