Publications by authors named "Killian A"

Purpose: To explore and describe therapeutic approaches for the prevention of upper limb (UL) repetitive strain injuries (RSI) amongst computer users in the twenty-first century.

Methods: A scoping review was conducted using the method described by Arksey and O'Malley, further enhanced by Levac et al. to ensure rigor, validity and reliability during analysis.

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The combination of vancomycin and piperacillin-tazobactam (VPT) has been associated with acute kidney injury (AKI) in hospitalized patients when compared to similar combinations. Additional studies examining this nephrotoxic risk in critically ill patients have not consistently demonstrated the aforementioned association. Furthermore, patients with baseline renal dysfunction have been excluded from almost all of these studies, creating a need to examine the risk in this patient population.

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Article Synopsis
  • The guideline aims to create evidence-based recommendations for ICU clinicians treating adults with acute liver failure (ALF) or acute on chronic liver failure (ACLF).
  • A panel of 27 experts conducted systematic reviews and categorized their findings into Population, Intervention, Comparison, and Outcomes (PICO) questions to guide clinical practice.
  • The resulting 28 recommendations include five strong recommendations and 21 conditional ones, but many are based on low-quality evidence, highlighting areas that need further research.
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Background: Approval of living kidney donors (LKD) with end-stage kidney disease (ESKD) risk factors, such as obesity, has increased. While lifetime ESKD development data are lacking, the study of intermediate outcomes such as diabetes is critical for LKD safety. Donation-attributable diabetes risk among persons with obesity remains unknown.

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and infections have been described as a cause of hyperammonemia syndrome leading to devastating neurological injury in the post-transplant period, most commonly in lung transplant recipients. The occurrence of significant hyperammonemia caused by other urease-producing organisms remains unclear. We describe a case of disseminated cryptococcosis presenting with profound hyperammonemia in a 55-year-old orthotopic liver transplant recipient.

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  • Spliceogenic variants in genes linked to diseases are often thought to be harmful due to their tendency to cause frameshifts that lead to loss of function; however, some may only cause modifications that maintain function, as shown in recent studies of cancer predisposition genes.
  • This study focused on the DNA mismatch repair gene MSH2, relevant to Lynch syndrome, and used minigene splicing assays to analyze 18 variants primarily found at splice sites, assessing the resulting protein changes.
  • The findings revealed three types of RNA changes that produced altered protein isoforms, all of which disrupted MSH2 function, confirming their pathogenicity and highlighting the need for integrated RNA and protein analyses for accurate clinical evaluations of these variants.
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Alloimmune responses in kidney transplant (KT) patients previously hospitalized with COVID-19 are understudied. We analyzed a cohort of 112 kidney transplant recipients who were hospitalized following a positive SARS-CoV-2 test result during the first 20 months of the COVID-19 pandemic. We found a cumulative incidence of 17% for the development of new donor-specific antibodies (DSA) or increased levels of pre-existing DSA in hospitalized SARS-CoV-2-infected KT patients.

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Background: Community-level factors contribute to living donor kidney transplantation disparities but may also influence the interventions aimed to mitigate these disparities. The Living Donor Navigator Program was designed to separate the advocacy role from the patient in need of transplantation-friends/family are encouraged to participate as the patients' advocates to identify living donors, though some of the patients participate alone as self-advocates. Self-advocates have a lower living donor kidney transplantation likelihood compared to the patients with an advocate.

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Background: Despite regulations mandating follow-up laboratory testing for living kidney donors, less than half of transplant centers are in compliance. We sought to understand barriers to follow-up testing from the donors' perspective.

Methods: We surveyed our center's living kidney donors.

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An unvaccinated adult male heart transplant recipient patient with recalcitrant COVID-19 due to SARS-CoV-2 delta variant with rising nasopharyngeal quantitative viral load was successfully treated with ALVR109, an off-the-shelf SARS-CoV-2-specific T cell therapy. Background immunosuppression included 0.1 mg/kg prednisone, tacrolimus, and mycophenolate mofetil 1 gm twice daily for historical antibody-mediated rejection.

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Importance: Living donor kidney transplant (LDKT) is the ideal treatment for end-stage kidney disease, but racial disparities in LDKT have increased over the last 2 decades. Recipient clinical and social factors do not account for LDKT racial inequities, although comprehensive measures of community-level vulnerability have not been assessed.

Objective: To determine if racial disparities persist in LDKT independent of community-level vulnerability.

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Objective: The aim of this study was to characterize end-stage renal disease (ESRD) patients with obesity as their only contraindication to listing and to quantify wait-list and transplant access.

Methods: Using the US Renal Data System, a retrospective cohort study of incident dialysis cases (2012 to 2014) was performed. The primary outcomes were time to wait-listing and time to transplantation.

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Background: Upregulated glucose metabolism is a common feature of tumors. Glucose can be broken down by either glycolysis or the oxidative pentose phosphate pathway (oxPPP). The relative usage within tumors of these catabolic pathways remains unclear.

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Background: Endovascular mechanical thrombectomy (EMT) is the standard of care for acute ischemic stroke (AIS) caused by proximal large vessel occlusions. There is conflicting evidence on outcome of patients undergoing EMT under procedural sedation (PS) or general anesthesia (GA). In this retrospective study we analyze the effect of GA and PS on the functional outcome of patients undergoing EMT.

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Background: The Living Donor Navigator (LDN) Program pairs kidney transplant candidates (TC) with a friend or family member for advocacy training to help identify donors and achieve living donor kidney transplantation (LDKT). However, some TCs participate alone as self-advocates.

Methods: In this retrospective cohort study of TCs in the LDN program (04/2017-06/2019), we evaluated the likelihood of LDKT using Cox proportional hazards regression and rate of donor screenings using ordered events conditional models by advocate type.

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Introduction: The Living Donor Navigator (LDN) program is one of several initiatives designed to help transplant candidates identify living donors with the help of a friend or family member advocate to speak on their behalf. More than half of advocates in the LDN program were the spouse or parent of the candidate and served in a caregiving role. Caregivers for patients awaiting transplantation have reported poorer quality of life than the general population, suggesting more support is needed for this vulnerable group.

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Objective: This study evaluated the safety and efficacy of adjunctive dexmedetomidine for alcohol withdrawal syndrome (AWS) treatment compared to symptom-triggered benzodiazepine therapy.

Methods: This single-center, retrospective, cohort study evaluated patients admitted to an intensive care unit (ICU) with AWS. Patients were divided into 2 groups: adjunctive dexmedetomidine or symptom-triggered therapy (control).

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Objectives: To develop evidence-based recommendations for clinicians caring for adults with acute or acute on chronic liver failure in the ICU.

Design: The guideline panel comprised 29 members with expertise in aspects of care of the critically ill patient with liver failure and/or methodology. The Society of Critical Care Medicine standard operating procedures manual and conflict-of-interest policy were followed throughout.

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Article Synopsis
  • Branch points (BPs) are crucial for the splicing of pre-mRNA and are located in short motifs upstream of acceptor splice sites (3'ss); several bioinformatics tools for detecting BPs have been developed recently.
  • In a study utilizing a large dataset of human 3'ss, Branchpointer was found to be the most accurate tool for identifying BPs, showing 99.48% accuracy for constitutive and 65.84% for alternative 3'ss.
  • Additionally, BPP was the best performer for predicting the impact of variants in BP regions on mRNA splicing, achieving an accuracy of 89.17%.
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Yeast prions are protein-based genetic elements found in the baker's yeast , most of which are amyloid aggregates that propagate by fragmentation and spreading of small, self-templating pieces called propagons. Fragmentation is carried out by molecular chaperones, specifically Hsp104, Hsp70, and Hsp40. Like other amyloid-forming proteins, amyloid-based yeast prions exhibit structural polymorphisms, termed "strains" in mammalian systems and "variants" in yeast, which demonstrate diverse phenotypes and chaperone requirements for propagation.

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This study collected behavioral data for testing how regional contrast changes due to the addition of cosmetics would affect attractiveness ratings. In addition, we used an established model of asymmetry to look for a correlation between changes in attractiveness related to the application of cosmetics to specific regions of the face and changes in symmetry. Using this asymmetry model we compared female faces with and without makeup.

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