Publications by authors named "Caroline Dong"

Sympatric species are often locally adapted to distinct microhabitats. However, temporal variation may cause local maladaptation and species boundary breakdown, especially during extreme climatic events leading to episodic selection. Repeated reciprocal transplants can reveal the interplay between short and long-term patterns of natural selection.

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Introduction: Hospital overcrowding is common and can lead to delays in intensive care unit (ICU) admission, resulting in increased morbidity and mortality in medical and surgical patients. Data on delayed ICU admission are limited in the postsurgical trauma cohort. Damage control laparotomy with temporary abdominal closure (DCL-TAC) for severely injured patients is often followed by an aggressive early resuscitation phase, usually occurring in the ICU.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study investigates how to best manage extraperitoneal bladder injuries (EBIs) in patients who also have pelvic fractures, comparing surgical (cystorrhaphy) and non-operative treatments.
  • Researchers reviewed data from 90 patients at a trauma center between 2017 and 2022, finding that 56% had EBIs and the rest had other types of bladder injuries.
  • Results indicated that while patients who had surgery experienced more bladder leaks post-treatment, overall complications were similar between those treated operatively and non-operatively.
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Predator-prey interactions have been suggested as drivers of diversity in different lineages, and the presence of anti-predator defences in some clades is linked to higher rates of diversification. Warning signals are some of the most widespread defences in the animal world, and there is evidence of higher diversification rates in aposematic lineages. The mechanisms behind such species richness, however, are still unclear.

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Introduction: Hernia U was created with the objective to expand the educational landscape of abdominal wall surgery. It is an online platform where surgeons can register with no cost and subscribe for different courses. The aim of this study is to evaluate the impact of the platform on patient management and surgical education.

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Background: During the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic, New York instituted a statewide stay-at-home mandate to lower viral transmission. While public health guidelines advised continued provision of timely care for patients, disruption of safety-net health care and public fear have been proposed to be related to indirect deaths because of delays in presentation. We hypothesized that admissions for emergency general surgery (EGS) diagnoses would decrease during the pandemic and that mortality for these patients would increase.

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Background: A subcutaneous endoscopic onlay repair for ventral hernia with an anterior plication of diastasis recti (DR) has been published under different names in different countries. The aim of this systematic review is to assess the safety and feasibility of different named techniques with the same surgical concept.

Methods: The PRISMA guidelines were followed during all stages of this systematic review.

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The outcome of secondary contact between divergent lineages or species may be influenced by both the reproductive traits of parental species and the fitness of offspring; however, their relative contributions have rarely been evaluated, particularly in longer-lived vertebrate species. We performed pure and reciprocal laboratory crosses between Ctenophorus decresii (tawny dragon) and C. modestus (swift dragon) to examine how parental reproductive traits and ecologically relevant offspring fitness traits may explain contact zone dynamics in the wild.

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Diversification in sexual signals is often taken as evidence for the importance of sexual selection in speciation. However, in order for sexual selection to generate reproductive isolation between populations, both signals and mate preferences must diverge together. Furthermore, assortative mating may result from multiple behavioral mechanisms, including female mate preferences, male mate preferences, and male-male competition; yet their relative contributions are rarely evaluated.

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Background: Patients presenting for evaluation of umbilical and epigastric hernias are often found to have diastasis recti (DR). As isolated hernia repair in these patients may be associated with higher rates of recurrence, prior international publications have described a prefascial mesh repair in combination with anterior plication of DR. We present our initial United States (US) experience with a SubCutaneous OnLay endoscopic Approach (SCOLA) to address these concurrent pathologies in a single hybrid procedure.

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Colour polymorphic species are model systems for examining the evolutionary processes that generate and maintain discrete phenotypic variation in natural populations. Lizards have repeatedly evolved strikingly similar polymorphic sexual signals in distantly related lineages, providing an opportunity to examine convergence and divergence in colour polymorphism, correlated traits and associated evolutionary processes. Herein, we synthesise the extensive literature on lizard colour polymorphisms in both sexes, including recent advances in understanding of the underlying biochemical, cellular and genetic mechanisms, and correlated behavioural, physiological and life-history traits.

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The sensory drive hypothesis predicts the correlated evolution of signaling traits and sensory perception in differing environments. For visual signals, adaptive divergence in both color signals and visual sensitivities between populations may contribute to reproductive isolation and promote speciation, but this has rarely been tested or shown in terrestrial species. We tested whether opsin protein expression differs between divergent lineages of the tawny dragon () that differ in the presence/absence of an ultraviolet sexual signal.

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The goal of this protocol is to mimic the biomechanics of physiological accommodation in a cost-efficient, practical manner. Accommodation is achieved through the contraction of the ciliary body and relaxation of zonule fibers, which results in the thickening of the lens necessary for near vision. Here, we present a novel, simple method in which accommodation is replicated by tensing the zonules connected to the lens capsule via a manual lens stretcher (MLS).

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Objective: Diagnosis of obesity using traditional body mass index (BMI) using length may not be a reliable indicator of body composition in spina bifida (SB). We examine traditional and surrogate measures of adiposity in adults with SB, correlated with activity, metabolic disease, attitudes towards exercise and quality of life.

Design: Adult subjects with SB underwent obesity classification using BMI by length and arm span, abdominal girth and percent trunk fat (TF) on dual energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA).

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Objective: To compare recurrence after urethroplasty, identifying associated risk factors for early recurrence.

Materials And Methods: Among 262 urethroplasties (2001-2010) with ≥6 months of follow-up, we identified 65 patients (24.8%) with recurrence (defined by obstruction in the area of repair on cystoscopy).

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Introduction: To analyze the correlations of bladder management technique, ambulatory status and urologic reconstruction on quality of life (QOL) as affected by urinary symptoms in adult spina bifida (SB) patients.

Material And Methods: Sixty-six adult SB patients completed the RAND 36-Item Health Survey (mSF-36) and Incontinence Quality of Life (I-QOL). Demographic information, history of urinary reconstruction, and bladder management techniques were reviewed and analyzed with respect to survey scores.

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Purpose: We aimed to understand the characteristics of patients who are less likely to submit adequate urine collections at metabolic stone evaluation.

Methods: Inadequate urine collection was defined using two definitions: (1) Reference ranges for 24-hour creatinine/kilogram (Cr/24) and (2) discrepancy in total 24-hour urine Cr between 24-hour urine collections. There were 1502 patients with ≥1 kidney stone between 1998 and 2014 who performed a 24- or 48-hour urine collection at Northwestern Memorial Hospital and who were identified retrospectively.

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Multidimensional cancer genome analysis and validation has defined Quaking (QKI), a member of the signal transduction and activation of RNA (STAR) family of RNA-binding proteins, as a novel glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) tumor suppressor. Here, we establish that p53 directly regulates QKI gene expression, and QKI protein associates with and leads to the stabilization of miR-20a; miR-20a, in turn, regulates TGFβR2 and the TGFβ signaling network. This pathway circuitry is substantiated by in silico epistasis analysis of its components in the human GBM TCGA (The Cancer Genome Atlas Project) collection and by their gain- and loss-of-function interactions in in vitro and in vivo complementation studies.

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Plasmacytoid dendritic cells (pDCs) play essential roles in directing immune responses. These cells may be particularly important in determining the nature of immune responses to viral infections in patients with allergic asthma as well those with other atopic diseases. The purposes of this study were 1) to compare the functional capacity of pDCs in patients with one type of allergic disorder, allergic asthma, and controls; 2) to determine whether IgE cross-linking affects antiviral responses of influenza-exposed pDCs; and 3) to determine whether evidence of counterregulation of FcepsilonRIalpha and IFN-alpha pathways exists in these cells.

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Exposure to diesel exhaust particles (DEP) was shown to increase the susceptibility of the lung to bacterial infection in rats. In this study, the effects of DEP on alveolar macrophage (AM) phagocytic and bactericidal functions and cytokine secretion by AM and lymphocytes in response to Listeria monocytogenes infection were investigated in vitro and the roles of different DEP components in these processes were compared. Exposure to DEP or the organic extracts of DEP (eDEP) significantly decreased the phagocytosis and killing of L.

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Exposure to diesel exhaust particles (DEP) during the sensitization process has been shown to increase antigen-specific IgE production and aggravate allergic airway inflammation in human and animal models. In this study, we evaluated the effect of short-term DEP exposure on ovalbumin (OVA)-mediated responses using a post-sensitization model. Brown Norway rats were first exposed to filtered air or DEP (20.

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Studies have shown that exposure to diesel exhaust particles (DEP) suppresses pulmonary host defense against bacterial infection. The present study was carried out to characterize whether DEP exposure exerts a sustained effect in which inhaled DEP increase the susceptibility of the lung to bacterial infection occurring at a later time. Brown Norway rats were exposed to filtered air or DEP by inhalation at a dose of 21.

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We have previously demonstrated that exposure to diesel exhaust particles (DEP) prior to ovalbumin (OVA) sensitization in rats reduced OVA-induced airway inflammation. In the present study, Brown Norway rats were first sensitized to OVA (42.3 +/- 5.

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Diesel exhaust particles (DEP) have been shown to alter pulmonary immune responses to bacterial infection. Exposure of rats to 100 mg/m(3) DEP for 4 h was found to aggravate Listeria monocytogenes(Listeria) infection at 3 days postinfection, but the bacteria were largely cleared at 7 days postinfection due to the development of a strong T cell-mediated immunity. In the present study, we examined the effects of repeated DEP exposure at lower doses on pulmonary responses to bacterial infection.

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