Publications by authors named "Debbie Burdinski"
Article Synopsis
- The study investigates the effects of one year of medical cannabis use on brain function, specifically focusing on areas tied to working memory, reward, and inhibitory control.
- Conducted in the Boston area, the cohort study involved individuals aged 18-65 who sought medical cannabis cards for conditions like anxiety, depression, pain, or insomnia.
- Results showed brain imaging performed before and after a year of cannabis use did not reveal significant changes in brain activation related to the cognitive tasks evaluated.
Importance: Cannabis is increasingly being used to treat medical symptoms, but the effects of cannabis use on brain function in those using cannabis for these symptoms is not known.
Objective: To test whether brain activation during working memory, reward, and inhibitory control tasks, areas of cognition impacted by cannabis, showed increases following one year of cannabis use for medical symptoms.
Design: This observational cohort study took place from July 2017 to July 2020 and is reported on in 2024.
UV irradiation remodels the specificity landscape of transcription factors.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A
March 2023
Somatic mutations are highly enriched at transcription factor (TF) binding sites, with the strongest trend being observed for ultraviolet light (UV)-induced mutations in melanomas. One of the main mechanisms proposed for this hypermutation pattern is the inefficient repair of UV lesions within TF-binding sites, caused by competition between TFs bound to these lesions and the DNA repair proteins that must recognize the lesions to initiate repair. However, TF binding to UV-irradiated DNA is poorly characterized, and it is unclear whether TFs maintain specificity for their DNA sites after UV exposure.
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