Publications by authors named "JL Jimenez"

Introduction: While the general immune response to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) is well-understood, the long-term effects of Human Immunodeficiency Virus-1/Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-Coronavirus-2 (HIV-1/SARS-CoV-2) co-infection on the immune system remain unclear. This study investigates the immune response in people with HIV-1 (PWH) co-infected with SARS-CoV-2 to understand its long-term health consequences.

Methods: A retrospective longitudinal study of PWH with suppressed viral load and SARS-CoV-2 infection was conducted.

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Using a new approach that constrains thermodynamic modeling of aerosol composition with measured gas-to-particle partitioning of inorganic nitrate, we estimate the acidity levels for aerosol sampled in the South Korean planetary boundary layer during the NASA/NIER KORUS-AQ field campaign. The pH (mean ± 1σ = 2.43±0.

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Article Synopsis
  • Wildfires are a growing contributor to air pollution, particularly due to reactive organic compounds (ROC), which have varying health impacts based on their toxicity and abundance.
  • A study combining field campaign data and air quality modeling found that current emissions estimates capture only 40-45% of the total ROC released from wildfires.
  • The research indicates that particulate ROC could significantly affect health risks from smoke exposure, highlighting the need for more accurate toxicity data on these compounds.
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In this global phase 2 study in patients with relapsed/refractory follicular lymphoma (FL), zandelisib was administered on intermittent dosing to mitigate immune-related adverse events and infections that have been reported with oral PI3Kδ inhibitors administered daily continuously. Eligible patients with measurable disease and progression after at least two prior therapies were administered zandelisib until disease progression or intolerability. The primary efficacy endpoint was objective response rate (ORR) and the key secondary efficacy endpoint was duration of response (DOR).

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Since the 1930s, germicidal ultraviolet (GUV) irradiation has been used indoors to prevent the transmission of airborne diseases, such as tuberculosis and measles. Recently, it has received renewed attention due to the COVID-19 pandemic. While GUV radiation has been shown to be effective in inactivating airborne bacteria and viruses, few studies on the impact of GUV on indoor air quality have been published.

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Rationale: Flavors can alter the orosensory properties of tobacco products. Specifically, flavors can serve as an oral cue for smokeless tobacco products.

Objectives: We aimed to investigate the impact of oral vanillin, the principal chemical of vanilla flavor in tobacco products, on nicotine's taste, and nicotine choice, intake, and seeking behaviors.

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What can be considered an appropriate statistical method for the primary analysis of a randomized clinical trial (RCT) with a time-to-event endpoint when we anticipate non-proportional hazards owing to a delayed effect? This question has been the subject of much recent debate. The standard approach is a log-rank test and/or a Cox proportional hazards model. Alternative methods have been explored in the statistical literature, such as weighted log-rank tests and tests based on the Restricted Mean Survival Time (RMST).

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We evaluated the sensitivity of estimated PM and NO health impacts to varying key input parameters and assumptions including: 1) the spatial scale at which impacts are estimated, 2) using either a single concentration-response function (CRF) or using racial/ethnic group specific CRFs from the same epidemiologic study, 3) assigning exposure to residents based on home, instead of home and work locations for the state of Colorado. We found that the spatial scale of the analysis influences the magnitude of NO, but not PM, attributable deaths. Using county-level predictions instead of 1 km predictions of NO resulted in a lower estimate of mortality attributable to NO by ∼ 50 % for all of Colorado for each year between 2000 and 2020.

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Interleukin 7 receptor (IL7R) is vital in the adaptive immune response against human immunodeficiency viruses (HIV). We assessed IL7RA polymorphisms (SNPs) in antiretroviral therapy (ART)-naïve HIV patients for their association with spontaneous HIV infection control. We conducted a retrospective cohort study involving 667 ART-naïve patients categorized by HIV progression (ordinal variable): 150 rapid progressors, 334 moderate/typical progressors, 86 long-term nonprogressors elite controllers (LTNPs-EC), and 97 LTNPs-non-EC.

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Biomass burning particulate matter (BBPM) affects regional air quality and global climate, with impacts expected to continue to grow over the coming years. We show that studies of North American fires have a systematic altitude dependence in measured BBPM normalized excess mixing ratio (NEMR; ΔPM/ΔCO), with airborne and high-altitude studies showing a factor of 2 higher NEMR than ground-based measurements. We report direct airborne measurements of BBPM volatility that partially explain the difference in the BBPM NEMR observed across platforms.

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The impact of aerosols on human health and climate is well-recognized, yet many studies have only focused on total PM or changes from anthropogenic activities. This study quantifies the health and climate effects of organic aerosols (OA) from anthropogenic, biomass burning, and biogenic sources. Using two atmospheric chemistry models, CAM-chem and GEOS-Chem, our findings reveal that anthropogenic primary OA (POA) has the highest efficiency for health effects but the lowest for direct radiative effects due to spatial and temporal variations associated with population and surface albedo.

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The casts of Pompeii bear witness to the people who died during the Vesuvius 79 AD eruption. However, studies on the cause of death of these victims have not been conclusive. A previous important step is the understanding of the post-depositional processes and the impact of the plaster in bones, two issues that have not been previously evaluated.

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Atmospheric simulation chambers continue to be indispensable tools for research in the atmospheric sciences. Insights from chamber studies are integrated into atmospheric chemical transport models, which are used for science-informed policy decisions. However, a centralized data management and access infrastructure for their scientific products had not been available in the United States and many parts of the world.

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IRF5-TNPO3 polymorphisms have previously been related to immune response, and TNPO3 plays a role in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-1 infection after nuclear import. Therefore, we analyzed the genetic association between IRF5-TNPO3 polymorphisms and the HIV elite control in long-term nonprogressors (LTNPs). We performed a retrospective cohort study on 183 LTNPs, who were antiretroviral therapy-naïve with CD4  ≥ 500 cells/mm , viral load ≤10 000 copies/mL, and asymptomatic over 10 years after HIV seroconversion.

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Combination of several anticancer treatments has typically been presumed to have enhanced drug activity. Motivated by a real clinical trial, this paper considers phase I-II dose finding designs for dual-agent combinations, where one main objective is to characterize both the toxicity and efficacy profiles. We propose a two-stage Bayesian adaptive design that accommodates a change of patient population in-between.

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Urbanization and fires perturb the quantities and composition of fine organic aerosol in the central Amazon, with ramifications for radiative forcing and public health. These disturbances include not only direct emissions of particulates and secondary organic aerosol (SOA) precursors but also changes in the pathways through which biogenic precursors form SOA. The composition of ambient organic aerosol is complex and incompletely characterized, encompassing millions of potential structures relatively few of which have been synthesized and characterized.

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Pyrocumulonimbus (pyroCb) are wildfire-generated convective clouds that can inject smoke directly into the stratosphere. PyroCb have been tracked for years, yet their apparent rarity and episodic nature lead to highly uncertain climate impacts. In situ measurements of pyroCb smoke reveal its distinctive and exceptionally stable aerosol properties and define the long-term influence of pyroCb activity on the stratospheric aerosol budget.

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Phase I-II cancer clinical trial designs are intended to accelerate drug development. In cases where efficacy cannot be ascertained in a short period of time, it is common to divide the study in two stages: i) a first stage in which dose is escalated based only on toxicity data and we look for the maximum tolerated dose (MTD) set and ii) a second stage in which we search for the most efficacious dose within the MTD set. Current available approaches in the area of continuous dose levels involve fixing the MTD after stage I and discarding all collected stage I efficacy data.

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This is an account that should be heard of an important struggle: the struggle of a large group of experts who came together at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic to warn the world about the risk of airborne transmission and the consequences of ignoring it. We alerted the World Health Organization about the potential significance of the airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and the urgent need to control it, but our concerns were dismissed. Here we describe how this happened and the consequences.

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Recent results have demonstrated that the genus is non-monophyletic because the genus is nested within it, with a single species, placed as sister to the clade comprising plus the remaining species of . Here we transfer to a new segregate genus , discuss the morphological features supporting this new genus, present a key to distinguish from closely related genera in the Leucaena subclade, and provide a distribution map of .

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Delayed separation of survival curves is a common occurrence in confirmatory studies in immuno-oncology. Many novel statistical methods that aim to efficiently capture potential long-term survival improvements have been proposed in recent years. However, the vast majority do not consider stratification, which is a major limitation considering that most large confirmatory studies currently employ a stratified primary analysis.

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Aerosol mass extinction efficiency (MEE) is a key aerosol property used to connect aerosol optical properties with aerosol mass concentrations. Using measurements of smoke obtained during the Fire Influence on Regional to Global Environments and Air Quality (FIREX-AQ) campaign we find that mid-visible smoke MEE can change by a factor of 2-3 between fresh smoke (<2 hr old) and one-day-old smoke. While increases in aerosol size partially explain this trend, changes in the real part of the aerosol refractive index (real(n)) are necessary to provide closure assuming Mie theory.

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In parametric Bayesian designs of early phase cancer clinical trials with drug combinations exploring a discrete set of partially ordered doses, several authors claimed that there is no added value in including an interaction term to model synergism between the two drugs. In this paper, we investigate these claims in the setting of continuous dose levels of the two agents. Parametric models will be used to describe the relationship between the doses of the two agents and the probability of dose limiting toxicity and efficacy.

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