Publications by authors named "Brittain D"

Objective: Food insecurity is becoming recognized as an important measure of public health. Louisiana has a poorer health index and a higher food insecurity rate than the national average. This study aims to investigate how living in a food desert affects the stage at diagnosis and 5-year overall survival in patients with gynecologic cancers.

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Objective: B-HOLISTIC was a real-world retrospective study of treatment patterns and clinical outcomes in Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) in regions outside Europe and North America. This subgroup analysis reports findings from Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, and South Africa.

Materials And Methods: Patients aged ≥18 years and diagnosed with stage IIB-IV classical HL receiving frontline chemotherapy (frontline cHL) and/or with relapsed/refractory HL (RRHL) from January 2010 to December 2013 were assessed.

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(1) Background: Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and other gender and sexual minority-identified (LGBTQ+) adolescents face mental and physical health disparities compared to their heterosexual and cisgender counterparts. Mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) may be a potential method to intervene upon health disparities in this population. This pilot study explores the initial acceptability and feasibility, along with the descriptive health changes of an online MBI, Learning to Breathe-Queer (L2B-Q), which was adapted to meet the needs of LGBTQ+ adolescents.

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  • Researchers have created a detailed neuronal wiring diagram of the whole brain of a fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster), mapping over 5 billion chemical synapses between more than 139,000 neurons, to better understand brain function.
  • The study includes detailed annotations about various cell types, nerve pathways, and neurotransmitter identities, and the data is freely available for other researchers to use and explore.
  • By analyzing synaptic pathways and connections, the project helps illustrate how neural structures relate to sensorimotor behaviors, paving the way for similar studies in other species.
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  • Animal movement is directed by motor neurons that connect the central nervous system to muscles, with complex premotor networks coordinating these movements for various behaviors.
  • Researchers analyzed the wiring of premotor circuits in Drosophila flies to understand how motor networks control leg and wing movements.
  • They discovered that leg motor modules have a hierarchical structure based on the size of motor neurons, while wing circuits are more flexible in their connectivity, highlighting differences in motor control for distinct body parts.
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  • This study focuses on understanding how neural circuits in the brain manage behavior by analyzing the Drosophila melanogaster (fruit fly) ventral nerve cord, which mirrors the spinal cord in vertebrates.
  • Researchers mapped approximately 45 million synapses and 14,600 neuron cell bodies within the fruit fly's nerve cord to comprehend its neural connections.
  • They created a motor neuron atlas that identifies which muscles are targeted by motor neurons, aiding in the understanding of leg and wing movement coordination, especially during take-off.
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South Africa has more than 8 million people living with HIV. However, the number of patients undergoing haematopoietic stem-cell transplantation (HSCT) in South Africa is far below the target number. Donor numbers are insufficient to meet demand.

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Advances in Electron Microscopy, image segmentation and computational infrastructure have given rise to large-scale and richly annotated connectomic datasets which are increasingly shared across communities. To enable collaboration, users need to be able to concurrently create new annotations and correct errors in the automated segmentation by proofreading. In large datasets, every proofreading edit relabels cell identities of millions of voxels and thousands of annotations like synapses.

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Connections between neurons can be mapped by acquiring and analyzing electron microscopic (EM) brain images. In recent years, this approach has been applied to chunks of brains to reconstruct local connectivity maps that are highly informative, yet inadequate for understanding brain function more globally. Here, we present the first neuronal wiring diagram of a whole adult brain, containing 5×10 chemical synapses between ~130,000 neurons reconstructed from a female .

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Animal movement is controlled by motor neurons (MNs), which project out of the central nervous system to activate muscles. MN activity is coordinated by complex premotor networks that allow individual muscles to contribute to many different behaviors. Here, we use connectomics to analyze the wiring logic of premotor circuits controlling the leg and wing.

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Neural circuit function is shaped both by the cell types that comprise the circuit and the connections between those cell types . Neural cell types have previously been defined by morphology , electrophysiology , transcriptomic expression , connectivity , or even a combination of such modalities . More recently, the Patch-seq technique has enabled the characterization of morphology (M), electrophysiology (E), and transcriptomic (T) properties from individual cells .

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Article Synopsis
  • Understanding how circuit connectivity influences brain function is key to grasping brain computations, especially in the mouse primary visual cortex (V1), where similar-response neurons tend to be synaptically linked.
  • This study used a large dataset to show that neuronal connections are based not only within V1 but also span across different cortical layers and areas, indicating a 'like-to-like' connectivity rule throughout the visual system.
  • Additionally, a digital model revealed that neuronal response features, rather than their physical location, primarily predict synaptic connections, suggesting both basic and complex connectivity patterns that impact sensory processing and learning in both biological and artificial neural networks.
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We are now in the era of millimeter-scale electron microscopy (EM) volumes collected at nanometer resolution. Dense reconstruction of cellular compartments in these EM volumes has been enabled by recent advances in Machine Learning (ML). Automated segmentation methods produce exceptionally accurate reconstructions of cells, but post-hoc proofreading is still required to generate large connectomes free of merge and split errors.

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Background: A novel, once-daily, fixed-dose combination of mometasone furoate/indacaterol acetate/glycopyrronium bromide (MF/IND/GLY) delivered via Breezhaler® is the first inhaled corticosteroid/long-acting ꞵ-agonist/long-acting muscarinic antagonist (ICS/LABA/LAMA) therapy approved for the maintenance treatment of asthma in adults inadequately controlled on ICS/LABA combination. In patients with asthma and persistent airflow limitation (PAL), maximal treatment, especially with combination is suggested. This post hoc analysis of data from the IRIDIUM study assessed the efficacy of MF/IND/GLY in asthma patients with and without PAL.

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Mammalian cortex features a vast diversity of neuronal cell types, each with characteristic anatomical, molecular and functional properties. Synaptic connectivity powerfully shapes how each cell type participates in the cortical circuit, but mapping connectivity rules at the resolution of distinct cell types remains difficult. Here, we used millimeter-scale volumetric electron microscopy to investigate the connectivity of all inhibitory neurons across a densely-segmented neuronal population of 1352 cells spanning all layers of mouse visual cortex, producing a wiring diagram of inhibitory connections with more than 70,000 synapses.

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Neurons in the developing brain undergo extensive structural refinement as nascent circuits adopt their mature form. This physical transformation of neurons is facilitated by the engulfment and degradation of axonal branches and synapses by surrounding glial cells, including microglia and astrocytes. However, the small size of phagocytic organelles and the complex, highly ramified morphology of glia have made it difficult to define the contribution of these and other glial cell types to this crucial process.

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Learning from experience depends at least in part on changes in neuronal connections. We present the largest map of connectivity to date between cortical neurons of a defined type (layer 2/3 [L2/3] pyramidal cells in mouse primary visual cortex), which was enabled by automated analysis of serial section electron microscopy images with improved handling of image defects (250 × 140 × 90 μm volume). We used the map to identify constraints on the learning algorithms employed by the cortex.

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Practitioners in health departments, university extension programs, and nonprofit organizations working in public health face varied challenges to publishing in the peer-reviewed literature. These practitioners may lack time, support, skills, and efficacy needed for manuscript submission, which keeps them from sharing their wisdom and experience-based evidence. This exclusion can contribute to literature gaps, a failure of evidence-based practice to inform future research, reduced ability to educate partners, and delays in advancing public health practice.

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Information on Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) is mostly limited to Europe and North America. This real-world, retrospective study assessed treatment pathways and clinical outcomes in adults with stage IIB-IV classical HL receiving frontline treatment ( = 1598) or relapsed/refractory HL (RRHL,  = 426) in regions outside Europe and North America between January 2010 and December 2013. The primary endpoint was progression-free survival (PFS) in the RRHL group.

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Article Synopsis
  • A semi-automated reconstruction of the L2/3 region of the mouse primary visual cortex was created using electron microscopy images, capturing various cell types and structures important for understanding visual processing.
  • The data includes visual response characteristics of pyramidal cells and is available for public access, along with interactive tools for analysis.
  • Research highlights how the organization of mitochondria and synapses relates to cell location, while predicting connectivity patterns in pyramidal cells correlates with their visual response strength and reliability.
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A novel, once-daily (o.d.), fixed-dose combination (FDC) of indacaterol acetate (IND), glycopyrronium bromide (GLY), and mometasone furoate (MF), delivered by the inhaler Breezhaler device, is the first long-acting beta2-adrenergic agonist/long-acting muscarinic antagonist/inhaled corticosteroid (LABA/LAMA/ICS) therapy to be approved for maintenance treatment of asthma in adults inadequately controlled on LABA/ICS.

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Article Synopsis
  • Advances in automated imaging now allow for the mapping of entire brains, with projects needing significant time for data proofreading due to their size.
  • FlyWire is introduced as an online platform that enables collaborative proofreading of neural circuits in fruit flies, utilizing 3D interactive tools for efficient editing from anywhere.
  • The platform encourages community participation, enhances data accuracy, and promotes faster scientific discoveries, showcased through the analysis of mechanosensory neurons' connectome.
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Background: Chronic pain is a public health issue, with women being disproportionately impacted. Progressing from light physical activity to the recommended moderate to vigorous intensities is effective for chronic pain self-management, yet participation is low among women experiencing chronic pain. Researchers studying resilience approaches to chronic pain contend that women with higher resilience, or functioning well despite adverse life stressors including chronic pain, should have better resilience mechanisms and more physical activity participation.

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Inhibitory neurons in mammalian cortex exhibit diverse physiological, morphological, molecular, and connectivity signatures. While considerable work has measured the average connectivity of several interneuron classes, there remains a fundamental lack of understanding of the connectivity distribution of distinct inhibitory cell types with synaptic resolution, how it relates to properties of target cells, and how it affects function. Here, we used large-scale electron microscopy and functional imaging to address these questions for chandelier cells in layer 2/3 of the mouse visual cortex.

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