Publications by authors named "J Danforth"

We present a challenging clinical case of a 68-year-old female kidney transplant recipient who had a complicated posttransplant course marked by borderline T-cell-mediated rejection and BK virus nephropathy. The treatment for borderline rejection with steroids resulted in overimmunosuppression, and the patient acquired cytomegalovirus infection manifesting as colitis and SARS-CoV-2 infection. This progressed rapidly to collapsing glomerulopathy and allograft failure.

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Objectives: Before the advent of direct-acting antiviral therapy for hepatitis C virus, a large proportion of kidneys from donors with hepatitis C viremia were discarded. Hepatitis C virus is now amenable to effective treatment with excellent seronegativity rates. In this study, we review the outcomes of hepatitis C viremic kidneys transplanted into hepatitis C-naive recipients.

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Background: Alpha (α)-radiation is a ubiquitous environmental agent with epigenotoxic effects. Human exposure to α-radiation at potentially harmful levels can occur repetitively over the long term via inhalation of naturally occurring radon gas that accumulates in enclosed spaces, or as a result of a single exposure from a nuclear accident. Alterations in epigenetic DNA methylation (DNAm) have been implicated in normal aging and cancer pathogenesis.

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The COVID-19 pandemic has produced widespread behaviour changes that shifted how people split their time between different environments, altering health risks. Here, we report an update of North American activity patterns before and after pandemic onset, and implications to radioactive radon gas exposure, a leading cause of lung cancer. We surveyed 4009 Canadian households home to people of varied age, gender, employment, community, and income.

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Exposure to environmental ionizing radiation is prevalent, with greatest lifetime doses typically from high Linear Energy Transfer (high-LET) alpha particles the radioactive decay of radon gas in indoor air. Particle radiation is highly genotoxic, inducing DNA damage including oxidative base lesions and DNA double strand breaks. Due to the ionization density of high-LET radiation, the consequent damage is highly clustered wherein ≥2 distinct DNA lesions occur within 1-2 helical turns of one another.

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