In recent years, the use of electronic cigarettes (e-cigs) has increased. However, their long-term effects on oral health and saliva remain poorly understood. Therefore, this study aimed to evaluate the saliva of e-cig users and investigate possible biomarkers.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground And Objectives: Since the early 2000s, a global age-friendly communities (AFC) movement has called for improving the built, social, and service environments of localities for aging. Yet research on the outcomes of AFC initiatives, as programmatic efforts toward AFC progress, remains in its nascence. Drawing on "The Water of Systems Change" framework, our study aimed to address this gap by exploring the extent to which accomplishments of AFC initiatives are indicative of altering six conditions for systems change: policies, organizational practices, resource allocations, power dynamics, relationships, and mental models.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThere is growing attention to community-based services for preventing adverse health care outcomes among people aging with dementia. We explored whether the availability of dementia-centered programming within older adult centers (ie, senior centers)-specifically, adult day services (ADS), social adult day centers (SADCs), memory cafes, and caregiver support-is associated with reduced hospitalization, emergency room use, and total Medicare costs for community-dwelling individuals ages 75 and older with Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD), and whether associations differ by the relative size of the local jurisdiction. We used a novel dataset that links Medicare claims data with data from an organizational census of municipally based Massachusetts older adult centers.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: A 2-stage revision remains the standard for managing chronic periprosthetic joint infection. Despite multiple spacer options, whether a particular one better resists biofilm formation remains unclear. Prefabricated polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) articulating spacers containing antibiotics and a proprietary pore structure were developed to increase antibiotic elution characterized by a rapid burst phase for the initial one to two days and an extended slow-release phase for > 28 days.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCrumb rubber generated from end-of-life tires (ELTs) poses a threat to environmental and human health based on its widespread use. Of particular concern is the use of ELT crumb rubber as infill for artificial turf fields, as people are unknowingly exposed to complex mixtures of chemicals when playing on these fields. Additionally, there is concern regarding transport of rubber-related chemicals from artificial turf into the environment.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Aging Soc Policy
August 2024
The global age-friendly cities and communities (AFCC) movement has centered on the involvement of the public sector, calling on high-ranking authorities to commit to improving the built, social, and service environments of their localities. This interpretive review aimed to advance understanding of the ways in which the public sector is involved in AFCC efforts. Based on emergent themes from peer-reviewed articles from the United States and Canada published since 2010, we derived a two-dimensional framework for conceptualizing variability in public sector involvement, encompassing the internal/external (a) locus of responsibility for cross-sector change and (b) target for cross-sector change.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTrees in cities perform important environmental functions: they produce oxygen, filter pollutants, provide habitat for wildlife, mitigate stormwater runoff, and reduce the effects of climate change, especially in terms of lowering temperatures and converting carbon dioxide from the atmosphere into stored carbon. Generally, to increase the environmental benefits of urban forests, the number of trees is increased, directly influencing the canopy coverage. However, little is known about potential of modifying the species composition of urban tree communities in order to increase ecological benefits.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOlder adults' engagement in age-friendly community (AFC) initiatives is considered an essential element of community transformation. However, research on older adults' experiences of engaging in AFC initiatives remains nascent. Based on qualitative interviews with 23 older adult participants from 15 AFC initiatives across four states in the United States (U.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: Emerging evidence supports the protective effects of higher childhood socioeconomic status (cSES) on cognition over the life course. However, less understood is if higher cSES confers benefits equally across intersecting social positions. Guided by a situational intersectionality perspective and the theory of Minority Diminished Returns (MDR), this study examined the extent to which associations between cSES and cognition in young adulthood are jointly moderated by racialized identity and region of childhood residence.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAims: Biofilm infections are among the most challenging complications in orthopaedics, as bacteria within the biofilms are protected from the host immune system and many antibiotics. Halicin exhibits broad-spectrum activity against many planktonic bacteria, and previous studies have demonstrated that halicin is also effective against biofilms grown on polystyrene or polypropylene substrates. However, the effectiveness of many antibiotics can be substantially altered depending on which orthopaedically relevant substrates the biofilms grow.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPart C Early Intervention (EI) systems are an entry point to services for autistic toddlers and can be leveraged to facilitate access to autism evidence-based practices (EBPs). However, EI systems are complex and limited research has examined how an EI system's infrastructure (i.e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFParent-mediated interventions (PMIs) are considered an evidence-based practice for fostering social communication skills in young autistic children and for promoting parent responsivity and empowerment, yet barriers to caregiver engagement are evident when PMIs are implemented within historically underserved community settings. Issues of caregiver engagement can reflect a lack of fit between PMIs and the needs of diverse families. We used a mixed methods approach to examine barriers to participating in an evidence-based PMI, Project ImPACT (Ingersoll & Dvortcsak, 2019), within an outpatient setting, as well as strategies that clinicians reported using to deliver and adapt Project ImPACT for minoritized families.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAntimicrobial strategies for musculoskeletal infections are typically first developed with in vitro models. The In Vitro Section of the 2023 Orthopedic Research Society Musculoskeletal Infection international consensus meeting (ICM) probed our state of knowledge of in vitro systems with respect to bacteria and biofilm phenotype, standards, in vitro activity, and the ability to predict in vivo efficacy. A subset of ICM delegates performed systematic reviews on 15 questions and made recommendations and assessment of the level of evidence that were then voted on by 72 ICM delegates.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Gerontol B Psychol Sci Soc Sci
March 2024
Objectives: Mounting evidence suggests that the protective effects of one's own higher socioeconomic status (SES) on health are diminished among minoritized racial/ethnic groups in the United States. This study extends this area of research to childhood SES and cognition in middle and later life, focusing on the protective effects of higher parental education among non-Hispanic Black and White adults.
Methods: Harmonizing data from individuals ages 50 and older across the Health and Retirement Study, the Study of Midlife in the United States, and the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project, we examine whether associations between parental education and two measures of cognition (episodic memory and global cognition) are moderated by racialized identity (non-Hispanic White or Black) using a random-effects individual participant data meta-analysis approach.
The aim of the study was to evaluate the salivary metabolomic profile of patients who habitually smoke hookah and cigarettes. The groups consisted of 33 regular and exclusive hookah smokers, 26 regular and exclusive cigarette smokers, and 30 nonsmokers. Unstimulated whole saliva was collected for the measurement of salivary metabolites by gas chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometry (GC-MS/MS).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground And Objectives: Given the increase in methodological pluralism in research on brain health, cognitive aging, and neurodegenerative diseases, this scoping review aims to provide a descriptive overview and qualitative content analysis of studies stating the use of participatory research approaches within Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD) literature globally.
Research Design And Methods: We conducted a systematic search across four multidisciplinary databases (CINAHL, SCOPUS, PsycInfo, PubMed) for peer-reviewed, English-language studies addressing ADRD that explicitly described their use of a participatory research approach. We employed a systematic process for selecting articles that yielded a final sample of 163 studies.
Objectives: Research on associations between early life adversity (ELA) and later life cognition has yielded mixed results and generally have not considered how broader societal systems of stratification potentially influence associations. The current study addresses this gap by exploring if racialized identity and childhood socioeconomic status (cSES) moderate associations between ELA exposure and later life cognition.
Methods: Using data from the Health and Retirement Study (Waves 2010-2018), we used growth curve modeling to examine if the confluence of ELA, cSES, and racialized identity is associated with cognition.
Prior research has demonstrated ways in which community events help to establish age-friendly community initiatives and strengthen their impact. We extend these insights by discussing how the design and implementation of a statewide event - the New Jersey Age-Friendly Virtual Fair - exemplifies this practice theory and extends its applicability beyond local community development toward broader state-level age-friendly ecosystems. We describe how events that are deliberately multi-organizational, multi-sectoral, and multi-level can help to further propel the Age-Friendly Movement toward systems change for aging in community.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground And Objectives: Dementia-friendly communities (DFCs) are systematic and collaborative efforts to make local communities more supportive and inclusive of persons living with dementia and their care partners. This study explores how the organizational characteristics of senior centers influence their engagement in DFCs.
Research Design And Methods: We used a partially mixed, concurrent, equal status design, drawing on qualitative interviews with staff from 13 senior centers leading DFC initiatives as part of a statewide dementia-friendly network in Massachusetts, as well as quantitative data from 342 senior centers collected as part of a statewide survey.
Dementia-friendly communities (DFC) have emerged as a global movement to make communities more supportive and inclusive of people living with dementia (PLWD) and their care partners. This study contributes to a nascent body of research on DFC initiatives by building theory on their local implementation. Based on an analysis of data from semi-structured interviews with 23 leaders of initiatives in Massachusetts (United States), we aimed to identify key dimensions of variation in the implementation of DFC initiatives.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInt J Environ Res Public Health
October 2022
COVID-19 has disproportionally impacted Latinx and Black communities in the US. Our study aimed to extend the understanding of ethnic disparities in COVID-19 case rates by using a unique dataset of municipal case rates across New Jersey (NJ) during the first 17 months of the pandemic. We examined the extent to which there were municipal-level ethnic disparities in COVID-19 infection rates during three distinct spikes in case rates over this period.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe impact of bone cell activation on bacterially-induced osteolysis remains elusive. Here, we show that matrix-embedded osteocytes stimulated with bacterial pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs) directly drive bone resorption through an MYD88-regulated signaling pathway. Mice lacking MYD88, primarily in osteocytes, protect against osteolysis caused by calvarial injections of bacterial PAMPs and resist alveolar bone resorption induced by oral Porphyromonas gingivalis (Pg) infection.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBy definition, a monoclonal antibody should only be of a single class or subclass. Each class of antibody is associated with specific functions, and it can be useful to know the class/subclass of the monoclonal antibody produced by a specific hybridoma. In this protocol, class/subclass-specific antibodies are used to capture the monoclonal antibody from hybridoma supernatant.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAntibodies that are produced by hybridomas are known as monoclonal antibodies. Here we introduce methods for generating and screening monoclonal antibodies, including developing the screening procedure and producing hybridomas.
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