Publications by authors named "Erhardt E"

Introduction: Nintedanib is approved for the treatment of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), other forms of progressive pulmonary fibrosis (PPF), and systemic sclerosis-associated interstitial lung disease (ILD). We present global post-marketing safety data for nintedanib in these fibrosing ILDs.

Methods: Data on adverse events in patients with fibrosing ILDs who were treated with nintedanib were collected via spontaneous reporting and solicited reporting in various studies (excluding clinical trials).

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The Global ECT MRI Research Collaboration (GEMRIC) has collected clinical and neuroimaging data of patients treated with electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) from around the world. Results to date have focused on neuroimaging correlates of antidepressant response. GEMRIC sites have also collected longitudinal cognitive data.

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Neuroinflammation is a key component underlying multiple neurological disorders, yet non-invasive and cost-effective assessment of in vivo neuroinflammatory processes in the central nervous system remains challenging. Diffusion weighted magnetic resonance spectroscopy (dMRS) has shown promise in addressing these challenges by measuring diffusivity properties of different neurometabolites, which can reflect cell-specific morphologies. Prior work has demonstrated dMRS utility in capturing microglial reactivity in the context of lipopolysaccharide (LPS) challenges and serious neurological disorders, detected as changes of microglial metabolite diffusivity properties.

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Article Synopsis
  • - Cerebrovascular dysfunction following pediatric mild traumatic brain injury (pmTBI) is not well-studied compared to other injuries, but this study aimed to analyze cerebrovascular reactivity (CVR) and cerebral blood flow (CBF) in youths aged 8-18 post-injury.
  • - Researchers collected data approximately one week and four months after the injury, observing subtle clinical and cognitive deficits at the one-week mark that improved over time for some but not all participants.
  • - The study found increased CVR responses in pmTBI patients, particularly in certain brain regions, and noted that cerebrovascular dysfunction could persist for up to four months after the injury without a direct link to cognitive deficits or post-concussive
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Background: Despite clinical practice guidelines prioritizing cardiorenal risk reduction, national trends in diabetes outcomes, particularly in rural communities, do not mirror the benefits seen in clinical trials with emerging therapeutics and technologies.

Objective: Project ECHO supports implementation of guidelines in under-resourced areas through virtual communities of practice, sharing of best practices, and case-based learning. We hypothesized that diabetes outcomes of patients treated by ECHO-trained primary care providers (PCPs) would be similar to those of patients treated by specialists at an academic medical center.

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With the steadily increasing abundance of longitudinal neuroimaging studies with large sample sizes and multiple repeated measures, questions arise regarding the appropriate modeling of variance and covariance. The current study examined the influence of standard classes of variance-covariance structures in linear mixed effects (LME) modeling of fMRI data from patients with pediatric mild traumatic brain injury (pmTBI; N = 181) and healthy controls (N = 162). During two visits, participants performed a cognitive control fMRI paradigm that compared congruent and incongruent stimuli.

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Article Synopsis
  • Research indicates cerebrovascular dysfunction plays a key role in Parkinson's disease (PD), prompting a study using BOLD MRI to assess cerebrovascular reactivity (CVR) in PD patients compared to healthy controls.
  • The study analyzed whole-brain maps of CVR amplitude and latency, revealing a specific pattern (PD-CVRP) with increased latency in several brain areas for PD patients and decreased latency in cerebral white matter.
  • While no significant clinical correlations were identified due to sample size limitations, the PD-CVRP underscores the potential of cerebrovascular dysfunction as a biomarker for PD in future research.
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Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) pulse amplitude, which dictates the induced electric field (E-field) magnitude in the brain, is presently fixed at 800 or 900 milliamperes (mA) without clinical or scientific rationale. We have previously demonstrated that increased E-field strength improves ECT's antidepressant effect but worsens cognitive outcomes. Amplitude-determined seizure titration may reduce the E-field variability relative to fixed amplitude ECT.

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While the analysis of temporal signal fluctuations and co-fluctuations has long been a fixture of blood oxygenation-level dependent (BOLD) functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) research, the role and implications of spatial propagation within the 4D neurovascular BOLD signal has been almost entirely neglected. As part of a larger research program aimed at capturing and analyzing spatially propagative dynamics in BOLD fMRI, we report here a method that exposes large-scale functional attractors of spatial flows formulated as Markov processes defined at the voxel level. The brainwide stationary distributions of these voxel-level Markov processes represent patterns of signal accumulation toward which we find evidence that the brain exerts a probabilistic propagative undertow.

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Background: Non-chromosomal birth defects are an important risk factor for several childhood cancers. However, these associations are less clear for Hodgkin lymphoma (HL). Therefore, we sought to more fully elucidate the association between non-chromosomal birth defects and HL risk.

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Objective: Hippocampal atrophy is an indicator of emerging dementia in PD, though it is unclear whether cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) Abeta-42, t-tau, or alpha-syn predict hippocampal subfield atrophy in a cohort of PD patients. To examine whether levels of CSF alpha-synuclein (alpha-syn), beta-amyloid 1-42 (Abeta-42) or total-tau (t-tau) are associated with hippocampal subfield volumes over time.

Methods: We identified a subset of Parkinson's Progression Markers Initiative (PPMI) PD patients with longitudinal T1-weighted imaging (baseline plus at least two additional visits across 12, 24, and 48 months) and CSF biomarkers available at baseline.

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Article Synopsis
  • Neuromelanin-sensitive MRI methods show potential for noninvasive detection of substantia nigra degeneration in Parkinson's disease patients, but further evaluation of quantification techniques is required.
  • The study compared different measures (spatial, signal-intensity, and subject-specific) to better differentiate between Parkinson's patients and healthy controls, concluding that signal intensity measures were the most effective.
  • Automated atlas-based metrics outperformed manual tracing metrics, indicating a need for future research on their applicability for other types of parkinsonism and as long-term monitoring tools.
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There is a growing body of research showing that cerebral pathophysiological processes triggered by pediatric mild traumatic brain injury (pmTBI) may extend beyond the usual clinical recovery timeline. It is paramount to further unravel these processes, because the possible long-term cognitive effects resulting from ongoing secondary injury in the developing brain are not known. In the current fMRI study, neural processes related to cognitive control were studied in 181 patients with pmTBI at sub-acute (SA; ~1 week) and early chronic (EC; ~4 months) stages post-injury.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study discusses the challenges of diagnosing mixed dementia, which combines Alzheimer's disease and vascular disease, by developing a new method to identify and classify different patient groups.
  • Using cerebrospinal fluid and brain imaging data, the researchers identified eight distinct subgroups, including those with preclinical forms of Alzheimer's and vascular dementia.
  • The findings highlight a significant relationship between cognitive functioning and the identified biomarkers, suggesting that further research is necessary to enhance diagnostic approaches.
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Background: Cerebrovascular dysfunction in Parkinson's disease (PD) is heterogeneous and may contribute to disease pathophysiology or progression. There is a need to understand the mechanisms by which cerebrovascular dysfunction is altered in participants with PD.

Objectives: The objective of this study is to test the hypothesis that participants with PD exhibit a significant reduction in the ability of the cerebral vessels to dilate in response to vasoactive challenges relative to healthy controls (HC).

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  • ECT (Electroconvulsive Therapy) is effective for treating severe depression, but it can cause cognitive side effects, prompting researchers to explore the link between brain activity during treatment and cognitive outcomes.
  • In this study with 27 participants, the researchers examined the relationship between brain electric fields, cognitive function (specifically phonemic and semantic fluency), and treatment outcomes by capturing brain wave activity during ECT sessions.
  • Findings indicate that ictal theta power is associated with the brain's electric field and cognitive abilities, suggesting it could serve as a cognitive biomarker to improve ECT treatment strategies, although more extensive studies are needed to confirm these results.
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This project compared the effectiveness of two evidence-based models of culturally competent diabetes health promotion: (DSMS), and (CCM). Our primary outcome was improvement in patient capacity for diabetes self-management as measured by the Diabetes Knowledge Questionnaire (DKQ) and the Patient Activation Measure (PAM). Our secondary outcome was patient success at diabetes self-management as measured by improvement in A1c, depression sores using the PHQ-9, and Body Mass Index (BMI).

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Depression and diabetes are co-occurring epidemics. This article explores the association between depression and diabetes in a cohort of Latinx patients with diabetes from low-income households. Data were gathered in Albuquerque, New Mexico (U.

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Blood-brain barrier (BBB) permeability can be measured by the ratio of albumin in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and blood and by dynamic contrast-enhanced MRI (DCEMRI). Albumin is a large molecule measured in CSF and blood to form the albumin index (Q), which is a global measure of BBB permeability, while the smaller Gadolinium molecule measures regional transfer (K); few studies have directly compared them in the same patients. We used both methods as part of a study of mechanisms of white matter injury in patients with different forms of dementia.

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Background And Objectives: The clinical and physiologic time course for recovery following pediatric mild traumatic brain injury (pmTBI) remains actively debated. The primary objective of the current study was to prospectively examine structural brain changes (cortical thickness and subcortical volumes) and age-at-injury effects. A priori study hypotheses predicted reduced cortical thickness and hippocampal volumes up to 4 months postinjury, which would be inversely associated with age at injury.

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Ghrelin, a regulator of food intake and energy expenditure, has been shown to be associated with insufficient sleep. The goal of the present study was to investigate the effect of a single night of total sleep deprivation on fasting saliva ghrelin and on nocturnal variation of saliva ghrelin concentration. A further aim of the study was to investigate the influence of body mass index on changes in saliva ghrelin levels.

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Objectives: Primary health care (PHC) is essential for a well-functioning health system. Although PHC has been shown to have adverse effects on health outcomes, many barriers prevent adequate access, including a shortage of primary care physicians. In New Mexico, 32 of 33 counties are designed as primary care health professional shortage areas, and the state has a lower-than-average primary care provider density compared with other states.

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Objective: To assess associations between the extent of fibrotic interstitial lung disease (ILD) and forced vital capacity (FVC) at baseline and change in FVC over 52 weeks in patients with systemic sclerosis-associated ILD (SSc-ILD) in the SENSCIS trial.

Material And Methods: We used generalized additive models, which involve few assumptions and allow for interaction between non-linear effects, to assess associations between the extent of fibrotic ILD on high-resolution computed tomography (HRCT), and the interplay of extent of fibrotic ILD on HRCT and FVC % predicted, at baseline and FVC decline over 52 weeks.

Results: In the placebo group (n = 288), there was weak evidence of a modest association between a greater extent of fibrotic ILD at baseline and a greater decline in FVC % predicted at week 52 [r: -0.

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