A Qualitative Exploration of the Functional, Social, and Emotional Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on People Who Use Drugs.

Since 2020, people who use drugs (PWUD) experienced heightened risks related to drug supply disruptions, contamination, overdose, social isolation, and increased stress. This study explored how the lives of PWUD changed in Philadelphia over a one-year period. Using semi-structured interviews with 20 participants in a Housing First, low-barrier medication for opioid use (MOUD) program in Philadelphia, the effects of the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic on the daily lives, resources, functioning, substance use, and treatment of PWUD were explored.

UltraPrep is a scalable, cost-effective, bead-based method for purifying cell-free DNA.

UltraPrep is an open-source, two-step method for purification of cell-free DNA that entails extraction of total DNA followed by size-selective enrichment of the smaller fragments that are characteristic of DNA originating from fragmentation between nucleosome. The advantages of the two related protocols that are described are that they can easily accommodate a wide range of sample input volumes, they rely on simple, magnetic bead-based technology, the yields of cfDNA are directly comparable to the most popular methods for cfDNA purification, and they dramatically reduce the cost of cfDNA isolation relative to currently available commercial methods. We provide a framework for physical and molecular quality analysis of purified cfDNA and demonstrate that the cfDNA generated by UltraPrep meets or exceeds the quality metrics of the most commonly used procedure.

Collection of cell-free DNA for genomic analysis of solid tumors in a clinical laboratory setting.

The breadth of diagnostic procedures that utilize cell free DNA (cfDNA) from human plasma has increased dramatically in recent years. Here, we confirm that tumor-derived cfDNA fragments are similar in size distribution to cfDNA derived from normal tissues. Therefore, collection procedures optimized with healthy donor specimens are likely to be applicable to the diagnosis and monitoring of many different cancer types.

Blood-Borne RNA Correlates with Disease Activity and IFN-Stimulated Gene Expression in Systemic Lupus Erythematosus.

The loss of tolerance and the presence of circulating autoantibodies directed against nuclear Ags is the hallmark of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). Many of these Ags are complexed with short, noncoding RNAs, such as U1 and Y1. The amount of U1 and Y1 RNA complexed with SLE patient Abs and immune complexes was measured in a cross-section of 228 SLE patients to evaluate the role of these RNA molecules within the known biochemical framework of SLE.