Publications by authors named "E Dawkins"

Schizophrenia is a leading cause of global disease burden. Current drug treatments are associated with significant side effects and have limited efficacy for many patients, highlighting the need to develop new approaches that target other aspects of the neurobiology of schizophrenia. Preclinical, in vivo imaging, postmortem, genetic, and pharmacological studies have highlighted the key role of cortical GABAergic (gamma-aminobutyric acidergic)-glutamatergic microcircuits and their projections to subcortical dopaminergic circuits in the pathoetiology of negative, cognitive, and psychotic symptoms.

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Background: Midlife hypertension is associated with cognitive decline and Alzheimer's disease and related dementia (ADRD), suggesting that blood pressure control may be a therapeutic target for dementia prevention. Given excess hypertension in non-Hispanic Black (NHB) adults, blood pressure control may also reduce ADRD disparities. We describe a pilot randomized controlled trial (RCT) to evaluate the feasibility and preliminary efficacy of a multicomponent lifestyle-based intervention versus enhanced usual care on cognition among middle-aged NHB adults.

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Food insecurity affects nearly 50 million Americans and is linked to cardiovascular disease risk factors and health disparities. The purpose of this single-arm pilot study was to determine the feasibility of a 16-week dietitian-led lifestyle intervention to concurrently address food access, nutrition literacy, cooking skills, and hypertension among safety-net primary care adult patients. The Food Resources and Kitchen Skills (FoRKS) intervention provided nutrition education and support for hypertension self-management, group kitchen skills and cooking classes from a health center teaching kitchen, medically tailored home-delivered meals and meal kits, and a kitchen toolkit.

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Imbalances in the amounts of amyloid-β peptides (Aβ) generated by the membrane proteases β- and γ-secretase are considered as a trigger of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Cell-free studies of γ-secretase have shown that increasing membrane thickness modulates Aβ generation but it has remained unclear if these effects are translatable to cells. Here we show that the very long-chain fatty acid erucic acid (EA) triggers acyl chain remodeling in AD cell models, resulting in substantial lipidome alterations which included increased esterification of EA in membrane lipids.

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Prediabetes is a novel risk factor recently associated with changes in the left ventricle. Our aim is to determine if prediabetes is associated with heart failure (HF) and structural heart disease. We conducted a cross-sectional study and performed screening echocardiograms to consecutive primary care patients.

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