Publications by authors named "Hannah Ainsworth"

Article Synopsis
  • - The study evaluated a behavior change intervention aimed at reducing dental caries in secondary school children in the UK, involving 4680 participants from 42 schools over 2.5 years, with a focus on schools with higher free school meal eligibility to address low household income.
  • - Data collection included mixed methods such as self-reported questionnaires, staff feedback, and interviews to assess implementation fidelity, acceptability, and contextual factors surrounding the intervention.
  • - While the intervention was mostly implemented as planned, challenges included inconsistent delivery of classroom sessions and technical issues with text messages; despite this, the intervention was generally deemed acceptable by participants.
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There is a critical need to generate age- and sex-specific survival curves to characterize chronological aging consistently across nonhuman primates (NHP) used in biomedical research. Sex-specific Kaplan-Meier survival curves were computed in 12 translational aging models: baboon, bonnet macaque, chimpanzee, common marmoset, coppery titi monkey, cotton-top tamarin, cynomolgus macaque, Japanese macaque, pigtail macaque, rhesus macaque, squirrel monkey, and vervet/African green. After employing strict inclusion criteria, primary results are based on 12,269 NHPs that survived to adulthood and died of natural/health-related causes.

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Background: The presence of dental caries impacts on children's daily lives, particularly among those living in deprived areas. There are successful interventions across the United Kingdom for young children based on toothbrushing with fluoride toothpaste. However, evidence is lacking for oral health improvement programmes in secondary-school pupils to reduce dental caries and its sequelae.

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Article Synopsis
  • There is a significant need to create age- and sex-specific survival curves for nonhuman primates (NHP) in biomedical research to better understand aging.
  • A study analyzed data from over 110,000 captive NHP to generate survival curves for various species, reporting meaningful differences in lifespans and health based on sex and species type.
  • Results indicated that male NHP, particularly among certain African and Asian species, had reduced survival rates, and median lifespans were often lower than what was previously documented, suggesting these analyses may more accurately reflect healthspan rather than just lifespan.
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  • Rhesus macaques naturally develop colorectal cancers (CRC) that closely resemble human CRC in terms of histology, progression, and genetic characteristics, making them valuable for studying cancer immunotherapy.
  • Detailed analyses, including advanced imaging and molecular techniques like DNA sequencing and transcriptomics, confirmed similarities in mutation patterns and functional behaviors between macaque and human CRCs, particularly highlighting MLH1 loss and microsatellite instability.
  • The research also indicated a significant presence of DNA hypermethylation, particularly affecting MLH1, contributing to alterations in DNA topology that may impact transcription factor binding, showcasing the complex molecular landscape of CRC in these primates.
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Objectives: This multicentre, assessor-blinded, two-arm cluster randomized trial evaluated the clinical and cost-effectiveness of a behaviour change intervention promoting toothbrushing for preventing dental caries in UK secondary schools.

Methods: Pupils aged 11-13 years with their own mobile telephone attending secondary schools with above average free school meals eligibility were randomized (at year-group level) to receive a lesson and twice-daily text messages or to usual care. Year-groups (n = 84) from 42 schools including 4680 pupils (intervention, n = 2262; control, n = 2418) were randomized.

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Background This paper describes the sociodemographics and oral health of UK secondary school pupils. They were participants of the BRIGHT trial, which was designed to evaluate the effectiveness of a toothbrushing intervention to reduce dental caries.Methods Overall, 4,680 pupils aged 11-13 years attending 42 secondary schools in England, Scotland and Wales with above average proportion of pupils eligible for free school meals, were recruited to the trial.

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Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is a multi-organ autoimmune disorder with a prominent genetic component. Individuals of Asian-Ancestry (AsA) disproportionately experience more severe SLE compared to individuals of European-Ancestry (EA), including increased renal involvement and tissue damage. However, the mechanisms underlying elevated severity in the AsA population remain unclear.

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Background: Dental caries is common in young people and has wide-ranging ramifications for health and quality of life. Text messaging interventions show promise as a means to promote oral health behaviour change among young people. This paper reports the internal pilot of the Brushing RemInder 4 Good oral HealTh (BRIGHT) trial, which is evaluating an intervention comprising an oral health classroom lesson and text messages about toothbrushing, on caries in young people.

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Background: Globally, around 13% of children experience dental anxiety (DA). This group of patients frequently miss dental appointments, have greater reliance on treatment under general anaesthesia (GA) and have poorer oral health-related quality of life (OHRQoL) than their non-dentally anxious peers. Recently, a low-intensity cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT)-based, self-help approach has been recommended for management of childhood anxiety disorders.

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Introduction: Placenta-derived mesenchymal cells (PLCs) endogenously produce FVIII, which makes them ideally suited for cell-based fVIII gene delivery. We have previously reported that human PLCs can be efficiently modified with a lentiviral vector encoding a bioengineered, expression/secretion-optimized fVIII transgene (ET3) and durably produce clinically relevant levels of functionally active FVIII. The objective of the present study was to investigate whether CRISPR/Cas9 can be used to achieve location-specific insertion of a fVIII transgene into a genomic safe harbor, thereby eliminating the potential risks arising from the semi-random genomic integration inherent to lentiviral vectors.

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Background: There are limited real world data on the IMpower150 regimen in oncogene driven tumors and central nervous system metastases; this study aims to address this gap.

Materials And Methods: Retrospective analysis of patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer treated with the IMpower150 regimen across 12 Australian sites between July 2018 and April 2021. Clinicopathologic and treatment parameters were correlated with efficacy and toxicity.

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Anti-SSA/Ro antibodies, while strongly linked to fetal cardiac injury and neonatal rash, can associate with a spectrum of disease in the mother, ranging from completely asymptomatic to overt Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE) or Sjögren's Syndrome (SS). This study was initiated to test the hypothesis that the microbiome, influenced in part by genetics, contributes to disease state. The stool microbiome of healthy controls (HC) was compared to that of anti-SSA/Ro positive women whose children had neonatal lupus.

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Background: The Brushing RemInder 4 Good oral HealTh (BRIGHT) trial is investigating the clinical and cost-effectiveness of a multi-component behaviour change intervention to reduce the prevalence of dental caries in young people from deprived areas aged 11-13 years. Mobile health has gained popularity in delivering behaviour change interventions for improving oral health. The intervention, based on behaviour change theory, consists of two components; a single classroom-based session embedded in the school curriculum and a series of follow-up text messages (SMS) delivered twice daily to participants.

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Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is a chronic, multisystem, autoimmune inflammatory disease with genomic and non-genomic contributions to risk. We hypothesize that epigenetic factors are a significant contributor to SLE risk and may be informative for identifying pathogenic mechanisms and therapeutic targets. To test this hypothesis while controlling for genetic background, we performed an epigenome-wide analysis of DNA methylation in genomic DNA from whole blood in three pairs of female monozygotic (MZ) twins of European ancestry, discordant for SLE.

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Background: We performed expression quantitative trait locus (eQTL) analysis in single classical (CL) and non-classical (NCL) monocytes from patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) to quantify the impact of well-established genetic risk alleles on transcription at single-cell resolution.

Methods: Single-cell gene expression was quantified using qPCR in purified monocyte subpopulations (CD14CD16 CL and CD14CD16 NCL) from SLE patients. Novel analysis methods were used to control for the within-person correlations observed, and eQTLs were compared between cell types and risk alleles.

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Objective: Identify and characterize circulating metabolite profiles associated with adiposity to inform precision medicine.

Methods: Untargeted plasma metabolomic profiles in the Insulin Resistance Atherosclerosis Family Study (IRASFS) Mexican American cohort (n = 1108) were analyzed for association with anthropometric (body mass index, BMI; waist circumference, WC; waist-to-hip ratio, WHR) and computed tomography measures (visceral adipose tissue, VAT; subcutaneous adipose tissue, SAT; visceral-to-subcutaneous ratio, VSR) of adiposity. Genetic data, inclusive of genome-wide array-based genotyping, whole exome sequencing (WES) and whole genome sequencing (WGS), were evaluated to identify the genetic contributors.

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Background: Epidermal growth factor receptor gene (EGFR) exon 20 insertion (ex20-ins) mutations are an uncommon and heterogeneous group of non-small cell lung cancers (NSCLCs), resistant to conventional EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs). Characteristics and outcomes of patients with EGFR ex20-ins have not been fully established; we sought to clarify them using a multinational patient database.

Patients And Methods: Patients with NSCLC from six Australian institutions with EGFR exon 20 mutations (ex20-mut), excluding T790M, were retrospectively reviewed.

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Introduction: Patients with ADTKD-MUC1 have one allele producing normal mucin-1 (MUC1) and one allele producing mutant MUC1, which remains intracellular. We hypothesized that ADTKD-MUC1 patients, who have only 1 secretory-competent wild-type MUC1 allele, should exhibit decreased plasma mucin-1 (MUC1) levels. To test this hypothesis, we repurposed the serum CA15-3 assay used to measure MUC1 in breast cancer to measure plasma MUC1 levels in ADTKD-MUC1.

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In genomic fine-mapping studies, some approaches leverage annotation data to prioritize likely functional polymorphisms. However, existing annotation resources can present challenges as many lack information for novel variants and/or may be uninformative for non-coding regions. We propose a novel annotation source, sequence-dependent DNA topology, as a prioritization metric for fine-mapping.

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Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is a multi-organ autoimmune disorder with a prominent genetic component. Individuals of African ancestry (AA) experience the disease more severely and with an increased co-morbidity burden compared to European ancestry (EA) populations. We hypothesize that the disparities in disease prevalence, activity, and response to standard medications between AA and EA populations is partially conferred by genomic influences on biological pathways.

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Article Synopsis
  • * Researchers gathered clinical and genetic data from 722 individuals across 249 families, noting that men had a significantly higher risk of progressing to ESKD at a median age of 47 years.
  • * The study revealed a lower frequency of the rs4293393 allele than expected, making it impossible to conduct a Mendelian randomization, but identified a new score that could effectively predict the age of ESKD based on uromod
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Article Synopsis
  • G1 and G2 nephropathy-risk variants lead to mitochondrial dysfunction, contributing to kidney disease, with a focus on genetic regulation and mechanisms involved in nephropathy.
  • A gene expression analysis was conducted on renal tubule cells from African American individuals, alongside knockout and cell rescue experiments to investigate the effects of specific SNPs and their relation to gene expression.
  • Findings indicate that mitochondrial dynamics are altered by G1 and G2 variants, with potential therapeutic targets identified for mitigating -nephropathy through the regulation of mitochondrial fusion and fission.
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Background: Almost one-half of 12-15 year olds living in deprived areas of the UK have dental caries (tooth decay) with few oral health promotion programmes aimed at children of this age. Mobile phone-based interventions such as short messaging service (SMS) interventions have been found effective at changing certain behaviours and improving health outcomes. This protocol describes the BRIGHT Trial, investigating the clinical and cost-effectiveness of a behaviour change intervention-classroom-based session (CBS) embedded in the curriculum and a series of SMS delivered to participants twice daily to remind them to brush their teeth, compared to usual curriculum and no SMS-to reduce the prevalence of dental caries in young people from deprived areas.

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Background: The management of oligometastatic prostate cancer (PCa) remains controversial, especially following the introduction of prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA) positron emission tomography (PET) imaging.

Objective: To assess whether stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) provides a potential for cure in a selected group of patients with oligometastatic PCa in the PSMA-PET era.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This was a prospective, single-centre study of patients with oligometastatic PCa undergoing SBRT from November 2014 to July 2016.

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