Clinical risk factors associated with the need for tracheostomy in traumatic cervical and high thoracic spinal cord injury.

Background: Our objective was to assess the association of completeness and level of spinal cord injury (SCI) with the need for tracheostomy and identify additional risk factors predictive of tracheostomy.

Methods: This was a retrospective review of patients with SCI between January 2017 and December 2022.

Results: Patients with complete SCI were roughly thirty-three times more likely to have a tracheostomy when compared to incomplete injury (82 ​% vs 12 ​%, p ​< ​0.

Early-life tobacco exposure is causally implicated in aberrant RAG-mediated recombination in childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is the most common cancer in children, yet few environmental risk factors have been identified. We previously found an association between early-life tobacco smoke exposure and frequency of somatic deletions of 8 leukemia driver genes among childhood ALL patients in the California Childhood Leukemia Study. To expand analysis genome-wide and examine potential mechanisms, we conducted tumor whole-genome sequencing in 35 ALL patients, including 18 with high prenatal tobacco exposure and 17 with low exposure as determined by established epigenetic biomarkers.

The RNA tether model for human chromosomal translocation fragile zones.

One of the two chromosomal breakage events in recurring translocations in B cell neoplasms is often due to the recombination-activating gene complex (RAG complex) releasing DNA ends before end joining. The other break occurs in a fragile zone of 20-600 bp in a non-antigen receptor gene locus, with a more complex and intriguing set of mechanistic factors underlying such narrow fragile zones. These factors include activation-induced deaminase (AID), which acts only at regions of single-stranded DNA (ssDNA).

The impact of nativity on uterine cancer survival in the public hospital system of Queens, New York.

Objective: We studied cis-women with uterine cancer presenting to the two Public Hospitals in Queens, New York from 2006 to 2015 to examine the relationship between nativity (birthplace) and survival.

Methods: A retrospective review of tumor registries identified women diagnosed with uterine cancer between January 1, 2006, and December 31, 2015. Data from 259 women were available for this analysis.