Publications by authors named "Jennifer Kusovschi"

Background: Lipid profiling is central for coronary artery disease (CAD) risk assessment. Nonadherence or unreported use of lipid-lowering drugs, particularly statins, can significantly complicate the association between lipid profile measures and CAD clinical outcomes. By combining medication history evaluation with statin analysis in plasma, we determined the effects of inaccurately reported statin use on lipid profile measures and their association with CAD risk.

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Designing studies for lipid-metabolism-related biomarker discovery is challenging because of the high prevalence of various statin and fibrate usage for lipid-lowering therapies. When the statin and fibrate use is determined based on self-reports, patient adherence to the prescribed statin dose regimen remains unknown. A potentially more accurate way to verify a patient's medication adherence is by direct analytical measurements.

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Background: The causative agents for the current national outbreak of electronic-cigarette, or vaping, product use-associated lung injury (EVALI) have not been established. Detection of toxicants in bronchoalveolar-lavage (BAL) fluid from patients with EVALI can provide direct information on exposure within the lung.

Methods: BAL fluids were collected from 51 patients with EVALI in 16 states and from 99 healthy participants who were part of an ongoing study of smoking involving nonsmokers, exclusive users of e-cigarettes or vaping products, and exclusive cigarette smokers that was initiated in 2015.

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Progress toward better diagnosis and treatment of lipid metabolism-related diseases requires high throughput approaches for multiplexed quantitative analysis of structurally diverse lipids, including phospholipids (PLs). This work demonstrates a simplified "one-pot" phospholipid extraction protocol, as an alternative to conventional liquid-liquid extraction. Performed in a 96-well format, the extraction was coupled with high throughput UPLC and multiplexed tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) detection, allowing non-targeted quantification of phosphatidylcholines (PC), sphingomyelins (SM), lysophosphatidylcholines (LPC), phosphatidylethanolamines (PE), and phosphatidylinositols (PI).

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