Publications by authors named "Grace Noppert"

Background: There is an increasing awareness that aging of the immune system, or immunosenescence, is a key biological process underlying many of the hallmark diseases of aging and age-related decline broadly. While immunosenescence can be in part due to normal age-related changes in the immune system, emerging evidence posits that viral infections may be biological stressors of the immune system that accelerate the pace of immunosenescence.

Methods: We used a convenience sample of 42 individuals aged 65 years and older to examine correlations between antiviral immunoglobulin G (IgG) levels for 4 human herpesviruses (cytomegalovirus [CMV], herpes simplex virus [types 1 and 2], and Epstein-Barr virus) and multiple indicators of T-cell immunosenescence.

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Introduction: Large social inequities have been repeatedly observed in physical disability. While inflammation has been identified as a potential underlying biological mechanism to proxy immune processes, the general inflammatory measures available in many population health studies lack specificity in capturing the complex nature of immune function. Therefore, we sought to examine whether specific biomarkers of immune function are associated with the prevalence of physical disability.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study investigates how education impacts cardiometabolic health indicators (like BMI, blood pressure, and cholesterol) in middle-aged and older adults across the US, Mexico, China, and India, taking into account urban versus rural living conditions.
  • Data was collected from large-scale health surveys in each country, using both absolute (education level) and relative (ranking within the country) measures of educational attainment to analyze their relationship with health outcomes.
  • Results showed significant educational disparities, with higher education linked to lower blood pressure and HbA1c levels in the US, lower BMI in Mexico, but no significant health benefits associated with education in China; however, urban settings may play a role in these variations.
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Background: Muscle strength, as measured by handgrip strength (HGS), is associated with physical function and mortality. Yet the environmental context that influences muscle strength is poorly understood. We evaluated built and social neighborhood characteristics and their association with muscle strength over time.

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Background: National guidelines recognize lifetime trauma as relevant to clinical care for adults nearing the end of life. We determined the prevalence of early life and cumulative trauma among persons at the end of life by gender and birth cohort, and the association of lifetime trauma with end-of-life physical, mental, and social well-being.

Methods: We used nationally representative Health and Retirement Study data (2006-2020), including adults age > 50 who died while enrolled (N = 6495).

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  • Health care researchers and policymakers use socioeconomic deprivation indices to examine health equity, but the effects of choosing one index over another are unclear.
  • This study compares two common deprivation indices, the Area Deprivation Index (ADI) and the Social Vulnerability Index (SVI), by looking at Medicare beneficiaries over specific surgical procedures from 2016 to 2019.
  • Findings show that beneficiaries in high-deprivation areas faced worse outcomes (more unplanned surgeries and higher mortality rates) than those in lower-deprivation areas, with SVI indicating worse odds compared to ADI for those outcomes.
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There is growing recognition of the importance of immune health for understanding the origins of ageing-related disease and decline. Numerous studies have demonstrated consistent associations between the social determinants of health and immunosenescence (i.e.

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On 11 September 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center (WTC) killed nearly three thousand people and exposed hundreds of thousands of rescue and recovery workers, passersby, area workers, and residents to varying amounts of dust and smoke. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani ordered the emergency evacuation of Lower Manhattan below Canal Street, but not all residents evacuated. Previous studies showed that those who did not evacuate had a higher incidence of newly diagnosed asthma.

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Emerging evidence suggests that psychosocial stress ages the immune system. Accordingly, immune aging may be an important potential mechanism linking psychosocial stress to aging-related decline and disease. Incarceration and housing insecurity represent severe and complex experiences of a multitude of psychosocial stressors, including discrimination, violence, and poverty.

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Background: A lack of fine, spatially-resolute case data for the U.S. has prevented the examination of how COVID-19 infection burden has been distributed across neighborhoods, a key determinant of both risk and resilience.

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Background: A growing body of literature examines the relationship between peripheral immune function and Alzheimer's Disease (AD) in human populations. Our living systematic review summarizes the characteristics and findings of these studies, appraises their quality, and formulates recommendations for future research.

Methods: We searched the electronic databases PubMed, PsycINFO, and Web of Science, and reviewed references of previous reviews and meta-analyses to identify human studies examining the relationship between any peripheral immune biomarkers and AD up to September 7th, 2023.

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Introduction: Prior reviews synthesized findings of studies on long-term cardiac complications of COVID-19. However, the reporting and methodological quality of these studies has not been systematically evaluated. Here, we conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis on long-term cardiac complications of COVID-19 and examined patterns of reported findings by study quality and characteristics.

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Objectives: To compare 2 frequently used area-level socioeconomic deprivation indices: the Area Deprivation Index (ADI) and the Social Vulnerability Index (SVI).

Methods: Index agreement was assessed via pairwise correlations, decile score distribution and mean comparisons, and mapping. The 2019 ADI and 2018 SVI indices at the U.

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Background: Poor immune function is associated with increased risk for a number of age-related diseases, however, little is known about the impact of early life trauma on immune function in late-life.

Methods: Using nationally representative data from the Health and Retirement Study (n = 5,823), we examined the association between experiencing parental/caregiver death or separation before age 16 and four indicators of immune function in late-life: C-reactive Protein (CRP), Interleukin-6 (IL-6), soluble Tumor Necrosis Factor (sTNFR), and Immunoglobulin G (IgG) response to cytomegalovirus (CMV). We also examined racial/ethnic differences.

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A lack of fine, spatially-resolute case data for the U.S. has prevented the examination of how COVID-19 burden has been distributed across neighborhoods, a known geographic unit of both risk and resilience, and is hampering efforts to identify and mitigate the long-term fallout from COVID-19 in vulnerable communities.

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The COVID-19 pandemic presents an opportunity to assess the relationship between personal experiences and vaccine decision-making. The aim of this study was to examine the associations between experiences with COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccination status. We administered 28 repeated cross-sectional, online surveys between June 2020 and June 2021 in the US and Asia.

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Background: There is growing body of literature on the long-term cardiac symptoms following COVID-19. We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to synthesize and evaluate related evidence to inform clinical management and future studies.

Methods: We searched two preprint and seven peer-reviewed article databases from January 1, 2020 to January 8, 2022 for studies investigating cardiac symptoms that persisted for at least 4 weeks among individuals who survived COVID-19.

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Objectives: The objective of this study was to describe the socioeconomic inequities among individuals with tuberculosis (TB) in metropolitan Detroit.

Methods: We used data from the TB Social Survey to examine socioeconomic and demographic characteristics among individuals diagnosed with TB in one of three metropolitan Detroit health departments. We then examined mean levels of both economic disadvantage and socioeconomic instability across levels of race/ethnicity, nativity, and health department.

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Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the urgent need to understand variation in immunosenescence at the population-level. Thus far, population patterns of immunosenescence have not well described.

Methods: We characterized measures of immunosenescence from the 2016 Venous Blood Study from the nationally representative U.

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Despite well-documented evidence that structurally disadvantaged populations are disproportionately affected by infectious diseases, our understanding of the pathways that connect structural disadvantage to the burden of infectious diseases is limited. We propose a conceptual framework to facilitate more rigorous examination and testing of hypothesized mechanisms through which social and environmental factors shape the burden of infectious diseases and lead to persistent inequities. Drawing upon the principles laid out by Link and Phelan in their landmark paper on social conditions (J Health Soc Behav.

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Objective: Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, we estimated the average causal effect of neighborhood disadvantage in adolescence on memory performance in young adulthood. We contrasted several different ways of operationalizing a continuous measure of neighborhood disadvantage including a continuous neighborhood disadvantage score and ordinal measures.

Results: Neighborhood disadvantage was measured in Wave I when participants were a mean age of 15.

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