Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) is commonly used to localize brain regions activated during a task. Methods have been developed for constructing confidence regions of image excursion sets, allowing inference on brain regions exceeding non-zero activation thresholds. However, these methods have been limited to a single predefined threshold and brain volume data, overlooking more sensitive cortical surface analyses.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Research examining (MCI) criteria in diverse and/or health-disparate populations is limited. There is a critical need to investigate the predictive validity for incident dementia of widely used MCI definitions in diverse populations.
Method: Eligible participants were non-Hispanic White or Black Bronx community residents, free of dementia at enrollment, with at least one annual follow-up visit after baseline.
Cancer and kidney disease disproportionately impact Black patients. The CKD-EPI equation was developed to estimate glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) without using race. We assessed the impact of using CKD-EPI instead of CKD-EPI or Cockcroft-Gault (CG) on dosing and eligibility of anticancer drugs in Black and non-Black patients.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDespite the well documented importance and success of interventional pain procedures in the management of painful spine conditions, detractors have questioned their role as part of the care paradigm since their inception. One of the many unexpected consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States was the forced shut down of elective procedures in early 2020. This caused many patients suffering with pain, who had already been deemed appropriate for an interventional procedure to have to wait an extended period of time.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBlack, compared to white, women with residual estrogen receptor-positive (ER+) breast cancer after neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) have worse distant recurrence-free survival (DRFS). Such racial disparity may be due to difference in density of portals for systemic cancer cell dissemination, called TMEM doorways, and pro-metastatic tumor microenvironment (TME). Here, we evaluate residual cancer specimens after NAC from 96 Black and 87 white women.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: Incremental delays in time to treatment initiation (TTI) have been shown to cause a proportional, increased independent risk of disease-specific mortality for breast cancer, colorectal cancer (CRC), head and neck cancer (HNC), non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC), and pancreatic cancer. Studies suggest that delays are associated with racial and socioeconomic disparities. We evaluated associations between patient factors and TTI to identify those associated with delay.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Heart rate variability (HRV) reflects the activity of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) and can be used as a potential predictor of stress-related cardiovascular diseases. This study aimed to assess whether physical and mental strain during the performance of cerebral endovascular procedure influence time-domain HRV parameters in operating surgeon.
Materials And Methods: Heart rate (HR) and HRV metrics were measured using a HR sensor chest strap before, during, and after neuroendovascular interventions performed by a single neurosurgeon.
Objective: Episodic memory loss, a hallmark symptom of Alzheimer's Disease, is frequently quantified by story memory performance. The National Alzheimer's Coordinating Center Uniform Data Set Neuropsychological Battery (UDSNB) replaced Logical Memory with Craft Story 21 in UDSNB Version 3. The concordance between these story memory tasks is poorly characterized in demographically diverse older adults, possibly jeopardizing the integrity of longitudinal data in aging cohorts.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Association between socioeconomic status (SES) and stage at diagnosis in gastrointestinal (GI) cancers is poorly described. Relationship between low SES and stage at diagnosis as well as the mediating role of insurance status (IS) was examined.
Methods: The Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results database was queried for esophageal, gastric, liver, biliary, pancreatic, colon, and rectal cancers diagnosed in 2012-2016.
Aims: To evaluate whether diabetes and prediabetes are associated with impaired cognitive performance among older adults and examine depressive symptoms as a mediator.
Methods: We used cross-sectional data from the Einstein Aging Study, a systematically recruited, community-based cohort study of diverse older adults (N = 794; Age Mean (SD) = 78.9 (5.
Background: Black race is associated with worse outcome in patients with breast cancer. The distant relapse-free survival (DRFS) between Black and White women with localized breast cancer who participated in National Cancer Institute-sponsored clinical trial was evaluated.
Methods: Pooled data were analyzed from 8 National Surgical Adjuvant Breast and Bowel Project (NSABP) trials including 9702 women with localized breast cancer treated with adjuvant chemotherapy (AC, n = 7485) or neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC, n = 2217), who self-reported as Black (n = 1070) or White (n = 8632) race.
Chronic back and leg pain are leading causes of disability worldwide. The purpose of this study was to compare the care in a unidisciplinary (USC) versus multidisciplinary (MSC) spine clinic, where patients are evaluated by different specialists during the same office visit. Adult patients presenting with a chief complaint of back and/or leg pain between June 2018 and July 2019 were assessed for eligibility.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe immune system has been described to play a role in the development of Alzheimer's disease (AD), but the distribution of immunoglobulins and their subclasses in brain tissue has not been explored. In this study, examination of pathologically diagnosed frontal cortex gray matter revealed significantly higher levels of IgM and IgG in late-stage AD (Braak and Braak stages V and VI) compared to age-matched controls. While levels of IgG2 and IgG4 constant region fragments were higher in late-stage AD, concentration of native-state IgG4 with free Fc regions was increased in AD III and VI.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: Despite being the current standard of care, outcomes after endovascular thrombectomy (EVT) for acute ischemic stroke (AIS) remain highly variable. Though several scoring systems exist to predict outcomes in AIS, they were mainly developed to direct patient selection for treatment. Recognizing the integral role peri-procedural metrics play on outcome, our study aimed to develop a post-EVT prognostic score to predict 90-day functional dependency and death.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe 21-gene recurrence score (RS) is prognostic for recurrence and predictive of chemotherapy benefit in early estrogen receptor-positive (ER +) HER2-negative (HER2-) breast cancer (BCA). We evaluated clinicopathologic characteristics, RS and chemotherapy benefit in invasive ductal carcinoma (IDC), invasive lobular carcinoma (ILC), and carcinomas of mixed histologies (ductal + lobular (DLC), ductal + other (DOC), lobular + other (LOC)). Women diagnosed between 1/1/2010 and 1/1/2014 with ER + HER2- BCA, measuring <5 cm, with 0-3 involved axillary nodes, surgery as first treatment, and available RS, were identified from the NCDB.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWithin-person variability in cognitive performance has emerged as a promising indicator of cognitive health with potential to distinguish normative and pathological cognitive aging. We use a smartphone-based digital health approach with ecological momentary assessments (EMA) to examine differences in variability in performance among older adults with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and those who were cognitively unimpaired (CU). A sample of 311 systematically recruited, community-dwelling older adults from the Einstein Aging Study (Mean age = 77.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAn individual's pain experiences vary substantially over time. Though variability in pain may be an important metric which usually predicts health consequences, research on the measurement of pain variability estimates is lacking among older adults. We aimed to examine the reliabilities of both intra-individual mean (IIM) and intra-individual variability (IIV) of pain assessed using ecological momentary assessments (EMA) among racially diverse, systematically recruited community dwelling cohort of older adults.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The Uniform Data Set, Version 3 Neuropsychological Battery (UDSNB3.0), from the database of the University of Washington's National Alzheimer's Coordinating Center (NACC), is widely used to characterize cognitive performance in clinical and research settings; however, norms for underrepresented community-based samples are scarce.
Objective: We compared UDSNB 3.
Background: Most studies investigating human gut microbiome dynamics are conducted on humans living in an urban setting. However, few studies have researched the gut microbiome of the populations living traditional lifestyles. These understudied populations are arguably better subjects in answering human-gut microbiome evolution because of their lower exposure to antibiotics and higher dependence on natural resources.
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