Publications by authors named "Dennis Wong"

Carbon emissions are increasing due to continued urban developments and the growth of the human population, leading to environmental issues such as global warming. Moving towards the future, projected population growth will cause an increase in energy demand. Without the transition to cleaner energy generation, a high dependency on electricity generation by fossil fuels will emit more harmful gases, worsening the impacts of global warming.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Colorectal cancer (CRC) is a commonly diagnosed malignancy with significant mortality rates worldwide. The identification of robust prognostic biomarkers for prediction of survival outcomes and recurrence can aid disease management and improve patients' quality of living.

Aim: This study aimed to investigate the prognostic value of cadherin 17 (CDH17) tissue expression in CRC patients by utilizing a standardized automated immunohistochemistry (IHC) platform integrated with a digitalized scoring system.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) among adolescents is a prime public health concern worldwide. Research found that IPV victimization and peers' IPV perpetration could increase the likelihood of IPV perpetration. In contrast, healthy partner attachment, forgiveness, shame management, and family harmony could serve as protective factors for IPV.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Coronary computed tomography angiography (CCTA) is used to evaluate cardiovascular risk by quantifying coronary plaque, and deep learning technology helps automate this process.
  • A study involving 2803 patients analyzed how age and sex affect coronary plaque volume and its relation to the risk of myocardial infarction, showing that plaque volume increases with age and is typically higher in men.
  • Patients with coronary plaque in the ≥75th percentile were found to have a significantly higher risk of myocardial infarction compared to those below the 50th percentile, suggesting that deep learning-based plaque measurements can effectively predict cardiac events.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Introduction: Divided narratives pose long-standing difficulties in physician and patient communication. In decision-making on cancer treatment, divided narratives between physicians and patients hinder mutual understanding and agreement over the illness and its treatment. For effective decision-making on treatments, it is necessary to investigate the similarities and differences in these divided narratives.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Indigenous Australians are known to have a higher prevalence of coronary artery disease (CAD) than non-Indigenous counterparts. Atherogenic lipid profiles, characterised by low serum levels of high-density lipoprotein (HDL) and higher serum triglycerides, have been shown to be more prevalent in Indigenous Australians. The use of computed tomography coronary angiography (CTCA) for risk stratification and diagnosis of CAD has been validated in moderate risk populations, but limited data exists in specific high-risk populations such as Indigenous Australians.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Low-dose colchicine reduces the risk of cardiovascular events after myocardial infarction (MI). The purpose of this study was to assess the effect of colchicine post-MI on coronary plaque morphology in non-culprit segments by optical coherence tomography (OCT).

Methods And Results: COCOMO-ACS was a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial that randomized 64 patients (median age 61.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Aims: Conventional thiopurines (azathioprine and mercaptopurine) remain standard therapy to maintain steroid sparing remission in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), but are regularly discontinued due to adverse drug reactions (ADRs). Measurement of the metabolites 6-thioguanine nucleotides (6-TGN), 6-methylmercaptopurine ribonucleotides (6-MMPR) and the 6-MMPR/6-TGN ratio, may predict the development of these ADRs. Our aim was to evaluate whether early thiopurine metabolite measurements were associated with clinical outcomes.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Vascular inflammation plays a crucial role in the development of atherosclerosis and atherosclerotic plaque rupture resulting in acute coronary syndrome (ACS). Pericoronary adipose tissue (PCAT) attenuation quantified from routine coronary computed tomography angiography (CCTA) has emerged as a promising non-invasive imaging biomarker of coronary inflammation. However, a detailed understanding of the natural history of PCAT attenuation is required before it can be used as a surrogate endpoint in trials of novel therapies targeting coronary inflammation.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Although the clinical factors associated with progression of coronary artery disease have been well studied, the angiographic predictors are less defined.

Objectives: Our objective was to study the clinical and angiographic factors that associate with progression of coronary artery stenoses.

Methods: We conducted a retrospective analysis of consecutive patients undergoing multiple, clinically indicated invasive coronary angiograms with an interval greater than 6 months, between January 2013 and December 2016.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background And Objective: Efficacy of infliximab in children with inflammatory bowel disease can be enhanced when serum concentrations are measured and further dosing is adjusted to achieve and maintain a target concentration. Use of a population pharmacokinetic model may help to predict an individual's infliximab dose requirement. The aim of this study was to evaluate the predictive performance of available infliximab population pharmacokinetic models in an independent cohort of Dutch children with inflammatory bowel disease.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Exposure-response studies have shown that higher infliximab concentrations are associated with better outcomes in inflammatory bowel disease. There is little agreement about the optimal time to measure infliximab levels in children.

Objectives: We aimed to evaluate whether trough levels at week 6 or week 14 predict sustained remission.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Most children with milk and egg allergy are nonreactive to modified forms of milk and egg in bakery products such as muffins because of conformational changes in proteins. These baked milk (BM) and baked egg (BE) diets have become commonplace in the management of milk and egg allergy, respectively. Current laboratory- and skin test-based diagnostic approaches remain limited in their ability to predict BM/BE tolerance, resulting in various approaches to introduce these foods.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Angioedema is characterized by swelling localized to the subcutaneous and submucosal tissues. This review provides an overview of angioedema, including the different types, triggers, and underlying pathophysiologic mechanisms. Hereditary and acquired angioedema are caused by dysregulation of the complement and kinin pathways.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • * A study examined IBD patients with different TPMT genotypes, finding that 10.3% were intermediate metabolizers and 0.8% were poor metabolizers, some of whom experienced adverse effects on standard dosages of tioguanine.
  • * Reduced dosing strategies for those with abnormal TPMT levels led to safe long-term treatment, indicating that careful monitoring and adjusted dosages can make tioguanine an effective option for IBD patients.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Cryoadsorption on the inner surface of porous materials is a promising solution for safe, fast, and reversible hydrogen storage. Within the class of highly porous metal-organic frameworks, zeolitic imidazolate frameworks (ZIFs) show high thermal, chemical, and mechanical stability. In this study, we selected ZIF-8 synthesized mechanochemically by twin-screw extrusion as powder and pellets.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Reducing standard modifiable cardiovascular risk factors (SMuRFs) is essential for addressing coronary artery disease (CAD), but some patients develop CAD without any SMuRFs.
  • Patients without SMuRFs who have a heart attack tend to have higher early mortality rates compared to those with at least one SMuRF.
  • An international team has created a clinical pathway for managing SMuRFless CAD patients, focusing on confirming their condition, ensuring proper secondary prevention, and identifying other risk factors to improve their healthcare outcomes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

To evaluate if Indigenous Australians have higher coronary inflammation demonstrated non-invasively using pericoronary adipose tissue attenuation on coronary computed tomography angiography (CCTA). We retrospectively obtained a cohort 54 Indigenous patients age- and sex-matched to 54 non-Indigenous controls (age: 46.5 ± 13.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Lateral gene transfer (LGT) is an important mechanism for genome diversification in microbial populations, including the human microbiome. While prior work has surveyed LGT events in human-associated microbial isolate genomes, the scope and dynamics of novel LGT events arising in personal microbiomes are not well understood, as there are no widely adopted computational methods to detect, quantify, and characterize LGT from complex microbial communities. We addressed this by developing, benchmarking, and experimentally validating a computational method (WAAFLE) to profile novel LGT events from assembled metagenomes.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The Society of Cardiovascular Computed Tomography (SCCT) is an international community of physicians, scientists and technologists advocating for research, education, and clinical excellence in the use of cardiovascular computed tomography (CCT). SCCT members are committed to improving health outcomes through effective use of CCT. The SCCT routinely authors, endorses, and jointly collaborates on scientific documents that reflect the best available evidence and expert consensus supported in practice of CCT.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objectives: Epicardial adipose tissue (EAT) is a proposed marker of cardiovascular risk; however, clinical application may be limited by variability in post-processing software platforms. We assessed inter-vendor agreement of EAT volume (EATv) and attenuation on both contrast-enhanced (CE) and non-contrast CT (NCT) using a standard coronary CT reporting software (Vitrea), an EAT research-specific software (QFAT) and a freeware imaging software (OsiriX).

Methods: Seventy-six consecutive patients undergoing simultaneous CE and NCT had complete volumetric EAT measurement.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Previous studies showed that radiologists can detect the gist of an abnormality in a mammogram based on a half-second image presentation through global processing of screening mammograms. This study investigated the intra- and inter-observer reliability of the radiologists' initial impressions about the abnormality (or "gist signal"). It also examined if a subset of radiologists produced more reliable and accurate gist signals.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

There are limited data on therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) patients treated with vedolizumab (VDZ). Although an exposure-response relation has been demonstrated in the post-induction phase, this relationship is more uncertain in the maintenance phase of treatment. The aim of our study was to determine whether there is an association between VDZ trough concentration and clinical and biochemical remission in the maintenance phase.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • The study investigates the link between pericoronary adipose tissue (PCAT) attenuation, a measure of coronary inflammation, and stent failure in patients who underwent percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI).
  • Using computer tomography coronary angiography (CTCA), the authors analyzed patients who had a stent placed and underwent follow-up angiography within five years to define stent failure.
  • Results indicated that patients with stent failure had higher PCAT attenuation at baseline, suggesting a significant association between coronary inflammation and the likelihood of stent failure.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF