Publications by authors named "John C"

Objectives: The shape is commonly used to describe the objects. State-of-the-art algorithms in medical imaging are predominantly diverging from computer vision, where voxel grids, meshes, point clouds, and implicit surface models are used. This is seen from the growing popularity of ShapeNet (51,300 models) and Princeton ModelNet (127,915 models).

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Background: In many sub-Saharan African countries, it is recommended that children with sickle cell anaemia receive malaria chemoprevention with monthly sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine or daily proguanil as the standard of care. However, the efficacy of these interventions is compromised by high-grade antifolate resistance of Plasmodium falciparum and poor adherence. We aimed to compare the efficacy of weekly dihydroartemisinin-piperaquine and monthly sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine for the prevention of clinical malaria in children with sickle cell anaemia in areas with high-grade sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine resistance of P falciparum in Uganda and Malawi.

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Background: Patient organizations (POs) play a crucial role in supporting individuals with health conditions. Their activities range from counseling to support groups to advocacy. The COVID-19 pandemic and its related public health measures prompted rapid digital transformation efforts across multiple sectors, including health care.

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Light-harvesting complexes (LHCs) play a critical role in modulating energy flux within photosynthetic organisms in response to fluctuating light. Under high light conditions, they activate quenching mechanisms to mitigate photodamage. Despite their importance, the molecular mechanisms underlying these photoprotective processes remain incomplete.

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The interaction between cancer cells and immune cells in the tumor microenvironment (TME) plays a crucial role in determining tumor growth, metastasis, and response to treatment. Tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) in TME could be a predictive marker for treatment response in various therapeutic interventions, including chemotherapy and immunotherapy. Thus, imaging the tumor immune microenvironment is important for selecting the optimal treatment strategies in cancer therapy.

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Climate change is affecting or will affect the lives of every resident of New York State. This chapter examines the impacts of climate change on five critical areas in the state: populations and migration, the economy, education, culture, and government. The chapter highlights differential vulnerabilities among the state's regions, populations, workers, and businesses, paying particular attention to issues of equity and environmental justice.

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Introduction: Adequate prenatal care (PNC) is essential to the overall health of mother and infant. Teen age and advanced maternal age (AMA) are known risk factors for poor birth outcomes. However, less is known about whether these age groups are associated with inadequate PNC.

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Article Synopsis
  • The text indicates that there is a correction to a previously published article identified by the DOI 10.1016/j.lanepe.2021.100299.
  • The specific details of the correction are not provided in this snippet.
  • Readers interested in the original article should refer to this correction for accurate information.
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  • A study conducted in Uganda followed children aged 6 months to 4 years who were discharged from the hospital after being treated for specific severe malaria manifestations, comparing their post-discharge health to asymptomatic community children.
  • Over 12 months, 56.6% of children with severe malaria experienced one or more hospitalizations, significantly higher than the 30.8% of community children, with a majority of the hospitalizations being malaria-related.
  • The findings indicate a pressing need for research into post-discharge malaria prevention treatments to help reduce the healthcare burden on children who have suffered from severe malaria.
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Introduction: Few studies have described post-discharge morbidity of children with specific manifestations of severe malaria (SM) beyond severe malarial anemia or cerebral malaria.

Methods: Children 6 months to 4 years of age admitted at Jinja and Mulago hospitals in Uganda, with one or more of the five most common manifestations of SM, cerebral malaria (n=53), respiratory distress syndrome (n=108), malaria with complicated seizures (n=160), severe malarial anemia (n=155) or prostration (n=75), were followed for 12 months after discharge, along with community children (CC) (n=120) recruited from the household or neighborhood of the children with SM. Incidence and risk of post-discharge readmission, death or outpatient clinic visits were compared between children with SM and CC.

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Plant phenological dynamics have been well studied in relation to abiotic conditions and climate change, but comparatively poorly studied in relation to herbivory. In contrast, plant abundance dynamics have been well studied in relation to abiotic conditions and herbivory, but poorly studied in relation to phenology. Consequently, the contribution of herbivory to plant phenological dynamics and therefrom to plant abundance dynamics remains obscure.

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  • Children with severe malarial anemia (SMA) have low in-hospital mortality but face high risks of readmission or death after discharge, potentially due to factors impacting blood production and vascular health.
  • A study of 145 children in Kampala, Uganda, showed that higher plasma levels of platelet-derived growth factor-BB (PDGF-BB) and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) upon admission were linked to a significantly lower risk of readmission or death within 12 months.
  • The findings suggest that these angiogenesis-promoting factors may help reduce the likelihood of severe malaria recurrences in these children.
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Malaria in child travelers caused by Plasmodium ovale spp. is less well characterized than malaria due to other Plasmodium species. Commonly used diagnostic tests often lack adequate sensitivity to identify P.

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  • Co-infection with intestinal helminths and malaria is common in certain communities, but the relationship between these infections and malaria severity remains unclear.
  • A study analyzed stool samples from children with severe malaria and asymptomatic children in Uganda, finding a very low prevalence of intestinal helminth infections in both groups.
  • The results indicated that helminth infections were not linked to increased risk of severe malaria, which may be attributed to the success of Uganda's national deworming program introduced in 2003.
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  • Multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) is a serious condition linked to COVID-19, causing inflammation and affecting multiple organs.
  • Research indicates that while antibodies are produced, there are issues with cell-mediated immune responses, particularly with natural killer (NK) cells, which show reduced functionality.
  • Possible treatments, like using CD16 cellular engagers, may improve NK cell function and help address the immune system's dysregulation associated with MIS-C.
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Objective: Interventions that combat obesity and its associated metabolic perturbations may decrease incidence and improve outcomes of endometrial cancer (EC). Potential options for weight loss include pharmacotherapeutic interventions such as tirzepatide, a dual-acting glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) and gastric inhibitory polypeptide (GIP) receptor agonist. Given this, we explored the anti-obesity and anti-tumorigenic effects of tirzepatide in our pre-clinical mouse model of endometrioid EC.

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Objectives: Qualitative faecal immunochemical tests for haemoglobin (FIT), for triaging for colorectal cancer investigations, are available for professional use. The aim was to evaluate these lateral flow tests. No previous analytical evaluations have been published.

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The Care for Child Development (CCD) program may improve child development outcomes in resource-limited settings, but has not yet been adapted to group-based settings to facilitate sustainable dissemination. In this study, we determined the acceptability and feasibility of a group-based CCD program, with evaluation of program outcomes for child development, home environment, and symptoms of maternal depression as secondary outcomes. We evaluated this adapted program using a 2 × 2 crossover-designed pilot study administered over 10 bi-weekly sessions.

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  • The study aimed to evaluate the relationship between the perfusion index (PI), a noninvasive tool, and clinical markers of perfusion in critically ill children hospitalized with severe malaria, investigating its potential to identify those at higher risk of mortality.
  • Conducted in two hospitals in Uganda, the research analyzed data from 600 children under five with severe malaria and found that lower admission PI correlated with clinical signs of poor perfusion and complications, as well as higher mortality odds.
  • The results indicated that consecutive low PI measures (< 1%) were predictive of mortality, suggesting that PI could serve as an important indicator for managing severe malaria in pediatric patients.
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There is evidence that aerobic exercise improves brain health. Benefits may be modulated by acute physiological responses to exercise, but this has not been well characterized in older or cognitively impaired adults. The randomized controlled trial 'AEROBIC' (NCT04299308) enrolled 60 older adults who were cognitively healthy (n = 30) or cognitively impaired (n = 30) to characterize the acute brain responses to moderate [45-55% heart rate reserve (HRR)] and higher (65-75% HRR) intensity acute exercise.

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In addressing the limitations of CRISPR-Cas9, including off-target effects and high licensing fees for commercial use, Cas-CLOVER, a dimeric gene editing tool activated by two guide RNAs, was recently developed. This study focused on implementing and evaluating Cas-CLOVER in HEK-293 cells used for recombinant adeno-associated virus (rAAV) production by targeting the signal transducer and activator of transcription 1 (STAT1) locus, which is crucial for cell growth regulation and might influence rAAV production yields. Cas-CLOVER demonstrated impressive efficiency in gene editing, achieving over 90% knockout (KO) success.

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Background: There is evidence that chronic exercise can benefit the brain, but the effects vary markedly between studies. One potential mechanism for exercise-related benefit is the increase in systemic lactate concentration that is well-characterized to occur during exercise. Lactate is known to cross the blood brain barrier and can be used readily as a fuel for neurons.

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Understanding and preserving the deep sea ecosystems is paramount for marine conservation efforts. Automated object (deep-sea biota) classification can enable the creation of detailed habitat maps that not only aid in biodiversity assessments but also provide essential data to evaluate ecosystem health and resilience. Having a significant source of labelled data helps prevent overfitting and enables training deep learning models with numerous parameters.

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  • Respiratory infections are a major global health issue, but the genetic factors influencing them are not well understood, leading to this study that aimed to investigate genetic determinants through genome-wide association studies (GWAS).
  • The research analyzed data from 19,459 patients with respiratory infections and 101,438 controls in Stage 1, discovering 56 significant genetic signals, including one strong signal related to a gene important for immune response, but the follow-up Stage 2 study did not replicate these findings.
  • Possible reasons for the lack of replication include variations in how the studies were conducted and differences in patient populations, but the research suggests a novel gene may be linked to susceptibility to respiratory infections, warranting further investigation.
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