Decreasing Hospital-acquired Pressure Injuries During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A 5-step Quality Improvement Approach.

Background: Hospital-acquired pressure injuries (HAPIs) are common adverse events with large burdens on patients and health systems. In 2020, during the initial waves of the COVID-19 pandemic, the incidence of admitted patients with HAPIs of stage II and above in our health system rose from 2.92% to 3.

Prosthetic Visual Acuity with the PRIMA System in Patients with Atrophic Age-related Macular Degeneration at 4 years follow-up.

Objective: To assess the efficacy and safety of the PRIMA subretinal neurostimulation system 48-months post-implantation for improving visual acuity (VA) in patients with geographic atrophy (GA) due to age-related macular degeneration (AMD) at 48-months post-implantation.

Design: First-in-human clinical trial of the PRIMA subretinal prosthesis in patients with atrophic AMD, measuring best-corrected ETDRS VA (Clinicaltrials.gov NCT03333954).

Parental Health Literacy, Empowerment, and Advocacy for Food Allergy Safety in Schools: A Cross-Sectional Study.

Background: Approximately 8% of elementary school-aged children in the United States have food allergies, a complicated health management situation that requires parents to use many types of health literacy, empowerment, and advocacy skills to work with school staff to protect their children.

Objective: This cross-sectional study examined (a) whether the highest versus lowest levels of functional, communicative, and critical health literacy are associated with higher perceived effectiveness of parental advocacy behaviors for safe food allergy management in schools [parental advocacy]; and (b) whether communicative and critical health literacy are more strongly associated with parental advocacy than functional health literacy.

Methods: A sample of parents of elementary school-aged children was recruited through 26 food allergy organizations and a research patient registry.

Effects of Extraction Methods on Phenolic Content in the Young Bamboo Culm Extracts of Munro.

Nowadays, many studies focus on the potential of bamboo as a source of bioactive compounds and natural antioxidants for nutraceutical, pharmaceutical, and food sources. This study is a pioneering effort to determine the total phenolic content, total flavonoid content and free radical scavenging activity, as well as the phenolic identification and quantification of . The study was conducted by using ethanol, methanol, and water for solvent extraction by applying cold maceration, Soxhlet, and ultrasonic-assisted extraction techniques.

Frequency of Urgent or Emergent Vitreoretinal Surgical Procedures in the United States During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Importance: The American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO) indicated that urgent or emergent vitreoretinal surgical procedures should continue during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Although decreases in the frequency of critical procedures have been reported outside the field of ophthalmology, analyses are limited by volume, geography, and time.

Objective: To evaluate whether the frequency of ophthalmic surgical procedures deemed urgent or emergent by the AAO changed across the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic.

International service learning enhances nurse practitioner students' practice and cultural humility.

Academic and health care institutions are charged with improving quality-of-care outcomes by creating culturally educated health care professionals to practice in a global health care environment. International short-term service learning experiences provide nurse practitioner students an opportunity to meet clinical competency skills aligned with course curricula. Faculty can directly observe students' clinical practice, and students broaden diagnostic reasoning skills while earning credit for clinical hours.

C/EBPδ drives interactions between human MAIT cells and endothelial cells that are important for extravasation.

Many mediators and regulators of extravasation by bona fide human memory-phenotype T cells remain undefined. Mucosal-associated invariant T (MAIT) cells are innate-like, antibacterial cells that we found excelled at crossing inflamed endothelium. They displayed abundant selectin ligands, with high expression of and , and expressed CCR6, CCR5, and CCR2, which played non-redundant roles in trafficking on activated endothelial cells.

Sam68 Is Required for DNA Damage Responses via Regulating Poly(ADP-ribosyl)ation.

The rapid and robust synthesis of polymers of adenosine diphosphate (ADP)-ribose (PAR) chains, primarily catalyzed by poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase 1 (PARP1), is crucial for cellular responses to DNA damage. However, the precise mechanisms through which PARP1 is activated and PAR is robustly synthesized are not fully understood. Here, we identified Src-associated substrate during mitosis of 68 kDa (Sam68) as a novel signaling molecule in DNA damage responses (DDRs).

Nurse Practitioners' Use of Communication Techniques: Results of a Maryland Oral Health Literacy Survey.

Objectives: We examined nurse practitioners' use and opinions of recommended communication techniques for the promotion of oral health as part of a Maryland state-wide oral health literacy assessment. Use of recommended health-literate and patient-centered communication techniques have demonstrated improved health outcomes.

Methods: A 27-item self-report survey, containing 17 communication technique items, across 5 domains, was mailed to 1,410 licensed nurse practitioners (NPs) in Maryland in 2010.

Optical Coherence Tomography Angiography of Diabetic Retinopathy in Human Subjects.

Background And Objective: Optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA) is a novel, non-invasive OCT technique capable of imaging the retinal vasculature. This study aims to evaluate the retinal microvasculature in diabetic human subjects with OCTA and assess potential clinical applications.

Patients And Methods: Cross-sectional study of 33 subjects with diabetic retinopathy.

Evidence-Based Interventions for Prevention of Bone Density Loss after Kidney Transplant.

Mineral and bone disorder is common in individuals with kidney transplant as a sequelae of chronic kidney disease. Rapid bone density loss that occurs during the first year after transplant along with pre-existing bone disorder, places these patients at risk of bone fractures at three times higher than the general population. This article examines the efficacy of current evidence-based clinical interventions in reducing the incidence of bone fractures among recipients of kidney transplant.

TSLP expression: analysis with a ZsGreen TSLP reporter mouse.

Thymic stromal lymphopoietin (TSLP) is a type I cytokine that plays a central role in induction of allergic inflammatory responses. Its principal targets have been reported to be dendritic cells and/or CD4 T cells; epithelial cells are a principal source. We report in this study the development of a reporter mouse (TSLP-ZsG) in which a ZsGreen (ZsG)-encoding construct has been inserted by recombineering into a bacterial artificial chromosome immediately at the translation initiating ATG of TSLP.

Qualitative evaluation of a standardized patient clinical simulation for nurse practitioner and pharmacy students.

This article describes a qualitative evaluation of an interprofessional educational experience for nurse practitioner and pharmacy students using standardized patients and physicians role-playing physicians in clinical scenarios. This experience included the development of two clinical scenarios; training of standardized patients, providers, and faculty facilitators; pre-briefing preparation; partial facilitator prompting simulations; and facilitated debriefings. Forty-six students participated in the formative simulation.

Determinants of institutional delivery among women of childbearing age in rural Haiti.

Institutional delivery is an important factor associated with reduced maternal mortality rate (MMR). MMR in Haiti is high (350 per 100,000) and institutional delivery is low-just over 25 % of women delivered at a health facility in 2010. There also exists substantial rural-urban disparity in delivery with more hospital deliveries in urban than in rural areas.

Developing standardized patient clinical simulations to apply concepts of interdisciplinary collaboration.

Interdisciplinary collaboration and interprofessional education (IPE) are essential for transforming health care. Students in nurse practitioner (NP) programs have limited exposure to IPE. Simulated clinical experiences, based on social learning theory, provide a safe and realistic environment to expose NP students to interdisciplinary collaboration as a step toward developing IPE.

Intraluminal containment of commensal outgrowth in the gut during infection-induced dysbiosis.

Shifts in commensal microbiota composition are emerging as a hallmark of gastrointestinal inflammation. In particular, outgrowth of γ-proteobacteria has been linked to the etiology of inflammatory bowel disease and the pathologic consequences of infections. Here we show that following acute Toxoplasma gondii gastrointestinal infection of mice, control of commensal outgrowth is a highly coordinated process involving both the host response and microbial signals.

Protecting and improving breastfeeding practices during a major emergency: lessons learnt from the baby tents in Haiti.

Problem: The 2010 earthquake in Haiti displaced about 1.5 million people, many of them into camps for internally displaced persons. It was expected that disruption of breastfeeding practices would lead to increased infant morbidity, malnutrition and mortality.

Inflammatory monocytes regulate pathologic responses to commensals during acute gastrointestinal infection.

The commensal flora can promote both immunity to pathogens and mucosal inflammation. How commensal-driven inflammation is regulated in the context of infection remains poorly understood. Here, we show that during acute mucosal infection of mice with Toxoplasma gondii, inflammatory monocytes acquire a tissue-specific regulatory phenotype associated with production of the lipid mediator prostaglandin E2 (PGE2).

Prevalence and Risk Factors of Anemia among Children 6-59 Months Old in Haiti.

Anemia has serious consequences on child growth, development, and survival. This study was conducted in Fond des Blancs and Villa, Haiti, to assess the prevalence of childhood anemia and its risk factors in order to inform program design. Children 6-59 months old (n = 557) were selected using a cross-sectional multistage sampling methodology.

p38 and OGT sequestration into viral inclusion bodies in cells infected with human respiratory syncytial virus suppresses MK2 activities and stress granule assembly.

Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) forms cytoplasmic inclusion bodies (IBs) that are thought to be sites of nucleocapsid accumulation and viral RNA synthesis. The present study found that IBs also were the sites of major sequestration of two proteins involved in cellular signaling pathways. These are phosphorylated p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) (p38-P), a key regulator of cellular inflammatory and stress responses, and O-linked N-acetylglucosamine (OGN) transferase (OGT), an enzyme that catalyzes the posttranslational addition of OGN to protein targets to regulate cellular processes, including signal transduction, transcription, translation, and the stress response.

Compartmentalized control of skin immunity by resident commensals.

Intestinal commensal bacteria induce protective and regulatory responses that maintain host-microbial mutualism. However, the contribution of tissue-resident commensals to immunity and inflammation at other barrier sites has not been addressed. We found that in mice, the skin microbiota have an autonomous role in controlling the local inflammatory milieu and tuning resident T lymphocyte function.

The EIF4EBP3 translational repressor is a marker of CDC73 tumor suppressor haploinsufficiency in a parathyroid cancer syndrome.

Germline mutation of the tumor suppressor gene CDC73 confers susceptibility to the hyperparathyroidism-jaw tumor syndrome associated with a high risk of parathyroid malignancy. Inactivating CDC73 mutations have also been implicated in sporadic parathyroid cancer, but are rare in sporadic benign parathyroid tumors. The molecular pathways that distinguish malignant from benign parathyroid transformation remain elusive.

Knockout of G protein β5 impairs brain development and causes multiple neurologic abnormalities in mice.

Gβ5 is a divergent member of the signal-transducing G protein β subunit family encoded by GNB5 and expressed principally in brain and neuronal tissue. Among heterotrimeric Gβ isoforms, Gβ5 is unique in its ability to heterodimerize with members of the R7 subfamily of the regulator of G protein signaling proteins that contain G protein-γ like domains. Previous studies employing Gnb5 knockout (KO) mice have shown that Gβ5 is an essential stabilizer of such regulator of G protein signaling proteins and regulates the deactivation of retinal phototransduction and the proper functioning of retinal bipolar cells.

Linkage maps from multiple genetic crosses and loci linked to growth-related virulent phenotype in Plasmodium yoelii.

Plasmodium yoelii is an excellent model for studying malaria pathogenesis that is often intractable to investigate using human parasites; however, genetic studies of the parasite have been hindered by lack of genome-wide linkage resources. Here, we performed 14 genetic crosses between three pairs of P. yoelii clones/subspecies, isolated 75 independent recombinant progeny from the crosses, and constructed a high-resolution linkage map for this parasite.