Publications by authors named "Clare Walker"

Functional impairments in cognition are frequently thought to be a feature of individuals with depression or anxiety. However, documented impairments are both broad and inconsistent, with little known about when they emerge, whether they are causes or effects of affective symptoms, or whether specific cognitive systems are implicated. Here, we show, in the adolescent ABCD cohort (N = 11,876), that attention dysregulation is a robust factor underlying wide-ranging cognitive task impairments seen in adolescents with moderate to severe anxiety or low mood.

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Objective: To examine whether care provided by general practitioners (GPs) to non-urgent patients in the emergency department differs significantly from care provided by usual accident and emergency (A&E) staff in terms of process outcomes and A&E clinical quality indicators.

Design: Propensity score matched cohort study.

Setting: GPs in A&E colocated within the University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust between May 2015 and March 2016.

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Background: Tuberculosis (TB), caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) [(Zopf 1883) Lehmann and Neumann 1896], is a major cause of morbidity and mortality. Nearly one-third of the world's population is infected with MTB; TB has an annual incidence of 9 million new cases and each year causes 2 million deaths worldwide.

Objectives: To investigate the clinical effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of screening tests [interferon-gamma release assays (IGRAs) and tuberculin skin tests (TSTs)] in latent tuberculosis infection (LTBI) diagnosis to support National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guideline development for three population groups: children, immunocompromised people and those who have recently arrived in the UK from high-incidence countries.

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The human bile salt export pump (BSEP) is a membrane protein expressed on the canalicular plasma membrane domain of hepatocytes, which mediates active transport of unconjugated and conjugated bile salts from liver cells into bile. BSEP activity therefore plays an important role in bile flow. In humans, genetically inherited defects in BSEP expression or activity cause cholestatic liver injury, and many drugs that cause cholestatic drug-induced liver injury (DILI) in humans have been shown to inhibit BSEP activity in vitro and in vivo.

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The authors have investigated the expression of the microcephalin (MCPH1) protein to evaluate its prognostic importance in breast cancer. Microcephalin is a damage response protein involved in the regulation of BRCA1 and BRCA2. BRCA1 mutations are often associated with basal-like breast cancer, which are also often negative for oestrogen receptor (ER), progesterone receptor (PR) and HER2.

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CUB and SUSHI multiple domain protein 1 (CSMD1) is a candidate tumour suppressor gene that maps to chromosome 8p23, a region deleted in many tumour types including 50% of breast cancers. CSMD1 has homologies to proteins implicated in carcinogenesis. We aimed to study the expression pattern of the CSMD1 protein and evaluate its prognostic importance in invasive ductal carcinoma (IDC).

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There is a need for absolute leukocyte enumeration in the clinical setting, and accurate, reliable (and affordable) technology to determine absolute leukocyte counts has been developed. Such technology includes single platform and dual platform approaches. Derivations of these counts commonly incorporate the addition of a known number of latex microsphere beads to a blood sample, although it has been suggested that the addition of beads to a sample may only be required to act as an internal quality control procedure for assessing the pipetting error.

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Purpose: Small portable devices that provide delayed auditory feedback (DAF) and/or frequency altered feedback (FAF) have been developed and marketed to clinicians and people who stutter as fluency enhancing aids for use in everyday speaking situations. The literature contains many laboratory-based reports about the impact of altered auditory feedback (AAF) on the speech of people who stutter but few reports about its use in everyday speaking situations. This paper investigates use patterns and perceptions of the effectiveness and satisfaction with AAF devices.

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The clinical course of patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) is heterogeneous with some patients requiring early therapy whereas others will not be treated for years. The evaluation of an individual CLL patient's prognosis remains a problematic issue. The presence or absence of somatic mutations in the IgVH genes is currently the gold-standard prognostic factor, but this technique is labor intensive and costly.

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Background: We have previously reported a flow rate calibration method for the determination of absolute CD4(+) T-lymphocyte counts that removes the need for the addition of latex beads to each sample. However, a limitation with this approach is that a calibration factor (CF) needs to be applied to adjust for differences in viscosity between latex bead suspensions and biological specimens. We have also demonstrated the value of using stabilized whole blood samples in external quality assessment (EQA) studies; such samples have a stable absolute lymphocyte count for over 1 year, at 4 degrees C.

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