Publications by authors named "Hodge R"

Background: Diet plays a vital role in human health and environmental effects. Monitoring diet quality and its relationship to both health and environment are essential for policy making.

Objectives: This study aimed to analyze trends in the Planetary Health Diet Index (PHDI) and its associations with daily greenhouse gas emissions from food (GHG), disease-related biomarkers, anthropometric measurements, obesity, and all-cause mortality in the US population.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: The Overall Plant-based Diet Index (PDI), the Healthful Plant-based Diet Index (hPDI), and the Unhealthful Plant-based Diet Index (uPDI) are relatively new tools for characterizing the quality of plant-based dietary patterns in epidemiologic studies. Reproducibility and validity of these indices have not been assessed across populations.

Objective: The objective of this study was to evaluate the reproducibility and validity of PDI, hPDI, and uPDI in a racially and ethnically diverse population.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • - The study aimed to explore the relationship between non-nutritive sweetener (NNS) consumption and diet quality, using data from the American Cancer Society's cancer prevention study with over 163,000 participants.
  • - Results showed that consumers of NNS generally had lower diet quality compared to non-consumers, as indicated by decreases in both the ACS diet score and the Healthy Eating Index scores with increased NNS intake.
  • - Additionally, the likelihood of having a low diet quality increased with higher NNS consumption, indicating that those who consumed 2 or more servings of NNS daily had significantly higher odds of poor diet quality.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

In this review, we introduce the concept of cell competition, which occurs between heterogeneous neighboring cell populations. Cells with higher relative fitness become "winners" that outcompete cells of lower relative fitness ("losers"). We discuss the idea of super-competitors, mutant cells that expand at the expense of wild-type cells.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the leading cause of dementia in older adults. Although AD progression is characterized by stereotyped accumulation of proteinopathies, the affected cellular populations remain understudied. Here we use multiomics, spatial genomics and reference atlases from the BRAIN Initiative to study middle temporal gyrus cell types in 84 donors with varying AD pathologies.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The Seattle Alzheimer’s Disease Brain Cell Atlas (SEA-AD) is a multifaceted open data resource designed to identify cellular and molecular pathologies that underlie Alzheimer’s disease. Integrating neuropathology, single cell and spatial genomics, and longitudinal clinical metadata, SEA-AD is a unique resource for studying the pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s and related dementias.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Introduction: Successful organ transplantation in patients with end-stage organ failure improves long-term survival, improves quality of life and reduces costs to the NHS. Despite an increase in the number of deceased organ donors over the last decade, there remains a considerable shortfall of suitable organs available for transplantation. Over half of UK donors are certified dead by neurological criteria following brain stem compression, which leads to severe physiological stress in the donor, combined with a hyperinflammatory state.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Diffuse hemispheric gliomas, specifically H3G34R/V-mutant, are aggressive brain tumors with no current targeted therapies and come from neural precursor cells.
  • Researchers found that these tumors display developmental patterns similar to healthy brain interneurons and identified key genes that these tumor cells depend on, especially CDK6.
  • Targeting CDK6 with inhibitors showed promising results in reducing tumor growth and improving survival in experimental models, with one patient showing a significant response to treatment.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Few standardized and open-source tools exist for calculating multiple dietary pattern indexes from dietary intake data in epidemiological and clinical studies.

Objectives: The primary aim is to develop and validate dietaryindex, a user-friendly and versatile R package that standardizes the calculation of dietary indexes.

Methods: Dietaryindex can calculate multiple dietary indexes of high interest in research, including the Healthy Eating Index (HEI)-2020, the Alternative HEI 2010, the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension Index, the Alternate Mediterranean Diet Score, the Dietary Inflammatory Index, the American Cancer Society 2020 dietary index, and the Planetary Health Diet Index from the EAT-Lancet Commission.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Thrombocytopenic patients have an increased risk of bleeding when undergoing invasive procedures. In a multicentre, phase II, blinded, randomised, controlled feasibility trial, critically ill patients with platelet count 100 × 10/L or less were randomised 1:1 to intravenous desmopressin (0.3 µg/kg) or placebo before an invasive procedure.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Researchers addressed the limited access to lower motor neurons (LMNs) in the mammalian spinal cord by creating single cell multiome datasets from mouse and macaque spinal cords to identify enhancers for different neuronal populations.* -
  • They cloned identified enhancers into viral vectors and conducted functional tests in mice to screen for effective candidates, which were then validated in rats and macaques.* -
  • This new toolkit for labeling LMNs and upper motor neurons (UMNs) can facilitate future research on cell function across species and contribute to potential therapies for neurodegenerative diseases in humans.*
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Longer overnight fasting (ONF) is a potential strategy for weight control. Although promising, the evidence from large population-based studies is limited.

Objectives: To examine the association of self-reported ONF duration with 3- and 6-y weight change in the American Cancer Society's Cancer Prevention Study-3 prospective cohort.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Both the parasympathetic nervous system and social support from family and friends play important roles in the development of prosocial behavior among adolescents, especially in racially and ethnically minoritized groups.
  • In a study involving 229 U.S. Mexican-origin adolescents, findings indicated that family support was linked to prosocial behavior at 17 years, while friend support influenced civic behavior at 19 years.
  • The research revealed that adolescents with moderate baseline respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) showed higher cognitive empathy and prosocial behavior, highlighting the importance of both biological and social factors in fostering prosocial development.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Rotator cuff tears are a common orthopedic injury, and the role of social determinants of health (SDoH) in surgical outcomes remains underexplored. The goal of this study was to investigate the correlation between social deprivation, measured by the Area Deprivation Index (ADI), and outcomes following arthroscopic rotator cuff repair.

Methods: We conducted a retrospective chart review on patients undergoing primary arthroscopic rotator cuff repair at a level 1 academic center between 2006 and 2019.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Phosphorylation of hundreds of protein extracellular domains is mediated by two kinase families, yet the significance of these kinases is underexplored. Here, we find that the presynaptic release of the tyrosine directed-ectokinase, Vertebrate Lonesome Kinase (VLK/Pkdcc), is necessary and sufficient for the direct extracellular interaction between EphB2 and GluN1 at synapses, for phosphorylation of the ectodomain of EphB2, and for injury-induced pain. is an essential gene in the nervous system, and VLK is found in synaptic vesicles, and is released from neurons in a SNARE-dependent fashion.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is an age-associated neurodegenerative disorder characterized by progressive neuronal loss and pathological accumulation of the misfolded proteins amyloid-β and tau. Neuroinflammation mediated by microglia and brain-resident macrophages plays a crucial role in AD pathogenesis, though the mechanisms by which age, genes, and other risk factors interact remain largely unknown. Somatic mutations accumulate with age and lead to clonal expansion of many cell types, contributing to cancer and many non-cancer diseases.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

RhoU is an atypical member of the Rho family of small G-proteins, which has N- and C-terminal extensions compared to the classic Rho GTPases RhoA, Rac1 and Cdc42, and associates with membranes through C-terminal palmitoylation rather than prenylation. RhoU mRNA expression is upregulated in prostate cancer and is considered a marker for disease progression. Here, we show that RhoU overexpression in prostate cancer cells increases cell migration and invasion.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

This two-year longitudinal study examined Mexican-origin adolescents' need to belong and cognitive reappraisal as predictors of multiple forms of prosocial behavior (i.e., general, emotional, and public prosocial behaviors).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Scientists found that mutations in the RHOA gene can cause a type of stomach cancer called diffuse gastric cancer (DGC).
  • The most common mutations change amino acids in the RHOA protein, making it work differently and helping cancer cells grow.
  • RHOA also interacts with other proteins and pathways, which helps cancer cells move and spread, showing that it plays a key role in DGC development.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Comprehensive genotyping is necessary to identify therapy options for patients with advanced cancer; however, many cancers are not tested, partly because of tissue limitations. Next-generation sequencing (NGS) liquid biopsies overcome some limitations, but clinical validity is not established and adoption is limited. Herein, clinical bridging studies used pretreatment plasma samples and data from FLAURA (NCT02296125; n = 441) and AURA3 (NCT02151981; n = 450) pivotal studies to demonstrate clinical validity of Guardant360 CDx (NGS LBx) to identify patients with advanced EGFR mutant non-small-cell lung cancer who may benefit from osimertinib.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The development and diversity of neuronal subtypes in the human hypothalamus has been insufficiently characterized. To address this, we integrated transcriptomic data from 241,096 cells (126,840 newly generated) in the prenatal and adult human hypothalamus to reveal a temporal trajectory from proliferative stem cell populations to mature hypothalamic cell types. Iterative clustering of the adult neurons identified 108 robust transcriptionally distinct neuronal subtypes representing 10 hypothalamic nuclei.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Delineating the gene-regulatory programs underlying complex cell types is fundamental for understanding brain function in health and disease. Here, we comprehensively examined human brain cell epigenomes by probing DNA methylation and chromatin conformation at single-cell resolution in 517 thousand cells (399 thousand neurons and 118 thousand non-neurons) from 46 regions of three adult male brains. We identified 188 cell types and characterized their molecular signatures.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Recent studies on human cortex have shown that GABAergic neurons have a complex hierarchical organization with various subclasses and specific types.
  • Researchers used advanced techniques to study these neurons in human brain slices, combining viral labeling and single-cell RNA sequencing.
  • The findings revealed detailed differences within GABAergic neuron types, including variations between human and mouse neurons and highlighted the need for comprehensive analysis to better understand brain cell properties.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The human brain directs complex behaviors, ranging from fine motor skills to abstract intelligence, but the diversity of cell types that support these skills has not been fully described. In this work, we used single-nucleus RNA sequencing to systematically survey cells across the entire adult human brain. We sampled more than three million nuclei from approximately 100 dissections across the forebrain, midbrain, and hindbrain in three postmortem donors.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • The study investigates the cellular structure of the human cortex to define different cortical areas using single-cell transcriptomics.
  • Researchers performed RNA-sequencing across eight cortical areas and found consistent cellular makeup, but notable variations in the proportion of excitatory neuron subclasses, indicating differences in connectivity.
  • Findings include unique features in the primary visual cortex, such as changes in the ratio of excitatory to inhibitory neurons and an expansion of excitatory neurons in layer 4, suggesting a need for refined understanding of human cortical organization.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF