Publications by authors named "Huong D Meeks"

Objective: Natural language processing (NLP) can enhance research studies for febrile infants by more comprehensive cohort identification. We aimed to refine and validate an NLP algorithm to identify and extract quantified temperature measurements from infants aged 90 days and younger with fevers at home or clinics prior to emergency department (ED) visits.

Patients And Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional study using electronic health record (EHR) data from 17 EDs in 10 health systems that are part of the Pediatric Emergency Care Applied Research Network Registry.

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Background And Objectives: Accumulating evidence points to worse clinical outcomes among adults with multiple sclerosis (MS) belonging to minority or poverty-affected groups. By contrast, little is known about the outcomes of these populations with pediatric-onset MS (POMS). Individuals with POMS represent 5% of the MS population and are more racially diverse yet have been understudied regarding socioeconomic environment or characteristics.

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Objective: To ascertain how an instrumental variables (IV) model can improve upon the estimates obtained from traditional cost-of-illness (COI) models that treat health conditions as predetermined.

Study Setting And Design: A simulation study based on observational data compares the coefficients and average marginal effects from an IV model to a traditional COI model when an unobservable confounder is introduced. The two approaches are then applied to real data, using a kinship-weighted family history as an instrument, and differences are interpreted within the context of the findings from the simulation study.

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  • Pediatric patients with advanced heart disease often experience high levels of medical intervention at the end of life, raising questions about the role of pediatric palliative care (PPC).
  • The study, which examined 218 patients treated in a cardiac ICU, found that those who received PPC had less intensive end-of-life care, with fewer invasive interventions and a lower rate of death during resuscitation.
  • Early consultation for PPC was linked to reduced invasive treatments, suggesting that timely support for families can enhance care quality without drastically changing treatment goals.
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  • The study investigates how social determinants of health (SDOH) impact pediatric-onset multiple sclerosis (POMS), particularly in terms of adverse SDOH frequency and their effects on treatment and outcomes.
  • Researchers conducted a retrospective analysis of data from the United States Network of Pediatric MS Centers, focusing on various demographic and clinical outcomes related to SDOH hardships.
  • Findings indicated that 66% of participants faced social hardships, which influenced factors such as age at symptom onset, steroid treatment likelihood, study attrition risk, and overall health scores.
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Importance: Endometriosis has been associated with an increased risk of ovarian cancer; however, the associations between endometriosis subtypes and ovarian cancer histotypes have not been well-described.

Objective: To evaluate the associations of endometriosis subtypes with incidence of ovarian cancer, both overall and by histotype.

Design, Setting, And Participants: Population-based cohort study using data from the Utah Population Database.

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  • The study looked at why some patients with low back pain (LBP) get certain treatments and others don’t, focusing on factors like where they live and their personal backgrounds.
  • It found that people from poorer neighborhoods and some groups, like women and those without insurance, were less likely to get treatments for LBP.
  • The conclusion was that a person's neighborhood and personal details, like their sex and financial situation, affect the kind of medical care they receive for low back pain.
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Socially disadvantaged groups generally are more likely to reside in areas with less desirable conditions. We examined longitudinal relationships between neighborhood resident characteristics and amenities from 1990 to 2010 in an urban area of Utah, U.S.

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Introduction: Acute extremity compartment syndrome ("CS") is an under-researched, highly morbid condition affecting trauma populations. The purpose of this study was to analyze incidence rates and risk factors for extremity compartment syndrome using a high-quality population database. Additionally, we evaluated heritable risk for CS using available genealogic data.

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Objective: To determine whether there is evidence of heritable risk for nonunion using a large, state-wide population database.

Design: Database.

Setting: Level 1 Trauma Center.

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Purpose: Our goals were to identify individuals who required surgery for thumb carpometacarpal (CMC) joint osteoarthritis (OA), determine if CMC joint OA clusters in families, define the magnitude of familial risk of CMC joint OA, identify risk factors associated with CMC joint OA, and identify rare genetic variants that segregate with familial CMC joint OA.

Methods: We searched the Utah Population Database to identify a cohort of CMC joint OA patients who required surgery. Affected individuals were mapped to pedigrees to identify high-risk families with excess clustering of CMC joint OA.

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Article Synopsis
  • - The study analyzed live birth rates in 17,952 female cancer patients diagnosed at 18 or older from 1952-2014, comparing them to 89,436 healthy controls to understand the impact of cancer on fertility.
  • - Results showed that 17.4% of cancer survivors had at least one live birth compared to 21.7% in healthy controls, with an overall incidence rate ratio (IRR) of 0.69, indicating lower live birth rates among cancer patients.
  • - Different cancer types had varying impacts on live birth rates, with breast cancer showing an IRR of 0.44, while patients diagnosed at older ages had the lowest IRR of 0.48, highlighting the negative
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Objective: Erosive hand osteoarthritis (OA) is a severe and rapidly progressing subset of hand OA. Its etiology remains largely unknown, which has hindered development of successful treatments. This study was undertaken to test the hypothesis that erosive hand OA demonstrates familial clustering in a large statewide population linked to genealogical records, and to determine the association of potential risk factors with erosive hand OA.

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Ageing may be due to mutation accumulation across the lifespan, leading to tissue dysfunction, disease, and death. We tested whether germline autosomal mutation rates in young adults predict their remaining survival, and, for women, their reproductive lifespans. Age-adjusted mutation rates (AAMRs) in 61 women and 61 men from the Utah CEPH (Centre d'Etude du Polymorphisme Humain) families were determined.

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Background: Periprosthetic joint infection (PJI) is a devastating complication after total joint arthroplasty, carrying significant economic and personal burden. The goal of this study is to use an established database to analyze socioeconomic variables and assess their relationship to PJI. Additionally, we sought to evaluate whether socioeconomic factors, along with other known risk factors of PJI, when controlled for in a statistical model affected the familial risk of PJI.

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Background: The effect of diabetes type on the risk of periprosthetic joint infection is not well documented. We hypothesized that patients with diabetes mellitus type 1 would be at greater risk for periprosthetic joint infection than those with diabetes mellitus type 2 and that a history of diabetic complications would be associated with an increased risk of periprosthetic joint infection.

Methods: We performed a retrospective cohort study, within a statewide database, on all adult patients who underwent hip or knee arthroplasty, with follow-up of ≥2 years, from 1996 to 2013.

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Although the spliceogenic nature of the BRCA2 c.68-7T > A variant has been demonstrated, its association with cancer risk remains controversial. In this study, we accurately quantified by real-time PCR and digital PCR (dPCR), the BRCA2 isoforms retaining or missing exon 3.

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Background: We previously showed that the variant c.5096G>A p.Arg1699Gln (R1699Q) was associated with an intermediate risk of breast cancer (BC) and ovarian cancer (OC).

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A recent analysis using family history weighting and co-observation classification modeling indicated that BRCA1 c.594-2A > C (IVS9-2A > C), previously described to cause exon 10 skipping (a truncating alteration), displays characteristics inconsistent with those of a high risk pathogenic BRCA1 variant. We used large-scale genetic and clinical resources from the ENIGMA, CIMBA and BCAC consortia to assess pathogenicity of c.

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Background: The K3326X variant in BRCA2 (BRCA2*c.9976A>T; p.Lys3326*; rs11571833) has been found to be associated with small increased risks of breast cancer.

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