Publications by authors named "O'Brien S"

Neonatal sepsis causes substantial morbidity and mortality, the burden of which is carried by low-income countries (LICs). The emergence of multidrug-resistant pathogens in vulnerable neonatal populations poses an urgent threat to infant survival. spp.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background And Objectives: Despite screening procedures, a few blood donors confirm positive for transfusion-transmissible infections and are deferred. Effective notification of laboratory results is essential to ensure that donors are advised of confirmed results and to seek medical care. Here we report results from post-notification interviews of Canadian Blood Services donors.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Amid a youth mental health crisis, community-based early intervention services have shown promising outcomes. Understanding the specific factors that predict clinical outcomes is crucial for enhancing intervention efficacy, yet these factors remain insufficiently understood.

Aim: This study examined the individual and service-related factors associated with reliable improvement for young people (n = 4565) aged 12-25 years attending a brief primary care youth talk therapy mental health service across 14 sites.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Patients with relapsed/refractory (R/R) diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) progressing after chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy (CAR T) have dismal outcomes. The prespecified post-CAR T expansion cohort of the ELM-1 study investigated the efficacy and safety of odronextamab, a CD20×CD3 bispecific antibody, in patients with disease progression after CAR T. Sixty patients received IV odronextamab weekly for 4 cycles followed by maintenance until progression.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Biceps-labrum complex (BLC) disease is a well-established pain generator in the shoulder. Despite its ubiquity, BLC disease continues to pose a diagnostic challenge for orthopaedic surgeons. The use of magnetic resonance imaging and glenohumeral arthroscopy in the diagnosis of BLC disease has proven to be inadequate when performed independently.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Adolescent girls with diagnoses of autism, ADHD and/or developmental coordination disorder (DCD) are at higher risk for mental health problems than boys with the same diagnoses and neurotypical girls. These girls are called neurodivergent here, though neurodivergence includes a broader range of diagnoses. One possible reason for this mental health disparity could be camouflaging, a coping strategy used more by girls.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

West Nile virus (WNV) is a mosquito-borne zoonotic flavivirus which often causes asymptomatic infection in humans but may develop into a deadly neuroinvasive disease. In this study, we aimed to investigate variables potentially associated with human WNV infection using human and mosquito WNV surveillance and monitoring datasets, established over 20 years, from 2003 to 2022, across the province of Ontario, Canada. We combined climatic and geographic data, mosquito surveillance data (n = 3010 sites), blood donation arboviral detection testing data in the human population, and demographic and socio-economic data from Canadian population censuses.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Understanding the habitat use of individuals can facilitate methods to measure the degree to which populations will be affected by potential stressors. Such insights can be hard to garner for marine species that are inaccessible during phases of their annual cycles. Here, we quantify the link between foraging habitat and behaviour in an aquatic bird of high conservation concern, the red-throated diver () across three breeding populations (Finland, Iceland and Scotland) during their understudied moult period.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: The relationship between the extent and severity of stress-induced ischemia and the extent and severity of anatomic coronary artery disease (CAD) in patients with obstructive CAD is multifactorial and includes the intensity of stress achieved, type of testing used, presence and extent of prior infarction, collateral blood flow, plaque characteristics, microvascular disease, coronary vasomotor tone, and genetic factors. Among chronic coronary disease participants with site-determined moderate or severe ischemia, we investigated associations between ischemia severity on stress testing and the extent of CAD on coronary computed tomography angiography.

Methods: Clinically indicated stress testing included nuclear imaging, echocardiography, cardiac magnetic resonance imaging, or nonimaging exercise tolerance test.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Alterations to post-translational crosslinking modifications in the extracellular matrix (ECM) are known to drive the pathogenesis of fibrotic diseases, including idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF). Thus, the methodology for measuring crosslinking dynamics is valuable for understanding disease progression. The existing crosslinking analysis sample preparation and liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) methods are typically labor-intensive and time-consuming which limits throughput.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Cystic neutrophilic granulomatous mastitis (CNGM) is a rare type of granulomatous lobular mastitis (GLM) with a distinct histologic pattern characterized on histopathology by clear lipid vacuoles lined by peripheral neutrophils ("suppurative lipogranulomas"), often containing gram-positive bacilli and strongly associated with Corynebacterial infection (in particular, Corynebacterium kroppenstedtii). Cystic neutrophilic granulomatous mastitis has a distinct histopathologic appearance, but the imaging appearance is less well described and has been limited to case reports and small case series published primarily in pathology literature. Mammographic findings of CNGM include focal asymmetry, skin thickening, and irregular or oval masses.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Microbial populations are often exposed to long-term abiotic disturbances, which can reduce population viability and cause local extinction. Eco-evolutionary theory suggests that spatial refuges can facilitate persistence and evolutionary rescue. However, one drawback of spatial refuges is reduced exposure to nutrients such as carbon and oxygen, suggesting the protective effect of refuges depends on the interplay between environmental conditions and the degree of stress.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Rationale And Objectives: Radiology resident readout practices were adapted during the COVID pandemic, with several institutions transitioning to virtual and asynchronous readouts. Some pandemic-era practices persist today, with unclear effects on resident education. We developed institutional Readout Best Practices and assessed implementation.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The discovery of oncogene addiction in cancer has led to the development of over a dozen FDA-approved biomarker-driven therapies in lung adenocarcinoma. Somatic mutations of the "Ras-like in all tissues" (RIT1) gene are non-canonical driver events in lung cancer, occurring in ~2% of lung adenocarcinomas in a mutually exclusive fashion with and mutations. Patients with -mutant lung cancer lack targeted therapy treatment options, and a lack of pre-clinical models has hindered the development of therapeutic strategies for -mutant lung cancer.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Lysosomal dysfunction is causally linked to neurodegeneration in many lysosomal storage disorders (LSDs) and is associated with various age-related neurodegenerative diseases , but there is limited understanding of the mechanisms by which altered lysosomal function leads to changes in gene expression that drive pathogenic cellular phenotypes. To investigate this question, we performed systematic imaging, transcriptomic, and epigenetic studies of major brain cell types in null (KO) mice, a preclinical mouse model for Sanfilippo syndrome (Mucopolysaccharidosis Type IIIA, MPS-IIIA) . MPS-IIIA is a neurodegenerative LSD caused by homozygous loss-of-function (LoF) mutations in which results in severe early-onset developmental, behavioral, and neurocognitive impairment .

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Canadian Blood Services changed their deferral policy for HIV prevention treatments (PrEP/PEP) from a time-based approach to focusing on sexual risk behaviors, causing changes in donor deferrals.
  • Data analysis over 22 months showed a stable rate of PEP deferrals while PrEP deferrals significantly increased from 5.9 to 12.4 per 100,000 donations. Many donors deferred were younger males or first-time users.
  • The conclusion indicates that the new criteria slightly raised PrEP deferrals, but the full impact might not be captured as potential donors could be self-deferring due to increased awareness and usage of PrEP.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Introduction: Routine collection of patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) has the potential to inform and improve cancer care. It is now feasible for patients to complete PROMs electronically (ePROMs) providing information about their current levels of symptoms, side effects of treatment and other concerns. PROM scores can be tracked over time allowing more timely identification of problems and more appropriate intervention.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Warfarin is used as anticoagulation for children for a wide range of cardiac indications but carries the disadvantage of requiring international normalised ratio monitoring and dose adjustment. Management of warfarin therapy is challenging due to its narrow therapeutic window and is further complicated in children by dietary changes, frequent illnesses, and developing systems of metabolism and haemostasis.A retrospective review was performed of patients' medical records to assess the indication for warfarin use, percentage of international normalised ratio values in target range (%ITR), and frequency of phlebotomy.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) are the largest family of cell receptors. They mediate the effects of a multitude of endogenous and exogenous cues, are deeply involved in human physiology and disease, and are major pharmacological targets. Whereas GPCRs were long thought to signal exclusively at the plasma membrane, research over the past 15 years has revealed that they also signal via classical G-protein-mediated pathways on membranes of intracellular organelles such as endosomes and the Golgi complex.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: Military experiences that violate one's sense of right and wrong (i.e., potentially morally injurious events [PMIEs]) may result in moral injury, characterized by shame, guilt, demoralization, self-condemnation, and social withdrawal.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: In Canada, as many as 24% of mothers are deferred from cord blood (CB) donation due to risk factors for Zika virus (ZIKV). However, the ZIKV epidemic has waned considerably since 2016, and there has not been any report of ZIKV transmission by CB transplantation, which questions this policy. Thus, we performed an analysis of the risk of introducing ZIKV in the CB supply maintained by Héma-Québec (HQ) and Canadian Blood Services (CBS).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • A study analyzed pregnancy outcomes for individuals with sickle cell disease (SCD) using national data from 2006-2018, noting limitations in existing research on the topic.
  • The research found that pregnant individuals with SCD experienced higher rates of complications such as preeclampsia, hypertension, and maternal death compared to controls without SCD.
  • Importantly, the outcomes from 2012-2018 showed no improvement over those from 2006-2011, with some complications increasing, indicating a persistent risk for pregnant individuals with SCD.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

"Despite ART, we detected occasional microglia containing cell-associated HIV RNA and HIV DNA integrated into open regions of the host's genome (∼0.005%)" should be corrected to: "Despite ART, we detected occasional microglia containing cell-associated HIV RNA and HIV DNA integrated into open regions of the host's genome (∼0.5%).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Whether revascularisation (REV) improves outcomes in patients with three-vessel coronary artery disease (3V-CAD) is uncertain.

Aims: Our objective was to evaluate outcomes with REV (percutaneous coronary intervention [PCI] or coronary artery bypass graft surgery [CABG]) versus medical therapy in patients with 3V-CAD.

Methods: ISCHEMIA participants with 3V-CAD on coronary computed tomography angiography without prior CABG were included.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF