Publications by authors named "Katherine Wray"

Background: Anaemia is common and associated with poor outcomes in survivors of critical illness. However, the optimal treatment strategy is unclear.

Methods: We conducted a multicentre, feasibility RCT to compare either a single dose of ferric carboxymaltose 1000 mg i.

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Article Synopsis
  • Iron deficiency is the most prevalent micronutrient deficiency globally, and its impact on immunity, especially adaptive immunity, is unclear, prompting the study of its effects through various experimental models.* -
  • Research demonstrated that low iron levels, caused by increased hepcidin, significantly hinder immune responses to vaccinations and viral infections in both animal models and humans, indicating a critical role of iron in T cell and antibody function.* -
  • The findings suggest that while hypoferremia serves as an innate response to infection, it can negatively affect the development of adaptive immunity, highlighting the need to address iron deficiency to enhance vaccine efficacy and overall immune health in various populations.*
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Background: To accurately assess micronutrient status, it is necessary to characterize the effects of inflammation and the acute-phase response on nutrient biomarkers.

Objective: Within a norovirus human challenge study, we aimed to model the inflammatory response of C-reactive protein (CRP) and α-1-acid glycoprotein (AGP) by infection status, model kinetics of micronutrient biomarkers by inflammation status, and evaluate associations between inflammation and micronutrient biomarkers from 0 to 35 d post-norovirus exposure.

Methods: Fifty-two healthy adults were enrolled into challenge studies in a hospital setting and followed longitudinally; all were exposed to norovirus, half were infected.

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Diamond-Blackfan Anemia (DBA) is a rare inherited form of pure red cell aplasia that usually manifests in infancy or early childhood, and is characterized by normochromic macrocytic anemia and bone marrow erythroblastopenia. The majority of DBA cases are associated with mutations in ribosomal protein genes. Here, we describe a Lebanese girl with RPL5-mutated DBA unresponsive to steroid treatment who died from complications following late hematopoietic stem cell transplantation performed at the age of 15 years.

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In hereditary hemochromatosis, iron overload is associated with homozygosity for the p.C282Y mutation. A second mutation, p.

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Hepcidin regulates systemic iron homeostasis. Suppression of hepcidin expression occurs physiologically in iron deficiency and increased erythropoiesis but is pathologic in thalassemia and hemochromatosis. Here we show that epigenetic events govern hepcidin expression.

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Anemia affects over 800 million women and children globally. Measurement of hepcidin as an index of iron status shows promise, but its diagnostic performance where hemoglobinopathies are prevalent is unclear. We evaluated the performance of hepcidin as a diagnostic test of iron deficiency in adolescents across Sri Lanka.

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Accurate diagnosis of rare inherited anaemias is challenging, requiring a series of complex and expensive laboratory tests. Targeted next-generation-sequencing (NGS) has been used to investigate these disorders, but the selection of genes on individual panels has been narrow and the validation strategies used have fallen short of the standards required for clinical use. Clinical-grade validation of negative results requires the test to distinguish between lack of adequate sequencing reads at the locations of known mutations and a real absence of mutations.

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Hemoglobin E (HbE) β-thalassemia is the most common severe thalassemia syndrome across Asia, and millions of people are carriers. Clinical heterogeneity in HbE β-thalassemia is incompletely explained by genotype, and the interaction of phenotypic variation with hepcidin is unknown. The effect of thalassemia carriage on hepcidin is also unknown, but it could be relevant for iron supplementation programs aimed at combating anemia.

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