α-Synucleinopathies constitute a spectrum of neurodegenerative disorders, including Parkinson's disease (PD), Lewy body dementia (LBD), Multiple System Atrophy (MSA), and Alzheimer's disease concurrent with LBD (AD-LBD). These disorders are unified by a pathological hallmark: aberrant misfolding and accumulation of α-synuclein (α-syn). This review delves into the pivotal role of α-syn, the key agent in α-synucleinopathy pathophysiology, and provides a survey of potential therapeutics that target cell-to-cell spread of pathologic α-syn.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLeadership positions with enormous responsibilities are challenging; at times leaders may feel isolated or lonely. A mastermind team is a small group of peer mentors or a personal board of directors, who meet on a recurring basis to share ideas for feedback, groupsource solutions, and to celebrate/commiserate on events. Joining a mastermind team helps leaders receive psychological support, encouragement, inspiration, suggestions for solving problems, and resources to manage challenges.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEarly evidence-based medical interventions to improve patient outcomes after traumatic brain injury (TBI) are lacking. In patients admitted to the ICU after TBI, optimization of nutrition is an emerging field of interest. Specialized enteral nutrition (EN) formulas that include immunonutrition containing omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (n-3 PUFAs) have been developed and are used for their proposed anti-inflammatory and proimmune properties; however, their use has not been rigorously studied in human TBI populations.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHolographic displays can generate light fields by dynamically modulating the wavefront of a coherent beam of light using a spatial light modulator, promising rich virtual and augmented reality applications. However, the limited spatial resolution of existing dynamic spatial light modulators imposes a tight bound on the diffraction angle. As a result, modern holographic displays possess low étendue, which is the product of the display area and the maximum solid angle of diffracted light.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe spread of prion-like protein aggregates is a common driver of pathogenesis in various neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer's disease (AD) and related Tauopathies. Tau pathologies exhibit a clear progressive spreading pattern that correlates with disease severity. Clinical observation combined with complementary experimental studies has shown that Tau preformed fibrils (PFF) are prion-like seeds that propagate pathology by entering cells and templating misfolding and aggregation of endogenous Tau.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTraumatic brain injury (TBI) is a common diagnosis requiring acute hospitalization. Long-term, TBI is a significant source of health and socioeconomic impact in the United States and globally. The goal of clinicians who manage TBI is to prevent secondary brain injury.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Early evidence-based medical interventions to improve patient outcomes after traumatic brain injury (TBI) are lacking. In patients admitted to the ICU after TBI, optimization of nutrition is an emerging field of interest. Specialized enteral nutrition (EN) formulas that include immunonutrition containing omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (n-3 PUFAs) have been developed and are used for their proposed anti-inflammatory and pro-immune properties; however, their use has not been rigorously studied in human TBI populations.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCore organizational values are essential for any organization, including academic institutions. Formal and informal leaders can have a positive, or negative, impact on shaping their culture through the core values. Members of an organization, including students, can be shaped by the organizational values in ways that strengthen, or impede, their professional identity formation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTraditional research focuses on efficacy or effectiveness of interventions but lacks evaluation of strategies needed for equitable uptake, scalable implementation, and sustainable evidence-based practice transformation. The purpose of this introductory review is to describe key implementation science (IS) concepts as they apply to medication management and pharmacy practice, and to provide guidance on literature review with an IS lens. There are five key ingredients of IS, including: (1) evidence-based intervention; (2) implementation strategies; (3) IS theory, model, or framework; (4) IS outcomes and measures; and (5) stakeholder engagement, which is key to a successful implementation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCompletion of the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) vaccine series remains low. Partnerships between primary care (PC) clinics and local pharmacies could boost vaccination rates. We conducted a scoping literature review to address what is known and what gaps exist on the interface between U.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCompressive lensless imagers enable novel applications in an extremely compact device, requiring only a phase or amplitude mask placed close to the sensor. They have been demonstrated for 2D and 3D microscopy, single-shot video, and single-shot hyperspectral imaging; in each case, a compressive-sensing-based inverse problem is solved in order to recover a 3D data-cube from a 2D measurement. Typically, this is accomplished using convex optimization and hand-picked priors.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLight field microscopy (LFM) uses a microlens array (MLA) near the sensor plane of a microscope to achieve single-shot 3D imaging of a sample without any moving parts. Unfortunately, the 3D capability of LFM comes with a significant loss of lateral resolution at the focal plane. Placing the MLA near the pupil plane of the microscope, instead of the image plane, can mitigate the artifacts and provide an efficient forward model, at the expense of field-of-view (FOV).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMent Health Clin
September 2020
Pharmacist-psychiatrist collaborative clinic models in specialty mental health clinics are limited, and there has been only 1 report of a clinic focused on adult attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). In this article, we describe the successful implementation of a pharmacist-psychiatrist collaborative practice agreement in an adult ADHD clinic at an academic medical center. Adult patients diagnosed with ADHD after a comprehensive assessment, including a full neuropsychological evaluation, were enrolled in the collaborative treatment clinic.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe present an on-chip, widefield fluorescence microscope, which consists of a diffuser placed a few millimeters away from a traditional image sensor. The diffuser replaces the optics of a microscope, resulting in a compact and easy-to-assemble system with a practical working distance of over 1.5 mm.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMask-based lensless imagers are smaller and lighter than traditional lensed cameras. In these imagers, the sensor does not directly record an image of the scene; rather, a computational algorithm reconstructs it. Typically, mask-based lensless imagers use a model-based reconstruction approach that suffers from long compute times and a heavy reliance on both system calibration and heuristically chosen denoisers.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAm J Health Syst Pharm
July 2019
Purpose: To describe the development of a collaborative community-academic postgraduate year 1 pharmacy residency program in San Diego that provides a hybrid experience of opportunities in community practice, ambulatory care, and teaching.
Summary: Residency training programs are being developed to better match the evolving role of the community pharmacist. In 2016, the University of California San Diego Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences partnered with Ralphs Pharmacy, a division of the Kroger Co.
J Am Pharm Assoc (2003)
March 2020
Objectives: To compare the completeness of immunization records for 6 vaccines between a community pharmacy database, a regional immunization information system (IIS), and a health system's electronic health record (EHR).
Methods: In a community pharmacy immunization program, 2 pharmacists and a community pharmacy resident performed a needs assessment for 6 vaccines (tetanus-diphtheria-acellular pertussis vaccine for adults or diphtheria-tetanus-acellular pertussis vaccine for children and adolescents, zoster vaccine live, 13-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine, 23-valent pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccine, hepatitis B vaccine series, and human papillomavirus vaccine) for more than 2400 patients from August 2016 to March 2017. This was a retrospective study to review immunization records for 243 patients.
Several reviews and case reports have described how information derived from the analysis of genomes are currently included in electronic health records (EHRs) for the purposes of supporting clinical decisions. Since the introduction of this new type of information in EHRs is relatively new (for instance, the widespread adoption of EHRs in the United States is just about a decade old), it is not surprising that a myriad of approaches has been attempted, with various degrees of success. EHR systems undergo much customization to fit the needs of health systems; these approaches have been varied and not always generalizable.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFStudies of antidepressant safety in pregnancy typically do not address complex patterns of use throughout pregnancy. We performed longitudinal trajectory modeling to describe patterns of antidepressant use in the first 32 weeks of pregnancy, and test whether these trajectories are associated with a reduction in birth weight or gestational age at delivery. Our study included 166 pregnant women with deliveries between 2011 and 2015 who were prescribed an antidepressant between 91 days prior to last menstrual period and 32 weeks of gestation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: There are limited data regarding the comparability of medication exposure information during pregnancy from maternal report and medical records, including for rheumatoid arthritis and asthma-related medications.
Methods: This study included pregnant women with rheumatoid arthritis (n = 216) and asthma (n = 172) enrolled in the MothertoBaby Pregnancy Studies (2009-2014). Women reported types and dates of medications used through semi-structured telephone interviews up to three times during pregnancy and once after delivery, and medical records were obtained.
J Am Pharm Assoc (2003)
September 2017
The emerging use of genomic data to inform medication therapy populates the medical literature and provides evidence for guidelines in the prescribing information for many medications. Despite the availability of pharmacogenomic studies, few pharmacists feel competent to use these new data in patient care. The first pharmacogenomics competency statement for pharmacists was published in 2002.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOBJECT This study explored antibiotic prophylaxis (AP) in pediatric patients undergoing intrathecal baclofen pump (ITBP) surgery and factors associated with perioperative AP compliance with clinical guidelines. METHODS Data were obtained from the Pediatric Health Information System. The study cohort comprised patients who underwent ITBP surgery within 3 days of admission, between July 1, 2004, and March 31, 2014, with a minimum prior screening period and follow-up of 180 days.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFunctional health literacy (FHL) is increasingly recognized as a useful predictor of health outcomes in different populations. However, the effect of FHL on medication knowledge and medication discrepancy in Chinese Americans is not well defined. To examine the effects of FHL on medication knowledge and medication discrepancy in Chinese American patients.
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