Major power outages have risen over the last two decades, largely due to more extreme weather conditions. However, there is a lack of knowledge on the distribution of power outages and its relationship to social vulnerability and co-occurring hazards. We examined the associations between localized outages and social vulnerability factors (demographic characteristics), controlling for environmental factors (weather), in Washington State between 2018-2021.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLefamulin is a first-in-class systemic pleuromutilin antimicrobial and potent inhibitor of bacterial translation, and the most recent novel antimicrobial approved for the treatment of community-acquired pneumonia (CAP). It exhibits potent antibacterial activity against the most prevalent bacterial pathogens that cause typical and atypical pneumonia and other infectious diseases. Early studies indicate additional anti-inflammatory activity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCeftobiprole is an advanced-generation broad-spectrum parenteral cephalosporin with activity against MSSA and MRSA. Ceftobiprole is not currently approved for use to treat bacteremia and phase three clinical trials are taking place. Drug approval requires further pre-clinical evidence to support this new indication.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPreeclampsia is a pregnancy-specific cardiovascular disorder, involving significant maternal endothelial dysfunction. Although inappropriate placentation due to aberrant angiogenesis, inflammation and shallow trophoblast invasion are the root causes of preeclampsia, pathogenic mechanisms are poorly understood, particularly in early pregnancy. Here, we first confirm the abnormal expression of important vascular and inflammatory proteins, FK506-binding protein-like (FKBPL) and galectin-3 (Gal-3), in human plasma and placental tissues from women with preeclampsia and normotensive controls.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPreeclampsia is a cardiovascular pregnancy complication characterised by new onset hypertension and organ damage or intrauterine growth restriction. It is one of the leading causes of maternal and fetal mortality in pregnancy globally. Short of pre-term delivery of the fetus and placenta, treatment options are limited.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Preeclampsia is a dangerous cardiovascular disorder of pregnancy that leads to an increased risk of future cardiovascular and metabolic disorders. Much of the pathogenesis and mechanisms involved in cardiac health in preeclampsia are unknown. A novel anti-angiogenic protein, FKBPL, is emerging as having a potential role in both preeclampsia and cardiovascular disease (CVD).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFImportance: To be considered for a kidney transplant, patients with advanced kidney disease must participate in a formal evaluation and selection process. Little is known about how this process proceeds in real-world clinical settings.
Objective: To characterize the transplant evaluation process among a representative national sample of US veterans with advanced kidney disease who were referred to a kidney transplant center.
Background: Patients with advanced kidney disease are less likely than many patients with other types of serious illness to enroll in hospice. Little is known about real-world clinical decision-making related to hospice for members of this population.
Methods: We used a text search tool to conduct a thematic analysis of documentation pertaining to hospice in the electronic medical record system of the Department of Veterans Affairs, for a national sample of 1000 patients with advanced kidney disease between 2004 and 2014 who were followed until October 8, 2019.
Fucoidans are known to be effective inhibitors of inflammation, and of virus binding and cellular entry. -derived fucoidan (UPF) was assessed in a severe influenza A (H1N1, PR8) infection model in mice. Initially, UPF was gavaged at 3.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFImportance: Approximately 1 in 4 patients receiving maintenance dialysis for end-stage renal disease eventually stop treatment before death. Little is known about the association of stopping dialysis and quality of end-of-life care.
Objectives: To evaluate the association of stopping dialysis before death with family-rated quality of end-of-life care and whether this association differed according to receipt of hospice services at the time of death.
Clin J Am Soc Nephrol
September 2019
Background And Objectives: Little is known about the quality of end-of-life care for patients with advanced CKD. We describe the relationship between patterns of end-of-life care and dialysis treatment with family-reported quality of end-of-life care in this population.
Design, Setting, Participants, & Measurements: We designed a retrospective observational study among a national cohort of 9993 veterans with advanced CKD who died in Department of Veterans Affairs facilities between 2009 and 2015.
In this essay, we describe the evolution of attitudes toward dialysis discontinuation in historical context, beginning with the birth of outpatient dialysis in the 1960s and continuing through the present. From the start, attitudes toward dialysis discontinuation have reflected the clinical context in which dialysis is initiated. In the 1960s and 1970s, dialysis was only available to select patients and concerns about distributive justice weighed heavily.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFClinical Introduction: A 24-year-old Filipino man attended the ED with a 1-month history of a discrete swelling over his upper anterior chest wall that was rapidly increasing in size and tenderness. He denied any other symptoms. His medical history was unremarkable.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground And Objectives: The highly specialized and technologically focused approach to care inherent to many health systems can adversely affect patients' emotional experiences of illness, while also obscuring these effects from the clinician's view. We describe what we learned from patients with advanced kidney disease about the emotional impact of illness and care.
Design, Setting, Participants, & Measurements: As part of an ongoing study on advance care planning, we conducted semistructured interviews at the VA Puget Sound Healthcare System in Seattle, Washington, with 27 patients with advanced kidney disease between April of 2014 and May of 2016.
Background: Parents of children admitted to neonatal and pediatric intensive care units (ICUs) are at increased risk of experiencing acute and post-traumatic stress disorder. The integration of palliative care may improve child and family outcomes, yet there remains a lack of information about indicators for specialty-level palliative care involvement in this setting.
Objective: To describe neonatal and pediatric critical care physician perspectives on indicators for when and why to involve palliative care consultants.
J Nurs Educ Pract
December 2016
Objective: Short-term international health-related study abroad seminars for health-professions students are increasingly popular because of a focus in higher education on global awareness and intercultural competency. This study describes a study abroad strategy to teach students intercultural communication skills and knowledge, and evaluated the effectiveness of a 3-week health-related study abroad program and intercultural competency curriculum in increasing skills and knowledge of health-profession students.
Methods: This was a mixed methods study, with a pretest-posttest, within-subjects design, and content analysis of student reflection journals.
Background: Most children die in neonatal and pediatric intensive care units after decisions are made to withhold or withdraw life-sustaining treatments. These decisions can be challenging when there are different views about the child's best interest and when there is a lack of clarity about how best to also consider the interests of the family.
Objective: To understand how neonatal and pediatric critical care physicians balance and integrate the interests of the child and family in decisions about life-sustaining treatments.
This paper reports result from a systematic search and thematic analysis of qualitative literature to identify key issues related to family-centered care, behaviors, and communication skills that support the parental role and improve patient and family outcomes in the PICU. Five themes were identified: 1) sharing information; 2) hearing parental voices; 3) making decisions for or with parents; 4) negotiating roles; and 5) individualizing communication. These themes highlight several gaps between how parents want to be involved and perceive clinicians engage them in the care of their child.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFReceptor interaction protein kinase 1 (RIP1) is a molecular cell-fate switch. RIP1, together with Fas-associated protein with death domain (FADD) and caspase-8, forms the RIPoptosome that activates apoptosis. RIP1 also associates with RIP3 to form the necrosome that triggers necroptosis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMDA5, a viral double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) receptor, shares sequence similarity and signaling pathways with RIG-I yet plays essential functions in antiviral immunity through distinct specificity for viral RNA. Revealing the molecular basis for the functional divergence, we report here the crystal structure of MDA5 bound to dsRNA, which shows how, using the same domain architecture, MDA5 recognizes the internal duplex structure, whereas RIG-I recognizes the terminus of dsRNA. We further show that MDA5 uses direct protein-protein contacts to stack along dsRNA in a head-to-tail arrangement, and that the signaling domain (tandem CARD), which decorates the outside of the core MDA5 filament, also has an intrinsic propensity to oligomerize into an elongated structure that activates the signaling adaptor, MAVS.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: To investigate the efficacy of the B subunit of Escherichia coli heat-labile enterotoxin (EtxB) in the treatment of ocular autoimmune disease. Murine experimental autoimmune uveoretinitis (EAU) is an animal model of autoimmune posterior uveitis initiated by retinal antigen-specific Th1 and Th17 CD4(+) T cells, which activate myeloid cells, inducing retinal damage. EtxB is a potent immune modulator that ameliorates other Th1-mediated autoimmune diseases, enhancing regulatory T-cell activity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe have examined the structure of the lamellar phase (Lalpha) that coexists with a micellar solution (L1) for a commercial sodium alkyl benzene sulfonate (LAS) mixed with water. The surfactant is a mixture containing C10-C13 alkyl chains, having all positional isomers of the benzene sulfonate group present except the 1-isomer. Unusually for ionic surfactants, the difference in compositions between the coexisting L1 and Lalpha phases is large (L1 = approximately 20 wt % LAS; Lalpha = approximately 65 wt %).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEscherichia coli heat-labile enterotoxin (Etx) is an oral adjuvant in mice. We show that this is also true for rats. To understand this adjuvant activity we examined lymph dendritic cells (DC) migrating from the intestine to mesenteric lymph nodes (MLN) in animals fed Etx.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMesotrione is a new callistemone herbicide that inhibits the HPPD enzyme (p-hydroxyphenylpyruvate dioxygenase) and introduces a new naturally selective tool into weed-management programmes for use in maize. Mesotrione provides control of the major broad-leaved weeds, and it can be used in integrated weed-management programmes depending on the grower's preferred weed-control strategy. At post-emergence rates of 150 g AI ha-1 or less, mesotrione provides naturally selective control of key species that may show triazine resistance (TR), e.
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