Publications by authors named "Garza A"

Culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) families of autistic children face unique challenges in accessing services that are appropriate for their cultures and languages. The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the impact of training language on caregiver skill acquisition. Using behavioral skills training (BST) through telehealth, three Latino caregivers whose first language is Spanish were taught to implement two different behavioral protocols with their autistic children.

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Pediatric solid tumors are a leading cause of childhood disease mortality. In this work, we examined germline structural variants (SVs) as risk factors for pediatric extracranial solid tumors using germline genome sequencing of 1765 affected children, their 943 unaffected parents, and 6665 adult controls. We discovered a sex-biased association between very large (>1 megabase) germline chromosomal abnormalities and increased risk of solid tumors in male children.

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Obstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) is associated with significant morbidity attributed to left ventricular outflow tract (LVOT) obstruction. Although alcohol septal ablation (ASA) is an established interventional treatment, mavacamten, a novel cardiac myosin inhibitor, has emerged as a noninvasive pharmacologic alternative. Understanding the comparative efficacy of these 2 treatments is important for optimizing patient care.

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Examinations of links between plant-based diets (e.g., vegetarian and vegan diets) and indices of physical and mental health have received increased attention in the scientific literature in recent years.

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Background: Chronic arterial hypertension restructures the vascular architecture of the brain, leading to a series of pathological responses that culminate in cerebral small-vessel disease. Pericytes respond dynamically to vascular challenges; however, how they manifest under the continuous strain of hypertension has not been elucidated.

Methods And Results: In this study, we characterized pericyte behavior alongside hypertensive states in the spontaneously hypertensive stroke-prone rat model, focusing on their phenotypic and metabolic transformation.

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Pediatric liver transplant is a lifesaving intervention for children with disparate pathology ranging from single-gene defects to global liver dysfunction and complications from progressive cirrhosis and portal hypertension. The Starzl Network for Excellence in Pediatric Transplantation (SNEPT), a novel learning health system dedicated to pediatric liver transplant, has previously identified practice variability, waitlist mortality, perioperative complications, and inadequate quality initiative implementation as critical barriers that deserve prioritization in the field. This project was a novel partnership between SNEPT and the United Network for Organ Sharing to co-design a pediatric transplant-specific data mart and web portal to systematically map an approach to understanding these barriers and deliver strategies to combat them.

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Background: Precision nutrition is based on the integration of individual's phenotypical and biological characteristics including genetic variants, epigenetic marks, gut microbiota profiles, and metabolite fingerprints as well as medical history, lifestyle practices, and environmental and cultural factors. Thus, nutriomics areas including nutrigenomics, nutrigenetics, nutriepigenetics, nutrimetabolomics, and nutrimetagenomics have emerged to comprehensively understand the complex interactions between nutrients, diet, and the human body's molecular processes through precision nutrition.

Summary: This document from the Ibero-American Network of Nutriomics and Precision Nutrition (RINN22; View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Sarcomatoid renal cell carcinoma (sRCC) is a form of renal cancer known for its aggressiveness and poor prognosis. This report presents the case of a 65-year-old male with an unusual presentation of sRCC. The patient presented with worsening kidney function, flank pain, hematuria, fatigue, and weight loss.

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To eliminate vertical HIV transmission and achieve therapy-free viral suppression among children living with HIV, novel strategies beyond antiretroviral therapy (ART) are necessary. Our group previously identified a triple broadly neutralizing antibody (bNAb) combination comprising of 3BNC117, PGDM1400 and PGT151 that mediates robust in vitro neutralization and non-neutralizing effector functions against a cross-clade panel of simian human immunodeficiency viruses (SHIVs). In this study, we evaluated the safety, pharmacokinetics, and antiviral potency of this bNAb combination in infant rhesus macaques (RMs).

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Chronic arterial hypertension disrupts the integrity of the cerebral microvasculature, doubling the risk of age-related dementia. Despite sufficient antihypertensive therapy in still a significant proportion of individuals blood pressure lowering alone does not preserve cognitive health. Accumulating evidence highlights the role of inflammatory mechanisms in the pathogenesis of hypertension.

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The circadian rhythm of the immune system helps to protect against pathogens; however, the role of circadian rhythms in immune homeostasis is less well understood. Innate T cells are tissue-resident lymphocytes with key roles in tissue homeostasis. Here we use single-cell RNA sequencing, a molecular-clock reporter and genetic manipulations to show that innate IL-17-producing T cells-including γδ T cells, invariant natural killer T cells and mucosal-associated invariant T cells-are enriched for molecular-clock genes compared with their IFNγ-producing counterparts.

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Purpose: This paper discusses an advanced version of our audiovisual-assisted therapeutic ambience in radiotherapy (AVATAR) radiolucent display systems designed for pediatric radiotherapy, enabling anesthesia-free treatments, video communication, and biofeedback. The scope of the AVATAR system is expanded here in two major ways: (i) through alternative mounting systems to accommodate a broader range of radiotherapy machines (specifically to fit robotic-arm and toroidal geometry photon radiotherapy and proton radiotherapy systems) and (ii) through additional hardware to provide video-calling, optimized audio for clear communication, and combined video inputs for biofeedback, translation, and other advanced functionalities.

Methods And Materials: Because robustness requires strong parts and radio-transparency requires thin, light parts, three-dimensional printing was used to rapidly prototype hollow structures and to iteratively improve robustness.

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Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are key in intercellular communication, carrying biomolecules like nucleic acids, lipids, and proteins. This study investigated postprandial characteristics and proteomic profiles of blood-derived EVs in healthy individuals. Twelve participants fasted overnight before baseline assessments.

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Article Synopsis
  • Parkinson's disease (PD) is challenging to model in mice due to its sporadic late-onset nature; existing transgenic models fail to accurately mimic the disease's characteristics.
  • Researchers created knock-in mice with the G51D mutation, observing that motor symptoms appeared at 9 months of age.
  • Early pathologies were identified, such as phosphorylated α-Syn in the olfactory bulb and enteric nervous system at 3 months, with olfactory deficits and gut issues occurring by 6 months, mimicking human PD progression and facilitating future research and therapy testing.
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Esophageal adenocarcinoma (EAC) is a highly lethal cancer of the upper gastrointestinal tract with rising incidence in western populations. To decipher EAC disease progression and therapeutic response, we performed multiomic analyses of a cohort of primary and metastatic EAC tumors, incorporating single-nuclei transcriptomic and chromatin accessibility sequencing, along with spatial profiling. We identified tumor microenvironmental features previously described to associate with therapy response.

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Background: Endovascular therapy (ET) outcomes for femoropopliteal peripheral arterial disease (FP-PAD) remain suboptimal. Cilostazol therapy may improve patency rates and decrease major adverse limb events after ET for FP-PAD. Our goal was to analyze published studies evaluating the use of cilostazol after ET for FP-PAD.

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CD2-Associated protein (CD2AP) is a candidate susceptibility gene for Alzheimer's disease, but its role in the mammalian central nervous system remains largely unknown. We show that CD2AP protein is broadly expressed in the adult mouse brain, including within cortical and hippocampal neurons, where it is detected at pre-synaptic terminals. Deletion of Cd2ap altered dendritic branching and spine density, and impaired ubiquitin-proteasome system activity.

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Inhibitory activity against angiotensin-converting enzyme (IAACE) by chicken skin collagen hydrolysate (CSCH) and their peptide fractions before and after in-vitro gastrointestinal digestion, were evaluated; as well as their ability to modulate lipid accumulation in 3 T3-L1 adipocytes. Before digestion, peptide fraction <1 kDa (F4) showed the highest IAACE (p < 0.05) followed by CSCH.

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The aim of this study was to validate an HPLC-UV method to assess vitamin D status by determining the linearity and precision of the 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D) calibration curve, the limits of detection, quantitation and robustness of the method, and its accuracy. A second stock solution of 25(OH)D was prepared (500 ng/mL), and working dilutions (5, 10, 20, 30, 40, and 50 ng/mL) were prepared for a calibration curve. The HPLC equipment had a UV-Vis diode-array detector and utilized an Acclaim 120 C18 column (5 µm, 4.

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Background: Our study addresses the gap in ventral hernia repair literature, regarding the long-term effectiveness of robotic transabdominal retrorectus umbilical prosthetic repair (r-TARUP) for primary and incisional ventral hernias. This study aimed to report the 3-year recurrence rates and overall patient outcomes including quality of life.

Method: A retrospective review of prospective collected data analyzed 101 elective r-TARUP patients from August 2018 to January 2022.

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This study examined Latinx adolescents' daily family assistance (assistance day, assistance time, language brokering) in relation to their daily affect and investigated whether the associations changed following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Two waves of 14-day daily diary data collected from 13 18-year-old Latinx adolescents (n = 284; 77% Mexican American, 77% female) before and amid the pandemic were analyzed using multilevel modeling. Three main findings emerged: (1) assisting the family on a given day was associated with higher levels of same-day positive affect both before and during COVID-19, and with lower levels of negative affect during COVID-19; (2) longer than usual family assistance time was associated with higher levels of same-day positive affect and lower levels of negative affect only during COVID-19; (3) language brokering on a given day was associated with higher levels of same-day positive affect both before and during COVID-19.

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English Learners (ELs), students from non-English-speaking backgrounds, are a fast-growing, understudied, group of students in the U.S. with unique learning challenges.

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Pediatric solid tumors are rare malignancies that represent a leading cause of death by disease among children in developed countries. The early age-of-onset of these tumors suggests that germline genetic factors are involved, yet conventional germline testing for short coding variants in established predisposition genes only identifies pathogenic events in 10-15% of patients. Here, we examined the role of germline structural variants (SVs)-an underexplored form of germline variation-in pediatric extracranial solid tumors using germline genome sequencing of 1,766 affected children, their 943 unaffected relatives, and 6,665 adult controls.

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Chemical permeation enhancers (CPEs) represent a prevalent and safe strategy to enable noninvasive drug delivery across skin-like biological barriers such as the tympanic membrane (TM). While most existing CPEs interact strongly with the lipid bilayers in the stratum corneum to create defects as diffusion paths, their interactions with the delivery system, such as polymers forming a hydrogel, can compromise gelation, formulation stability, and drug diffusion. To overcome this challenge, differing interactions between CPEs and the hydrogel system are explored, especially those with sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS), an ionic surfactant and a common CPE, and those with methyl laurate (ML), a nonionic counterpart with a similar length alkyl chain.

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Twiddler's syndrome is the voluntary or involuntary manipulation of an implanted device, most described in cardiac literature. Lead coiling may result in device malfunction due to lead migration or, less commonly, lead fracture. There are few but increasing reports of Twiddler's syndrome resulting in lead migration in sacral neuromodulation, but lead fracture has not yet been described.

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