Publications by authors named "Melissa R Thomas"

Physician burnout is a major problem that has long been facing our healthcare system. The COVID-19 pandemic has unfortunately deepened this problem and shed the light on the multiple structural shortcomings of our healthcare system that need immediate attention. Demoralization is one of the core features of "physician burnout," which results from a breakdown of genuine physician-patient interaction.

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Unilateral approaches to global health innovations can be transformed into cocreative, uniquely collaborative relationships between low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs) and high-income countries (HIC), constituted as 'reciprocal innovation' (RI). Since 2018, the Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute (CTSI) and Indiana University (IU) Center for Global Health Equity have led a grants programme sculpted from the core elements of RI, a concept informed by a 30-year partnership started between IU (Indiana) and Moi University (Kenya), which leverages knowledge sharing, transformational learning and translational innovations to address shared health challenges. In this paper, we describe the evolution and implementation of an RI grants programme, as well as the challenges faced.

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Background: Malaria affects 24 million children globally, resulting in nearly 500,000 child deaths annually in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Recent studies have provided evidence that severe malaria infection results in sustained impairment in cognition and behaviour among young children; however, a formal meta-analysis has not been published. The objective was to assess the association between severe malaria infection with cognitive and behavioural outcomes among children living in LMICs.

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The endocrine hormone FGF21 has attracted considerable interest as a potential therapeutic for treating diabetes and obesity. As an alternative to the native cytokine, we generated bispecific Avimer polypeptides that bind with high affinity and specificity to one of the receptor and coreceptor pairs used by FGF21, FGFR1c and β-Klotho. These Avimers exhibit FGF21-like activity in in vitro assays with potency greater than FGF21.

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To survive in a dynamic and unpredictable environment, cells must correctly interpret and integrate extracellular signals with internal factors. In particular, internal stores of nutrients must be managed for use during periods of nutrient limitation. To gain insight into this complex process, we combined biochemical and spectroscopic techniques to follow the dynamics of the phosphate responsive signaling pathway in both single yeast cells and populations.

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Resonance Raman spectroscopy has been used to observe changes in the iron-ligand stretching frequency in photoproduct spectra of the proximal cavity mutant of myoglobin H93G. The measurements compare the deoxy ferrous state of the heme iron in H93G(L), where L is an exogenous imidazole ligand bound in the proximal cavity, to the photolyzed intermediate of H93G(L)*CO at 8 ns. There are significant differences in the frequencies of the iron-ligand axial out-of-plane mode nu(Fe-L) in the photoproduct spectra depending on the nature of L for a series of methyl-substituted imidazoles.

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