Publications by authors named "L Hood"

Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are lipid bilayer nanoparticles released from all known cells and are involved in cell-to-cell communication via their molecular content. EVs have been found in all tissues and body fluids, carrying a variety of biomolecules, including DNA, RNA, proteins, metabolites, and lipids, offering insights into cellular and pathophysiological conditions. Despite the emergence of EVs and their molecular contents as important biological indicators, it remains difficult to explore EV-mediated biological processes due to their small size and heterogeneity and the technical challenges in characterizing their molecular content.

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Apolipoprotein E ( ) modifies human aging; specifically, the ε2 and ε4 alleles are among the strongest genetic predictors of longevity and Alzheimer's disease (AD) risk, respectively. However, detailed mechanisms for their influence on aging remain unclear. Herein, we analyzed inter-omic, context-dependent association patterns across genotypes, sex, and health axes in 2,229 community-dwelling individuals to test genotypes for variation in metabolites and metabolite-associations tied to a previously-validated metric of biological aging (BA) based on blood biomarkers.

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Article Synopsis
  • Pregnant women are often underrepresented in clinical trials, yet many take medications with limited safety information; this study aims to analyze medication use and its impact on pregnancy outcomes.
  • A retrospective analysis involved over 365,000 women who delivered from 2013 to 2022, focusing on outpatient medications prescribed during pregnancy, mainly looking at the risk of preterm birth and other adverse outcomes.
  • The study found a significant increase in medication prescriptions and identified 58 medications linked to preterm birth risk, underscoring the importance of utilizing real-world data to improve medication safety knowledge during pregnancy.
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Article Synopsis
  • Biomarkers of aging (BOA) are special measurements that can help scientists understand how old someone is on a biological level and how this changes with treatments.
  • Recently, many new BOA have been discovered that could really help people live healthier lives as they age, but there are some problems getting these ideas into actual medical practice.
  • Experts found six main challenges that are stopping BOA from being used more widely and suggested ways to make them better, such as ensuring they are easy to access and useful for everyone.
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Bowel movement frequency (BMF) directly impacts the gut microbiota and is linked to diseases like chronic kidney disease or dementia. In particular, prior work has shown that constipation is associated with an ecosystem-wide switch from fiber fermentation and short-chain fatty acid production to more detrimental protein fermentation and toxin production. Here, we analyze multi-omic data from generally healthy adults to see how BMF affects their molecular phenotypes, in a pre-disease context.

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