Publications by authors named "J-A Johnson"

Limited access to the comprehensive assessment of disorders of the upper aerodigestive tract is a barrier to care in rural health facilities. Assessment of the full aerodigestive tract requires a variety of specialists. The inability to access the necessary specialists can result in misdiagnosis, underdiagnosis, and increased associated mortality.

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Filoviruses, including Ebola, Marburg, Sudan, and Taï Forest viruses, are zoonotic pathogens that can cause severe viral hemorrhagic fever and death. Developing vaccines that provide durable, broad immunity against multiple filoviruses is a high global health priority. In this Phase 1 trial, we enrolled 60 healthy U.

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  • The study investigates how Alzheimer's disease (AD) biomarkers relate to cognitive performance as measured by the NIHTB-CB in late middle-aged Hispanic individuals.
  • Lower cortical thickness (CT) and the presence of infarcts were linked to poorer performance in reading recognition and overall cognition scores, while higher white matter hyperintensities (WMH) also negatively impacted processing speed.
  • Interestingly, amyloid and tau levels, often associated with AD, showed no correlation with cognitive test performance, prompting further research to see if AD affects NIHTB-CB results over time.
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  • Needle stick injuries (NSIs) are common among healthcare workers, with a 31% prevalence found in a study of 210 HCWs in a hospital in Kerala, India, where the intravenous cannula was the most involved device.
  • The study highlighted that older healthcare workers (above 31 years) were more likely to experience NSIs, suggesting a need for targeted safety measures for this group.
  • The results emphasize the necessity for improved documentation, adherence to safety protocols, and effective post-exposure prophylaxis to mitigate the risks associated with NSIs in the healthcare setting.
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  • * Between 2004 and 2022, MRI awarded scholarships to 405 individuals, and those who received funding had significantly lower dropout rates compared to national averages: 0% for graduate students and 2.2% for medical students.
  • * The initiative also showed that awardees were more likely to stay in the hematology-oncology field than national minority averages, with 14.4% of medical students and 88.5% of early-career
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  • Medically tailored meal (MTM) programs deliver meals to individuals with serious illnesses and poor nutrition, showing potential for reducing healthcare costs and improving client health.
  • A study analyzed data from 1,959 clients at MANNA to observe changes in health metrics, revealing a decrease in self-reported malnutrition risk and significant improvements in blood pressure and A1C levels for specific health conditions.
  • The findings suggest that MTM program participation positively impacts health outcomes, highlighting the importance of using routine data for assessment in community health initiatives.
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Background/objective: Current guidelines recommend biopsychosocial-informed treatment for chronic pelvic pain (CPP). The objective of this systematic review was to describe the available biopsychosocial approaches for the treatment of CPP, and the outcomes reported, to understand how guideline-recommended treatments can be applied.

Search Strategy: MEDLINE, CINAHL, PsycINFO, EMBASE, Emcare, AMED and Cochrane trial registries were searched (inception to 17 November 2023).

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  • Dual immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) using CTLA4 and PD-(L)1 inhibitors shows improved anti-tumor effectiveness and immune toxicity compared to PD-(L)1 inhibitors alone in advanced non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients.
  • Patients with mutations in STK11 and/or KEAP1 genes benefit more from the combination treatment compared to those receiving only PD-(L)1 inhibitors, as shown in the POSEIDON trial.
  • The loss of KEAP1 serves as a strong predictor for the success of dual ICB, as it leads to a more favorable outcome by changing the tumor's immune environment to better engage CD4 and CD8 T cells for anti-tumor activity. *
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Background: Long QT syndrome is a lethal arrhythmia syndrome, frequently caused by rare loss-of-function variants in the potassium channel encoded by . Variant classification is difficult, often because of lack of functional data. Moreover, variant-based risk stratification is also complicated by heterogenous clinical data and incomplete penetrance.

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  • Cancer vaccine development is challenged by the need for effective strategies to enhance dendritic cell (DC) induction of tumor-specific immunity, particularly through T cell function.
  • A novel glycan-costumed virus-like particle (VLP) vaccine was created, featuring a DC-SIGN-selective ligand and TLR7 agonists, which boosts DC activation and type 1 cellular immunity.
  • In mouse studies, this VLP vaccine successfully generated tumor-specific T cells, leading to significant tumor growth inhibition, highlighting its potential for improving cancer immunotherapies.
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Background: Given the many challenges of conducting research that addresses the palliative and end-of-life care needs of patients with serious illnesses, stakeholder engagement starting from the moment of study conceptualization and design is critical to ensure successful participant recruitment, data collection, intervention delivery, data analysis, and dissemination.

Methods: Guided by a conceptual model published by the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) entitled, "Measuring What Matters for Advancing the Science and Practice of Engagement"14 and with the support of a PCORI Engagement Officer, representatives from 9 PCORI-funded study teams formed a working group to survey team members and review, outline, and describe key lessons learned and best practices for promoting stakeholder engagement in palliative care research.

Results: Almost all study teams engaged with patients/caregivers, clinicians, researchers, and health care system experts as stakeholder partners.

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Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) glycoprotein B (gB) is a class III membrane fusion protein required for viral entry. HCMV vaccine candidates containing gB have demonstrated moderate clinical efficacy, but no HCMV vaccine has been approved. Here, we used structure-based design to identify and characterize amino acid substitutions that stabilize gB in its metastable prefusion conformation.

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  • The study analyzed serum proteins in 5,127 older Icelandic adults to gain insights into the molecular processes of late-onset Alzheimer's disease (LOAD) over nearly 13 years.
  • Researchers identified 303 proteins linked to incident LOAD, with over 40% showing independent associations from the APOE-ε4 gene variant, indicating involvement in neuronal functions.
  • Four proteins were found to be downregulated by APOE-ε4 but upregulated in LOAD, suggesting they may reflect a biological response to the onset of the disease, highlighting dysregulated processes early in LOAD development.
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Objectives:  Efforts to reduce documentation burden (DocBurden) for all health professionals (HP) are aligned with national initiatives to improve clinician wellness and patient safety. Yet DocBurden has not been precisely defined, limiting national conversations and rigorous, reproducible, and meaningful measures. Increasing attention to DocBurden motivated this work to establish a standard definition of DocBurden, with the emergence of excessive DocBurden as a term.

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Yellow fever virus (YFV) is endemic in >40 countries and causes viscerotropic disease with up to 20%-60% mortality. Successful live-attenuated yellow fever (YF) vaccines were developed in the mid-1930s, but their use is restricted or formally contraindicated in vulnerable populations including infants, the elderly, and people with compromised immune systems. In these studies, we describe the development of a next-generation hydrogen peroxide-inactivated YF vaccine and determine immune correlates of protection based on log neutralizing index (LNI) and neutralizing titer-50% (NT) studies.

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  • AI-enabled ECGs can predict the sex of pediatric patients and analyze the effects of puberty on this prediction.
  • The study utilized a convolutional neural network trained on ECG data from over 90,000 pediatric patients, dividing them into different age groups.
  • The model showed 81% overall accuracy, especially discriminating well in postpubertal patients, indicating potential for effective use in pediatric cardiology.
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Background: Variants in and (encoding apolipoprotein E and presenilin 1, respectively) alter the risk of Alzheimer's disease. We previously reported a delay of cognitive impairment in a person with autosomal dominant Alzheimer's disease caused by the variant who also had two copies of the apolipoprotein E3 Christchurch variant ( ). Heterozygosity for the variant may influence the age at which the onset of cognitive impairment occurs.

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  • A study was conducted to evaluate the effects of the proton-pump inhibitor pantoprazole on critically ill patients undergoing invasive ventilation, comparing it to a placebo.
  • The trial included 4,821 patients and found that pantoprazole significantly reduced the incidence of clinically important upper gastrointestinal bleeding compared to placebo (1.0% vs. 3.5%).
  • However, there was no significant difference in overall mortality rates at 90 days between the pantoprazole group (29.1%) and the placebo group (30.9%).
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The processes that govern human haematopoietic stem cell (HSC) self-renewal and engraftment are poorly understood and challenging to recapitulate in culture to reliably expand functional HSCs. Here we identify MYC target 1 (MYCT1; also known as MTLC) as a crucial human HSC regulator that moderates endocytosis and environmental sensing in HSCs. MYCT1 is selectively expressed in undifferentiated human haematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs) and endothelial cells but becomes markedly downregulated during HSC culture.

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  • Study investigated how well the pullback pressure gradient (PPG) can predict successful outcomes in percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) for patients with diffuse coronary artery disease.
  • PPG was found to have a strong correlation with changes in fractional flow reserve (FFR) post-PCI, significantly better than using FFR alone for predicting optimal revascularization.
  • The research highlights that PPG can influence treatment decisions and improve safety during PCI procedures, particularly for patients at risk of complications.
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  • The Exposure Therapy Consortium (ETC) was created to improve how exposure therapy works and to help people understand it better.
  • The article talks about how the ETC is organized and what they are doing to support researchers and doctors.
  • It also mentions how these teams can work together to find new ways to help more people access and use exposure therapy.
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Clonal hematopoiesis (CH) is characterized by the acquisition of a somatic mutation in a hematopoietic stem cell that results in a clonal expansion. These driver mutations can be single nucleotide variants in cancer driver genes or larger structural rearrangements called mosaic chromosomal alterations (mCAs). The factors that influence the variations in mCA fitness and ultimately result in different clonal expansion rates are not well understood.

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Background: Fetal Medicine Foundation (FMF) studies suggest that preterm preeclampsia can be predicted in the first trimester by combining biophysical, biochemical, and ultrasound markers and prevented using aspirin. We aimed to evaluate the FMF preterm preeclampsia screening test in nulliparous women.

Methods: We conducted a prospective multicenter cohort study of nulliparous women recruited at 11 to 14 weeks.

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Purpose: We aimed to describe RAS mutations in gynecologic cancers as they relate to clinicopathologic and genomic features, survival, and therapeutic implications.

Experimental Design: Gynecologic cancers with available somatic molecular profiling data at our institution between February 2010 and August 2022 were included and grouped by RAS mutation status. Overall survival was estimated by the Kaplan-Meier method, and multivariable analysis was performed using the Cox proportional hazard model.

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Immunization via the respiratory route is predicted to increase the effectiveness of a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine. Here, we evaluate the immunogenicity and protective efficacy of one or two doses of a live-attenuated murine pneumonia virus vector expressing SARS-CoV-2 prefusion-stabilized spike protein (MPV/S-2P), delivered intranasally/intratracheally to male rhesus macaques. A single dose of MPV/S-2P is highly immunogenic, and a second dose increases the magnitude and breadth of the mucosal and systemic anti-S antibody responses and increases levels of dimeric anti-S IgA in the airways.

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