Publications by authors named "Connie Yan"

is a unicellular ciliate capable of contracting to a quarter of its body length in less than five milliseconds. When measured as fractional shortening, this is an order of magnitude faster than motion powered by actomyosin. Myonemes, which are protein networks found near the cortex of many protists, are believed to power contraction.

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The 5-2-1 criteria was developed to facilitate the identification and referral of patients with Parkinson's Disease (PD) inadequately controlled by oral medications. The criterion was not developed to screen patients with PD for device-aided therapy eligibility. The robust design and validation of the 5-2-1 criteria minimizes over or inappropriate referrals, and supports physicians in the timely identification of patients with PD who may warrant further evaluation for treatment optimization.

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Introduction: Early, simple predictors for long-term survival in Parkinson's disease (PD) may help identify patients at elevated risk and are crucial for more personalized treatment.

Methods: This large, retrospective study examined whether higher levodopa equivalent daily dose (LEDD) a year after diagnosis predicts long-term survival.

Results: Mortality risk was increased among 292 patients receiving ≥ 600 mg LEDD versus 2233 patients receiving < 600 mg LEDD (hazard ratio 1.

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Objectives: While factors contributing to dental antibiotic overprescribing have previously been described, previous work has lacked any theoretical behavior change framework that could guide future intervention development. The purpose of this study was to use an evidence-based conceptual model to identify barriers and facilitators of appropriate antibiotic prescribing by dentists as a guide for future interventions aimed at modifying antibiotic prescribing.

Methods: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with dentists from the National Dental Practice Based Research Network (PBRN) exploring patient and practice factors perceived to impact antibiotic prescribing.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study focused on primary progressive aphasia (PPA) in native Chinese speakers, highlighting the unique challenges posed by the classifier system in Chinese compared to Indo-European languages.
  • Results showed that both semantic variant (sv) PPA and logopenic variant (lv) PPA patients struggled significantly with classifier production, with lvPPA patients performing better in recognition tasks.
  • The findings indicate that classifier processing could serve as a linguistic marker for distinguishing between different PPA variants, with performance linked to specific brain regions involved in language and visual processing.
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Introduction: Studies show that medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD) reduce illicit opioid use, emergency healthcare services, opioid-related overdose, and death. However, few studies have investigated the long-term cost-effectiveness of MOUD in office-based opioid treatment (OBOT) and opioid treatment program (OTP) settings. We aimed to estimate the cost, utility, quality-adjusted life years gained (QALYs), and incremental cost-effectiveness ratios (ICERs) of three MOUD compared to each other and counseling without medication from a US healthcare sector perspective.

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Objectives: Dentists prescribe 10% of all outpatient antibiotics in the United States and are the top specialty prescriber. Data on current antibiotic prescribing trends are scarce. Therefore, we evaluated trends in antibiotic prescribing rates by dentists, and we further assessed whether these trends differed by agent, specialty, and by patient characteristics.

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Introduction: Device-aided therapy may improve the quality of life (QoL) for people with advanced Parkinson's disease (PD) and poorly controlled symptoms with oral therapy. MANAGE-PD is a validated tool classifying patients based on symptom control and advanced treatment eligibility. This study focused on patient/caregiver reported outcomes and healthcare resource utilization among patients grouped by MANAGE-PD categories.

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Introduction: Low health literacy (HL) is consistently associated with worse health outcomes. Routine clinical screening with available instruments is impractical because of added time and effort. Prior findings suggested that signature time may be a reliable alternative measure of HL among general medicine patients.

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Cells have complex and beautiful structures that are important for their function. However, understanding the molecular mechanisms that produce these structures is a challenging problem due to the gap in size scales between molecular interactions and cellular structures. The giant ciliate is a unicellular model organism whose large size, reproducible structure, and ability to heal wounds and regenerate have historically allowed the formation of structure in a single cell to be addressed using methods of experimental embryology.

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Introduction: Complex polypharmacy regimens to manage persistent motor fluctuations result in significant pill burden for patients with advanced Parkinson's disease (APD). This study evaluated the effectiveness of carbidopa/levodopa enteral suspension (CLES) and deep brain stimulation (DBS) on reducing pill burden in APD patients.

Methods: We utilized 100% Medicare fee-for-service claims from 2014 to 2018 linked to CLES Patient Support Program (PSP) data.

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Introduction: Carbidopa/levodopa enteral suspension (CLES) previously demonstrated reduction in total daily OFF from baseline by over 4 hours in advanced Parkinson's disease patients across 54 weeks. Evidence on CLES's long-term effectiveness on patterns of motor-symptom control throughout the day remains limited.

Methods: We present post-hoc analyses of a large, open-label study of CLES monotherapy (N = 289).

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Introduction: Research comparing levodopa/carbidopa intestinal gel (LCIG), deep brain stimulation (DBS), and continuous subcutaneous apomorphine infusion (CSAI) for advanced Parkinson's disease (PD) is lacking. This network meta-analysis (NMA) assessed the comparative effectiveness of LCIG, DBS, CSAI and best medical therapy (BMT) in reducing off-time and improving quality of life (QoL) in patients with advanced PD.

Methods: A systematic literature review was conducted for randomized controlled trials (RCTs), observational and interventional studies from January 2003 to September 2019.

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The giant ciliate Stentor coeruleus is a classical model system for studying regeneration and morphogenesis in a single cell. The anterior of the cell is marked by an array of cilia, known as the oral apparatus, which can be induced to shed and regenerate in a series of reproducible morphological steps, previously shown to require transcription. If a cell is cut in half, each half regenerates an intact cell.

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Article Synopsis
  • Dentists in the U.S. often prescribe opioids for dental pain despite nonopioid alternatives being more effective, leading to a study on the factors influencing their prescribing behavior.
  • Interviews with 73 dentists revealed ten main themes related to their Capability, Opportunity, and Motivation Model of Behavior, highlighting the role of knowledge and clinical experiences in their decisions.
  • To promote safer prescribing practices, the study suggests that targeted education and improvements in the dental practice environment could help dentists better communicate pain management options and reduce opioid use.
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Although nonsteroidal anti inflammatory drugs are superior to opioids in dental pain management, opioids are still prescribed for dental pain in the United States. Little is known about the serious adverse outcomes of short-acting opioids within the context of dental prescribing. The objective of this study was to evaluate adverse outcomes and persistent opioid use (POU) after opioid prescriptions by dentists, based on whether opioids were overprescribed or within recommendations.

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Objective: Women with multiple comorbidities have competing health needs that may delay screening for early detection of breast cancer. Our objective was to determine associations between physical functioning and frailty with risk of locally-advanced breast cancer (BC).

Methods: We conducted a retrospective cohort study of women 65 years and older diagnosed with first primary stage I-III BC using the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results Medicare Health Outcome Survey Data Resource.

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Cellular components are non-randomly arranged with respect to the shape and polarity of the whole cell. Patterning within cells can extend down to the level of individual proteins and mRNA. But how much of the proteome is actually localized with respect to cell polarity axes? Proteomics combined with cellular fractionation has shown that most proteins localize to one or more organelles but does not tell us how many proteins have a polarized localization with respect to the large-scale polarity axes of the intact cell.

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Introduction: In advanced Parkinson's disease (PD), a high pill burden is associated with poor compliance, reduced control of symptoms, and decreased quality of life. We assessed the impact of carbidopa-levodopa enteral suspension (CLES) and deep brain stimulation (DBS) on PD-related pill burden.

Methods: A retrospective cohort analysis was conducted in the IBM MarketScan and Medicare Supplemental databases.

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Article Synopsis
  • * Researchers evaluated 40 PPA patients and 20 cognitively normal individuals through a Chinese dictation test (CLAP) and found that all PPA patients had significantly lower writing accuracy compared to controls, with no notable differences among the PPA variants.
  • * The test exhibited high sensitivity and specificity for identifying PPA in Chinese speakers, and specific types of writing errors were linked to different PPA variants, correlating with certain brain regions essential for language processing.
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Article Synopsis
  • A study analyzed opioid prescribing trends by U.S. dentists from 2012 to 2019, revealing excessive prescriptions and a need for more data on prescribing habits.
  • Over the 8-year period, more than 87.2 million opioid prescriptions were issued, with notable decreases in both population- and dentist-based prescribing rates and daily opioid dosages over time.
  • Following 2016, dentists became more conservative in opioid prescribing, suggesting that national regulations and strategies were effective in encouraging reduced use of opioids in dentistry.
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Background: Anticoagulation with warfarin represents a transportation-sensitive treatment state. Transportation barrier is a common reason for not using health care services.

Objective: To assess the association between transportation barriers to anticoagulation clinic and anticoagulation control (AC) among an inner-city, low-income population.

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Purpose: Frailty is assessed when making treatment decisions among older women with breast cancer (BC), which in turn impacts survival. We evaluated associations between pre-diagnosis frailty and risks of BC-specific and all-cause mortality in older women.

Methods: We conducted a retrospective cohort study of Medicare beneficiaries ages ≥ 65 years with stage I-III BC using the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results-Medicare Health Outcome Survey Data Resource.

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Background: Drug-induced liver injury (DILI) is a rare but known adverse event associated with trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole (TMP-SMX) in adults. No studies to date have looked at the risk of this association in children. We systematically reviewed the evidence for a potential association between TMP-SMX and DILI in the pediatric population.

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