Publications by authors named "Caroline Wagner"

Liquid formulations have been successfully used in many viral vector vaccines including influenza (Flu), hepatitis B, polio (IPV), Ebola, and COVID-19 vaccines. The main advantage of liquid formulations over lyophilized formulations is that they are cost-effective, as well as easier to manufacture and distribute. However, studies have shown that the liquid formulations of enveloped viral vector vaccines are not stable over extended periods of time.

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Background And Objectives: We conducted a national survey to assess the opinions and experiences of transplant center staff related to processes of care graduation.

Methods: Following IRB approval, medical staff at U.S.

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Article Synopsis
  • Lecanemab, an amyloid-targeting immunotherapy for Alzheimer’s, shows promise but comes with potential risks for patients.
  • An interprofessional team at a medical center developed resources like patient handouts and documentation templates to aid in the infusion process of lecanemab.
  • The team plans to share these developed resources and processes with other healthcare settings to improve implementation and monitoring.
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The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has generated a considerable number of infections and associated morbidity and mortality across the world. Recovery from these infections, combined with the onset of large-scale vaccination, have led to rapidly-changing population-level immunological landscapes. In turn, these complexities have highlighted a number of important unknowns related to the breadth and strength of immunity following recovery or vaccination.

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Article Synopsis
  • Doctors often use certain medicines to treat high blood pressure, but older people can have more problems with these meds.
  • A 90-year-old man took one of these medications and ended up having a fall and some unusual lab results, meaning his body wasn't handling the medicine well.
  • The situation showed that even though these medicines are recommended, they might not be safe for older people who could get sick from them.
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Background: Older adults are interested and able to complete video visits, but often require coaching and practice to succeed. Data show a widening digital divide between older and younger adults using video visits. We conducted a qualitative feasibility study to investigate these gaps via ethnographic methods, including a team member in older participants' homes.

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Background: In Canada, all provinces implemented vaccine passports in 2021 to reduce SARS-CoV-2 transmission in non-essential indoor spaces and increase vaccine uptake (policies active September 2021-March 2022 in Quebec and Ontario). We sought to evaluate the impact of vaccine passport policies on first-dose SARS-CoV-2 vaccination coverage by age, and area-level income and proportion of racialized residents.

Methods: We performed interrupted time series analyses using data from Quebec's and Ontario's vaccine registries linked to census information (population of 20.

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As the SARS-CoV-2 trajectory continues, the longer-term immuno-epidemiology of COVID-19, the dynamics of Long COVID, and the impact of escape variants are important outstanding questions. We examine these remaining uncertainties with a simple modelling framework that accounts for multiple (antigenic) exposures via infection or vaccination. If immunity (to infection or Long COVID) accumulates rapidly with the valency of exposure, we find that infection levels and the burden of Long COVID are markedly reduced in the medium term.

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Mucus is a biological hydrogel that coats and protects all non-keratinized wet epithelial surfaces. Mucins, the primary structural components of mucus, are critical components of the gel layer that protect against invading pathogens. For communicable diseases, pathogen-mucin interactions contribute to the pathogen's fate and the potential for disease progression in-host, as well as the potential for onward transmission.

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Wearable sensors can continuously and passively detect potential respiratory infections before or absent symptoms. However, the population-level impact of deploying these devices during pandemics is unclear. We built a compartmental model of Canada's second COVID-19 wave and simulated wearable sensor deployment scenarios, systematically varying detection algorithm accuracy, uptake, and adherence.

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Simulating native mucus with model systems such as gels made from reconstituted mucin or commercially available polymers presents experimental advantages including greater sample availability and reduced inter- and intradonor heterogeneity. Understanding whether these gels reproduce the complex physical and biochemical properties of native mucus at multiple length scales is critical to building relevant experimental models, but few systematic comparisons have been reported. Here, we compared bulk mechanical properties, microstructure, and biochemical responses of mucus from different niches, reconstituted mucin gels (with similar pH and polymer concentrations as native tissues), and commonly used commercially available polymers.

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The analysis of the statistics of random walks undertaken by passive particles in complex media has important implications in a number of areas including pathogen transport and drug delivery. In several systems in which heterogeneity is important, the distribution of particle step-sizes has been found to be exponential in nature, as opposed to the Gaussian distribution associated with Brownian motion. Here, we first develop a theoretical framework to study a simplified version of this problem: the motion of passive tracers in a range of sub-environments with different viscosity.

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The appearance of a novel coronavirus in late 2019 radically changed the community of researchers working on coronaviruses since the 2002 SARS epidemic. In 2020, coronavirus-related publications grew by 20 times over the previous two years, with 130,000 more researchers publishing on related topics. The United States, the United Kingdom and China led dozens of nations working on coronavirus prior to the pandemic, but leadership consolidated among these three nations in 2020, which collectively accounted for 50% of all papers, garnering well more than 60% of citations.

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Despite the rapid development of safe and highly effective vaccines against coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), the strategy for their distribution has been and remains contentious. Mathematical models can be used to guide and inform these strategies; however, uncertainties in critical immunological and evolutionary parameters of SARS-CoV-2 can limit the predictive power of models. Notwithstanding these ongoing uncertainties, we discuss how models have been applied to guide health policy decisions related to vaccination against COVID-19, and how they may be applied in the future in the context of booster doses under different scenarios related to disease-specific factors and global distribution.

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The rapid development of COVID-19 vaccines was the result of decades of research to establish flexible vaccine platforms and understand pathogens with pandemic potential, as well as several novel changes to the vaccine discovery and development processes that partnered industry and governments. And while vaccines offer the potential to drastically improve global health, low-and-middle-income countries around the world often experience reduced access to vaccines and reduced vaccine efficacy. Addressing these issues will require novel vaccine approaches and platforms, deeper insight how vaccines mediate protection, and innovative trial designs and models.

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Choking/strangulation during sex has become prevalent in the United States. Yet, no qualitative research has addressed men's choking experiences. Through interviews with 21 young adult men, we examined the language men use to refer to choking, how they first learned about it, their experiences with choking, and consent and safety practices.

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Choking/strangulation during sex is prevalent among young adults, with one study finding that 58% of women college students had ever been choked during sex. However, no qualitative study has examined women's experiences with choking/strangulation during sex outside of intimate partner violence. The purpose of our qualitative interview study was to investigate women's experiences with choking and/or being choked during partnered sex.

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The twenty-first century has witnessed a wave of severe infectious disease outbreaks, not least the COVID-19 pandemic, which has had a devastating impact on lives and livelihoods around the globe. The 2003 severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus outbreak, the 2009 swine flu pandemic, the 2012 Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus outbreak, the 2013-2016 Ebola virus disease epidemic in West Africa and the 2015 Zika virus disease epidemic all resulted in substantial morbidity and mortality while spreading across borders to infect people in multiple countries. At the same time, the past few decades have ushered in an unprecedented era of technological, demographic and climatic change: airline flights have doubled since 2000, since 2007 more people live in urban areas than rural areas, population numbers continue to climb and climate change presents an escalating threat to society.

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Vaccines provide powerful tools to mitigate the enormous public health and economic costs that the ongoing severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic continues to exert globally, yet vaccine distribution remains unequal among countries. To examine the potential epidemiological and evolutionary impacts of “vaccine nationalism,” we extend previous models to include simple scenarios of stockpiling between two regions. In general, when vaccines are widely available and the immunity they confer is robust, sharing doses minimizes total cases across regions.

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The COVID-19 pandemic presented a challenge to the global research community as scientists rushed to find solutions to the devastating crisis. Drawing expectations from resilience theory, this paper explores how the trajectory of and research community around the coronavirus research was affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Characterizing epistemic clusters and pathways of knowledge through extracting terms featured in articles in early COVID-19 research, combined with evolutionary pathways and statistical analysis, the results reveal that the pandemic disrupted existing lines of coronavirus research to a large degree.

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Article Synopsis
  • Vaccine dose shortages are prompting new strategies to boost population immunity against SARS-CoV-2, focusing on the timing of second doses and its impact on infection rates and viral evolution.
  • Research indicates that while a single vaccine dose can reduce infections in the short term, the long-term effects depend on how strong that single dose immunity is compared to two doses or natural infection.
  • There’s a risk that relying solely on one dose may lead to increased chances of the virus evolving to escape the immune response, emphasizing the need for more data on immune responses and a push for global vaccination efforts.
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Article Synopsis
  • - Various strategies are being considered to enhance population immunity against Covid-19 amidst vaccine shortages and logistics issues, focusing on the impact of the timing for delivering the second dose.
  • - Research indicates that while a single vaccine dose can reduce infections in the short term, longer-term effectiveness relies on how strong and lasting the immune response is compared to full two-dose and natural immunity.
  • - The study suggests that delaying the second dose could contribute to immune escape in the virus by increasing the number of individuals with partial immunity, emphasizing the importance of monitoring vaccine responses and accelerating global vaccination efforts.
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Despite vast improvements in global vaccination coverage during the last decade, there is a growing trend in vaccine hesitancy and/or refusal globally. This has implications for the acceptance and coverage of a potential vaccine against COVID-19. In the United States, the number of children exempt from vaccination for "philosophical belief-based" non-medical reasons increased in 12 of the 18 states that allowed this policy from 2009 to 2017 (1).

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