Publications by authors named "J Simkins"
Introduction: In Solid Organ Transplant (SOT) recipients, due to immunosuppression, the immunogenicity after COVID-19 vaccination is suboptimal and its durability is unknown.
Methods: We conducted a post-hoc analysis of a patient-blinded, single center, randomized controlled trial comparing BNT162b2 vs JNJ-78,436,735 as the third dose after two doses of BNT162b2 in adult SOT recipients with active graft to compare long-term immunogenicity.
Results: Forty-one recipients were analyzed.
Article Synopsis
- The study aimed to evaluate and summarize knee bracing interventions from randomized controlled trials (RCTs) focused on knee osteoarthritis (OA).
- A scoping review identified 31 RCTs with 47 different bracing types, highlighting variations in the type and use of braces, but poor reporting on brace adherence and contextual details.
- The review concluded that the diversity of interventions, along with gaps in adherence focus and reporting, may be leading to inconsistent findings and recommendations regarding the effectiveness of knee bracing for OA.
Objective: To investigate whether duration of knee symptoms influenced the magnitude of the effect of exercise therapy compared to non-exercise control interventions on pain and physical function in people with knee osteoarthritis (OA).
Method: We undertook an individual participant data (IPD) meta-analysis utilising IPD stored within the OA Trial Bank from randomised controlled trials (RCTs) comparing exercise to non-exercise control interventions among people with knee OA. IPD from RCTs were analysed to determine the treatment effect by considering both study-level and individual-level covariates in the multilevel regression model.
Article Synopsis
- Solid organ transplant recipients (SOTRs) face a heightened risk of nocardiosis, a serious opportunistic infection, with a study showing only 0.2% (13 out of 6179) of cases diagnosed over 10 years.
- Most patients were male (76.9%), primarily kidney transplant recipients (62%), with infections typically diagnosed around 8.8 months post-transplant.
- The one-year mortality rate after diagnosis was 46%, while low recurrence rates suggest that trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole (TMP-SMX) prophylaxis might be effective in reducing the incidence of this infection.
Significance: Luminopsins (LMOs) are bioluminescent-optogenetic tools with a luciferase fused to an opsin that allow bimodal control of neurons by providing both optogenetic and chemogenetic access. Determining which design features contribute to the efficacy of LMOs will be beneficial for further improving LMOs for use in research.
Aim: We investigated the relative impact of luciferase brightness, opsin sensitivity, pairing of emission and absorption wavelength, and arrangement of moieties on the function of LMOs.