Publications by authors named "Dean D"

White matter (WM) development early in life is a critical component of brain development that facilitates the coordinated function of neuronal pathways. Additionally, alterations in WM have been implicated in various neurodevelopmental disorders, including psychiatric disorders. Because of the need to understand WM development in the weeks immediately following birth, we characterized changes in WM microstructure throughout the postnatal macaque brain during the first year of life.

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  • Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) respond dynamically to their microenvironment, which is crucial for studying their true behavior; this study investigated how native extracellular matrices (ECMs) from bone marrow (BM) and adipose (AD) tissues influence MSC function.
  • The research found that both ECMs have similar collagen types but vary in abundance; BM-ECM was rougher and stiffer but less adhesive compared to AD-ECM, and both improved MSC proliferation compared to standard plastic surfaces.
  • When cultured under specific conditions, BM-ECM enhanced osteogenesis (bone formation) in MSCs, while AD-ECM boosted adipogenesis (fat formation), demonstrating that each ECM type retains unique characteristics that affect MSC
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Background: Legalization of medical and recreational cannabis is a major contributor to pediatric cannabis exposures. The trends and magnitude of pediatric cannabis exposures in Michigan after medical cannabis legalization in 2008 have not been assessed.

Objective: To describe the temporal trends of pediatric cannabis exposures reported to the Michigan Poison Center (MiPC) after medical cannabis was legalized in 2008 and 1 year after legalization of recreational cannabis in 2018.

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Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder that affects cognition and memory. Recent advances have helped identify many clinical sub-types in AD. Mounting evidence point toward structural polymorphism among fibrillar aggregates of amyloid-β (Aβ) to being responsible for the phenotypes and clinical manifestations.

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An intact lung epithelial barrier is essential for lung homeostasis. The Na+, K+-ATPase (NKA), primarily serving as an ion transporter, also regulates epithelial barrier function via modulation of tight junctions. However, the underlying mechanism is not well understood.

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Background: Minimally invasive surgery (MIS) is increasingly being used for bunion correction, but limited patient outcome data have been reported for third-generation minimally invasive chevron/Akin (MICA) techniques. The aim of this study was to report on radiographic outcomes, pain control, satisfaction, learning curve, and complication rates in a consecutive series of 94 patients undergoing MICA procedures for hallux valgus. It also describes strategies for avoiding perioperative complications that may arise with MIS bunionectomies.

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Exogenous electric fields are currently used in human therapy in a number of contexts. Interestingly, electric fields have also been shown to alter migration and function of immune cells, suggesting the potential for electric field-based immune therapy. Little is known as to the effect of electric field treatment (EFT) on the lung.

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Loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) has been widely used to detect many infectious diseases. However, minor inconveniences during the steps of adding reaction ingredients and lack of simple color results hinder point-of-care detection. We therefore invented a fluorometric paper-based LAMP by incorporating LAMP reagents, including a biotinylated primer, onto a cellulose membrane paper, with a simple DNA fluorescent dye incubation that demonstrated rapid and accurate results parallel to quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) methods.

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Patient-derived xenografts (PDXs) are resected human tumors engrafted into mice for preclinical studies and therapeutic testing. It has been proposed that the mouse host affects tumor evolution during PDX engraftment and propagation, affecting the accuracy of PDX modeling of human cancer. Here, we exhaustively analyze copy number alterations (CNAs) in 1,451 PDX and matched patient tumor (PT) samples from 509 PDX models.

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Nitrogen fixation by nitrogenase begins with the accumulation of four reducing equivalents at the active-site FeMo-cofactor (FeMo-co), generating a state (denoted E(4H)) with two [Fe-H-Fe] bridging hydrides. Recently, photolytic reductive elimination () of the E(4H) hydrides showed that enzymatic of E(4H) hydride yields an H-bound complex (E(H,2H)), in a process corresponding to a formal 2-electron reduction of the metal-ion core of FeMo-co. The resulting electron-density redistribution from Fe-H bonds to the metal ions themselves enables N to bind with concomitant H release, a process illuminated here by QM/MM molecular dynamics simulations.

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The BioCompute Object (BCO) standard is an IEEE standard (IEEE 2791-2020) designed to facilitate the communication of next-generation sequencing data analysis with applications across academia, government agencies, and industry. For example, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) supports the standard for regulatory submissions and includes the standard in their Data Standards Catalog for the submission of HTS data. We created the BCO App to facilitate BCO generation in a range of computational environments and, in part, to participate in the Advanced Track of the precisionFDA BioCompute Object App-a-thon.

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Background: Deaths attributable to psychostimulants with abuse potential have increased in the United States (US) in recent years. Methamphetamine use, in particular, has risen sharply. We evaluated the correlation between amphetamine- and methamphetamine-related case exposures reported to the Michigan Poison Center (MiPC) coinciding with psychostimulant age-adjusted mortality rates from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS).

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Purpose: Chordomas are rare, slow-growing sarcomas without any accepted prognostic biomarkers. Owing to their proximity to critical neurovascular structures, discovering predictive biomarkers in chordoma has been a significant research effort because it may potentially reduce risky therapies in patients with less aggressive tumors. In response, because cyclin E1 overexpression correlates with patient prognosis in several malignancies, we investigated its expression in chordoma and whether it informs patient prognosis.

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The COVID-19 crisis has resulted in disruption of everyday life worldwide but the impact and response to the pandemic have not been uniform. Many countries rapidly deployed physical-distancing mandates to curb the spread of the virus; others did not. Social distancing strategies are necessary to reduce the transmission of the virus but there may be unintended consequences.

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Low-income, racial/ethnic minority individuals face significant barriers in access to substance use (SU) treatment. Peer recovery coaches (PRCs), individuals with lived experience with substance use disorder (SUD), may be uniquely well suited to assist those encountering barriers to treatment. PRCs can also help reach those not engaged in treatment to promote harm reduction and support linkage-to-care when embedded in community rather than clinical settings.

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To understand the physiology and pathology of disease, capturing the heterogeneity of cell types within their tissue environment is fundamental. In such an endeavor, the human kidney presents a formidable challenge because its complex organizational structure is tightly linked to key physiological functions. Advances in imaging-based cell classification may be limited by the need to incorporate specific markers that can link classification to function.

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South Korea was able to successfully control the spread of COVID-19 without nationwide lockdowns or drastic social distancing efforts, but pandemic-related psychological outcome of the general population remains unknown. Between March and June 2020, 400 South Korean residents participated in an online study of depression, anxiety, stress, psychosis-risk and loneliness, as well as indices of social network, physical health and demographics. Clinical levels of depression, anxiety or stress were reported by 45% of the respondents, and psychosis-risk was present in 12.

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Chronic endoplasmic reticulum stress resulting from misfolding of the visual pigment rhodopsin (RHO) can lead to loss of rod photoreceptors, which initiates retinitis pigmentosa, characterized initially by diminished nighttime and peripheral vision. Cone photoreceptors depend on rods for glucose transport, which the neurons use for assembly of visual pigment-rich structures; as such, loss of rods also leads to a secondary loss of cone function, diminishing high-resolution color vision utilized for tasks including reading, driving, and facial recognition. If dysfunctional rods could be maintained to continue to serve this secondary cone preservation function, it might benefit patients with retinitis pigmentosa, but the mechanisms by which rods are removed are not fully established.

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Article Synopsis
  • LOY is linked to aging and increased cancer rates, particularly in prostate, pancreatic, and colorectal cancers in males.
  • A study analyzed blood samples from 50 patients with colorectal, prostate, and pancreatic cancers and 100 healthy controls, measuring the Y/X ratio to assess LOY levels.
  • Results showed significantly lower Y/X ratios in all cancer patients compared to controls, indicating that LOY is a strong predictor of cancer presence, outperforming age as a predictive factor.
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The current study was designed to evaluate the pathogenesis, pathology and immune response of female genital tract infection with L2c, the most recently discovered lymphogranuloma venereum strain, using a porcine model of sexually transmitted infections. Pigs were mock infected, infected once or infected and re-infected intravaginally, and samples were obtained for chlamydial culture, gross and microscopic pathology, and humoral and cell-mediated immunity. Intravaginal inoculation of pigs with this bacterium resulted in an infection that was confined to the urogenital tract, where inflammation and pathology were caused that resembled what is seen in human infection.

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Delivery of genetic material to tissues is an important technique used in research settings and is the foundation upon which clinical gene therapy is built. The lung is a prime target for gene delivery due to a host of genetic, acquired, and infectious diseases that manifest themselves there, resulting in many pathologies. However, the delivery of genetic material to the lung remains a practical problem clinically and is considered the major obstacle needed to be overcome for gene therapy.

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Background: Recently, surface EMG of parasternal intercostal muscle has been incorporated in the "ERS Statement of Respiratory Muscle Testing" as a clinical technique to monitor the neural respiratory drive (NRD). However, the anatomy of the parasternal muscle risks confounding EMG "crosstalk" activity from neighboring muscles.

Objectives: To determine if surface "parasternal" EMG: 1) reliably estimates parasternal intercostal EMG activity, 2) is a valid surrogate expressing neural respiratory drive (NRD).

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