Publications by authors named "J-H Thomas"

Over the past two decades there has been increased interest in orphan drug development for rare diseases. However, hurdles to clinical trial design for these disorders remain. This phase 1a/1b study addressed several challenges, while evaluating the safety and tolerability of the novel oral molecule KL1333 in healthy volunteers and subjects with primary mitochondrial disease.

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Objective: To estimate the burden of transthyretin cardiac amyloidosis (ATTR-CA) through a cross- sectional 'snapshot' of Australian Amyloidosis Network (AAN) and New Zealand (NZ) specialist amyloidosis clinics.

Design, Setting & Participants: A prospective survey was performed of seven AAN/ specialist amyloidosis clinics across Australia and NZ. All centres were invited to contribute data; participating centres provided clinical and demographic data for patients with ATTR-CA reviewed in the 2022 calendar year.

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  • Early integration of palliative care (PC) in inpatient oncology significantly improved patient outcomes, shifting more decedents to receive both inpatient and outpatient PC.
  • The implementation of a criteria-based PC consultation model resulted in earlier consultations and a reduced need for intensive care and hospitalizations in the last month of life.
  • Overall, this approach led to longer hospice stays and more deaths occurring at home, indicating a less aggressive end-of-life care strategy.
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Immune activation status determines non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) prognosis, with reported positive/negative associations for T helper type 2 (TH2) responses, including allergen-specific IgE and eosinophils. Our study seeks to explore the potential impact of these comorbid immune responses on the survival rates of patients with NSCLC. Our retrospective study used data from the Data Warehouse of the German Center for Lung Research (DZL) and Lung Biobank at Thoraxklinik Heidelberg.

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  • * Data from 670 patients revealed that while IVT may improve some outcomes, such as higher chances of achieving a modified Rankin Scale score of 0-2 in univariable analysis, this benefit was not consistently observed in more rigorous multivariable analyses.
  • * Overall, the findings suggest that adjunctive IVT may not significantly enhance clinical outcomes or safety compared to MT alone for this patient population.
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  • The study focuses on patients with heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF) and the importance of adhering to prescribed medication guidelines to improve health status.
  • Researchers analyzed the self-reported medication adherence of 3,495 outpatient participants over a 12-month period and found that nonadherent patients had worse health status at baseline and showed less improvement over time compared to those who followed their medication regimen.
  • Additionally, for patients who improved their adherence, there was a trend toward better health outcomes, highlighting the significance of medication adherence in managing HFrEF.
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  • Pulsed field ablation (PFA) is a new method for treating atrial fibrillation (AF) that focuses on ablating heart tissue while minimizing harm to nearby structures.
  • In the MANIFEST-17K study, data from 106 centers involved 17,642 patients and showed no serious complications like esophageal damage, with only a 1% major complication rate.
  • The results suggest that PFA has a strong safety profile and may change how AF is treated, compared to traditional thermal ablation methods.
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Given the proven benefits of screening to reduce diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) likelihood at the time of stage 3 type 1 diabetes diagnosis, and emerging availability of therapy to delay disease progression, type 1 diabetes screening programs are being increasingly emphasized. Once broadly implemented, screening initiatives will identify significant numbers of islet autoantibody-positive (IAb+) children and adults who are at risk for (confirmed single IAb+) or living with (multiple IAb+) early-stage (stage 1 and stage 2) type 1 diabetes. These individuals will need monitoring for disease progression; much of this care will happen in nonspecialized settings.

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The sodium-glucose co-transporter-2 (SGLT2) inhibitor dapagliflozin is increasingly used in the treatment of diabetes and heart failure. Dapagliflozin has been associated with reduced incidence of atrial fibrillation (AF) in clinical trials. We hypothesized that the favorable antiarrhythmic outcome of dapagliflozin use may be caused in part by previously unrecognized effects on atrial repolarizing potassium (K) channels.

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Purpose To assess the correlation between noninvasive cardiac MRI-derived parameters with pressure-volume (PV) loop data and evaluate changes in left ventricular function after myocardial infarction (MI). Materials and Methods Sixteen adult female swine were induced with MI, with six swine used as controls and 10 receiving platelet-derived growth factor-AB (PDGF-AB). Load-independent measures of cardiac function, including slopes of end-systolic pressure-volume relationship (ESPVR) and preload recruitable stroke work (PRSW), were obtained on day 28 after MI.

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Objective: To examine the effects of insulin-adjunctive therapy with a sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 (SGLT2) inhibitor and a glucagon receptor antagonist (GRA) on glycemia, insulin use, and ketogenesis during insulinopenia in type 1 diabetes.

Research Design And Methods: In a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover trial we assessed the effects of adjunctive SGLT2 inhibitor therapy (dapagliflozin 10 mg daily) alone and in combination with the GRA volagidemab (70 mg weekly) in 12 adults with type 1 diabetes. Continuous glucose monitoring, insulin dosing, and insulin withdrawal tests (IWT) for measurement of glucose and ketogenesis during insulinopenia were completed during insulin-only (Baseline), SGLT2 inhibitor, and combination (SGLT2 inhibitor + GRA) therapy periods.

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  • Immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) therapy has significantly advanced cancer treatment but is often complicated by immune-related adverse events like checkpoint inhibitor colitis (irColitis).
  • A study profiling around 300,000 cells from patients with irColitis uncovered key immune cell expansions and molecular changes in the colon mucosa and blood, highlighting the complexity of the condition.
  • Findings indicate that specific T cells and epithelial interactions are crucial for understanding irColitis and may lead to new therapeutic approaches for managing this side effect of ICI therapy.
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  • Cancer immunotherapy faces challenges due to poor antigen recognition and an unfriendly tumor microenvironment (TME).
  • Researchers developed "onion-like" multi-lamellar RNA lipid particle aggregates (LPAs) that enhance the delivery and effectiveness of tumor mRNA antigens by activating specific immune responses in the body.
  • In studies with dogs and humans, RNA-LPAs showed promising results, improving survival rates and triggering strong immune reactions against tumors, suggesting they could be a breakthrough method for cancer treatment.
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  • Effective longitudinal biomarkers, like cerebral perfusion, are crucial for tracking disease progression in presymptomatic genetic frontotemporal dementia (FTD) carriers.
  • The study examined cerebral perfusion in various genetic FTD groups using advanced MRI techniques and found declines in gray matter perfusion across all groups, with specific regional patterns.
  • Results suggest that monitoring cerebral perfusion could serve as an early biomarker for detecting FTD before symptoms appear, especially highlighting differences among genetic subgroups.
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For patients with non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) tumors without currently targetable molecular alterations, standard-of-care treatment is immunotherapy with anti-PD-(L)1 checkpoint inhibitors, alone or with platinum-doublet therapy. However, not all patients derive durable benefit and resistance to immune checkpoint blockade is common. Understanding mechanisms of resistance-which can include defects in DNA damage response and repair pathways, alterations or functional mutations in STK11/LKB1, alterations in antigen-presentation pathways, and immunosuppressive cellular subsets within the tumor microenvironment-and developing effective therapies to overcome them, remains an unmet need.

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Genomic studies focusing on the contribution of common and rare genetic variants of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder support the view that substantial risk is conferred through molecular pathways involved in synaptic plasticity in the neurons of cortical and subcortical brain regions, including the hippocampus. Synaptic long-term potentiation (LTP) is central to associative learning and memory and depends on a pattern of gene expression in response to neuronal stimulation. Genes related to the induction of LTP have been associated with psychiatric genetic risk, but the specific cell types and timepoints responsible for the association are unknown.

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Long COVID (LC) occurs after at least 10% of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infections, yet its etiology remains poorly understood. We used 'omic" assays and serology to deeply characterize the global and SARS-CoV-2-specific immunity in the blood of individuals with clear LC and non-LC clinical trajectories, 8 months postinfection. We found that LC individuals exhibited systemic inflammation and immune dysregulation.

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Comparing the performance of different continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) systems is challenging due to the lack of comprehensive guidelines for clinical study design. In particular, the absence of concise requirements for the distribution of comparator (reference) blood glucose (BG) concentrations and their rate of change (RoC) that are used to evaluate CGM performance, impairs comparability. For this article, several experts in the field of CGM performance testing have collaborated to propose characteristics of the distribution of comparator measurements that should be collected during CGM performance testing.

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  • The study investigates the role of the APOBEC3B (A3B) enzyme in lung cancer, specifically in non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) driven by the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR).
  • It was found that A3B expression can limit tumor growth in mouse models but is linked to resistance against EGFR-targeted therapies in tumors.
  • The research suggests that A3B could be targeted to improve the effectiveness of cancer treatments, as its upregulation was observed in both preclinical models and patients undergoing EGFR-targeted therapy.
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Objective: Atrial fibrillation (AF) is associated with impaired health-related quality of life (HRQoL), an increased risk of morbidity, and mortality. Traditional AF-related outcomes (e.g.

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Cell therapies have yielded durable clinical benefits for patients with cancer, but the risks associated with the development of therapies from manipulated human cells are understudied. For example, we lack a comprehensive understanding of the mechanisms of toxicities observed in patients receiving T cell therapies, including recent reports of encephalitis caused by reactivation of human herpesvirus 6 (HHV-6). Here, through petabase-scale viral genomics mining, we examine the landscape of human latent viral reactivation and demonstrate that HHV-6B can become reactivated in cultures of human CD4 T cells.

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Background: When investigating suitability for epilepsy surgery, people with drug-refractory focal epilepsy may have intracranial EEG (iEEG) electrodes implanted to localise seizure onset. Diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (dMRI) may be acquired to identify key white matter tracts for surgical avoidance. Here, we investigate whether structural connectivity abnormalities, inferred from dMRI, may be used in conjunction with functional iEEG abnormalities to aid localisation of the epileptogenic zone (EZ), improving surgical outcomes in epilepsy.

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Background: Over the last two decades, the acute management of rib fractures has changed significantly. In 2021, the Chest Wall injury Society (CWIS) began recognizing centers that epitomize their mission as CWIS Collaborative Centers. The primary aim of this study was to determine the resources, surgical expertise, access to care, and institutional support that are present among centers.

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Background: Intensive BP lowering in the Systolic Blood Pressure Intervention Trial (SPRINT) produced acute decreases in kidney function and higher risk for AKI. We evaluated the effect of intensive BP lowering on long-term changes in kidney function using trial and outpatient electronic health record (EHR) creatinine values.

Methods: SPRINT data were linked with EHR data from 49 (of 102) study sites.

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