Publications by authors named "Dominick Lemas"

The COVID-19 pandemic directly impacted well-being and healthcare delivery, but its indirect effects on health services utilization among pregnant women and new mothers remain less understood. Understanding how big events like pandemics impact health behaviors is essential for anticipating healthcare needs during future crises. This study examined how the perceived COVID-19 threat influenced health concerns and service utilization among 378 participants who were either pregnant or mothers of infants less than 12 months old, 18 years or older, and lived within a 50-mile radius of healthcare sites in the OneFlorida+ Clinical Research Consortium.

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Reproducibility in untargeted metabolomics data processing remains a significant challenge due to software limitations and the complex series of steps required. To address these issues, we developed Nextflow4MS-DIAL, a reproducible workflow for liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) metabolomics data processing, validated with publicly available data from MetaboLights (MTBLS733). Nextflow4MS-DIAL automates LC-MS data processing to minimize human errors from manual data handling.

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Background: The study aimed to evaluate how maternal pre-pregnant body mass index (BMI) impacts participant recruitment and retention.

Methods: Participants were enrolled in a longitudinal study between 30 and 36 weeks of pregnancy as having normal weight (pre-pregnant BMI ≥ 18.5 and <25 kg/m) or obesity (pre-pregnant BMI ≥ 30.

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Background:  Preeclampsia is a potentially fatal complication during pregnancy, characterized by high blood pressure and the presence of excessive proteins in the urine. Due to its complexity, the prediction of preeclampsia onset is often difficult and inaccurate.

Objective:  This study aimed to create quantitative models to predict the onset gestational age of preeclampsia using electronic health records.

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Objective: To assess recent temporal trends in guideline-compliant pediatric lipid testing, and to examine the influence of social determinants of health (SDoH) and provider characteristics on the likelihood of testing in youth.

Study Design: In this observational, multiyear cross-sectional study, we calculated lipid testing prevalence by year among 268 627 12-year olds from 2015 through 2019 who were enrolled in Florida Medicaid and eligible for universal lipid screening during age 9 to 11, and 11 437 22-year olds (2017-2019) who were eligible for screening during age 17-21. We compared trends in testing prevalence by SDoH and health risk factors at two recommended ages and modeled the associations between patient characteristics and provider type on lipid testing using generalized estimating equations.

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Article Synopsis
  • - The study emphasizes the importance of thorough data quality testing to reduce analytic errors in observational research using clinical data, specifically focusing on the PRESERVE study about chronic kidney disease in children.
  • - A systematic approach was utilized for data quality assessments, consisting of two evaluation rounds that uncovered numerous data quality issues—115 in the first round and 157 in the second—related to completeness, consistency, and data model adherence.
  • - By prioritizing the resolution of critical data quality problems, the research team improved data accuracy and avoided excluding institutions from the study, ultimately enhancing the reliability of the analysis outcomes.
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The objective of this study is to develop and evaluate natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning models to predict infant feeding status from clinical notes in the Epic electronic health records system. The primary outcome was the classification of infant feeding status from clinical notes using Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) terms. Annotation of notes was completed using TeamTat to uniquely classify clinical notes according to infant feeding status.

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Donor human milk (DHM) from a milk bank is the recommended feeding method for preterm infants when the mother's own milk (MOM) is not available. Despite this recommendation, information on the possible contamination of donor human milk and its impact on infant health outcomes is poorly characterised. The aim of this systematic review is to assess contaminants present in DHM samples that preterm and critically ill infants consume.

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Article Synopsis
  • The American Medical Informatics Association's Genomics and Translational Biomedical Informatics Workgroup is assessing how AI can be applied in genomics for better health outcomes.
  • The assessment involved discussions among workgroup members and reviews of relevant literature to reach consensus on key factors influencing AI's clinical application in genomics.
  • Important conclusions highlight the need for extensive informatics research, larger datasets, the avoidance of exacerbating disparities, standardized genomic data, and collaborative interfaces between AI technologies and clinicians for improved decision-making.
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Liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) metabolomics studies produce high-dimensional data that must be processed by a complex network of informatics tools to generate analysis-ready data sets. As the first computational step in metabolomics, data processing is increasingly becoming a challenge for researchers to develop customized computational workflows that are applicable for LC-MS metabolomics analysis. Ontology-based automated workflow composition (AWC) systems provide a feasible approach for developing computational workflows that consume high-dimensional molecular data.

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Women who experience stillbirths are at increased risk for severe maternal morbidity and mortality, which makes the postpartum period a critical time in which to address health conditions and prevent complications. However, research on the health care needs of women who experience stillbirths is scarce, and these women are often excluded from research on the postpartum period. Therefore, the purpose of this commentary is to identify gaps in the research on postpartum care after stillbirth, explain why current fourth trimester care guidelines in the United States are inadequate, and advocate for nursing research and practice to improve understanding of health care needs in the fourth trimester.

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Epidemiological data demonstrate that bovine whole milk is often substituted for human milk during the first 12 months of life and may be associated with adverse infant outcomes. The objective of this study is to interrogate the human and bovine milk metabolome at 2 weeks of life to identify unique metabolites that may impact infant health outcomes. Human milk ( = 10) was collected at 2 weeks postpartum from normal-weight mothers (pre-pregnant BMI < 25 kg/m) that vaginally delivered term infants and were exclusively breastfeeding their infant for at least 2 months.

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Studies have demonstrated the importance of the gut microbiota during pregnancy, and there is emerging literature on the postpartum maternal gut microbiota. The primary objective of this paper was to synthesize the literature on the postpartum gut microbiome composition and diversity measured in stool samples from healthy mothers of predominantly term infants. The secondary objectives were (1) to identify biological and environmental factors that influence postpartum maternal gut microbiota and (2) to assess health conditions and clinical intermediate measures associated with postpartum gut microbiota changes in all mothers.

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Background: Perinatal health outcomes are influenced by a variety of socioeconomic, behavioral, and economic factors that reduce access to health services. Despite these observations, rural communities continue to face barriers, including a lack of resources and the fragmentation of health services.

Objective: To evaluate patterns in health outcomes, health behaviors, socioeconomic vulnerability, and sociodemographic characteristics across rural and nonrural counties within a single health system catchment area.

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Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic created an unprecedented need for population-level clinical trials focused on the discovery of life-saving therapies and treatments. However, there is limited information on perception of research participation among perinatal populations, a population of particular interest during the pandemic.

Methods: Eligible respondents were 18 years or older, were currently pregnant or had an infant (≤12 months old), and lived in Florida within 50 miles of sites participating in the OneFlorida Clinical Research Consortium.

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Background: Liquid chromatography-high resolution mass spectrometry (LC-HRMS) is a popular approach for metabolomics data acquisition and requires many data processing software tools. The FAIR Principles - Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reusability - were proposed to promote open science and reusable data management, and to maximize the benefit obtained from contemporary and formal scholarly digital publishing. More recently, the FAIR principles were extended to include Research Software (FAIR4RS).

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Background: Atopic dermatitis (AD) is a chronic, inflammatory skin disease commonly onset during infancy.

Objective: We examine the association between pre-and postnatal antibiotic exposure and the development of AD.

Methods: A retrospective, observational study analyzed 4106 infants at the University of Florida from June 2011 to April 2017.

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Purpose Of Review: Precision health provides an unprecedented opportunity to improve the assessment of infant nutrition and health outcomes. Breastfeeding is positively associated with infant health outcomes, yet only 58.3% of children born in 2017 were still breastfeeding at 6 months.

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Attendance at professional society meetings facilitates networking, collaboration, and success in academic/scientific fields. Insufficient funds, support, or resources for caregiving can inhibit attendance for parents/caretakers, who may become professionally disadvantaged by not attending professional society conferences. The American Society for Nutrition (ASN) offered a family support grant for caregiving needs during the annual conference (maximum: $750); however, the perceived impact of caregiving funds on attendance outcomes is unknown.

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Objective: We sought to examine the extent to which body mass index (BMI) was available in electronic health records for Florida Medicaid recipients aged 5 to 18 years taking Second-Generation Antipsychotics (SGAP). We also sought to illustrate how clinical data can be used to identify children most at-risk for SGAP-induced weight gain, which cannot be done using process-focused measures.

Methods: Electronic health record (EHR) data and Medicaid claims were linked from 2013 to 2019.

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Clinical metabolomics emerged as a novel approach for biomarker discovery with the translational potential to guide next-generation therapeutics and precision health interventions. However, reproducibility in clinical research employing metabolomics data is challenging. Checklists are a helpful tool for promoting reproducible research.

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The number of metabolomics studies have increased dramatically in recent years, spanning from basic/mechanistic research to the identification and validation of clinical biomarkers. Developments in analyte separation techniques and the growth of databases are largely responsible for the rapid growth of metabolomics, although broad differences in analytical workflows can result in difficulty when comparing data across studies. The establishment of baseline metabolomics data for human reference materials using complementary/orthogonal data acquisition strategies can help to alleviate some of these challenges.

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Background: Atopic dermatitis (AD) is a common pediatric skin condition with significant morbidity. It is unclear what factors contribute to racial differences in disease prevalence.

Methods: A single-site, retrospective cohort study of infants born from June 1, 2011, to April 30, 2017, was performed.

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Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has had a widespread impact on attendance in biomedical research and health care visits.

Objective: This study aimed to identify when and how American adults might feel comfortable about resuming in-person research and health care visits.

Methods: Cross-sectional questionnaire data were collected from 135 adults (age: median 48 years; women: n=113, 83.

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Background: Electronic health records (EHRs) hold great potential for longitudinal mother-baby studies, ranging from assessing study feasibility to facilitating patient recruitment to streamlining study visits and data collection. Existing studies on the perspectives of pregnant and breastfeeding women on EHR use have been limited to the use of EHRs to engage in health care rather than to participate in research.

Objective: The aim of this study is to explore the perspectives of pregnant and breastfeeding women on releasing their own and their infants' EHR data for longitudinal research to identify factors affecting their willingness to participate in research.

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