Publications by authors named "Pitts J"

Introduction: This study provides an ethnographic lens to understand gender messages in girls' puberty books, focusing on the representation of parents in both text and images.

Methods: A content and thematic analysis was performed on 22 children's books on girls' pubertal development drawn from Amazon bestselling books on Children's Health & Maturing.

Results: Content analysis results demonstrated an imbalance in the representation of parents in books about girls' pubertal development.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: External, environmental perturbations (e.g., slips) account for >60% of falls and lead to severe health-related consequences.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Early detection of acute brain injury (ABI) at the bedside is critical in improving survival for patients with extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) support. We aimed to examine the safety of ultra-low-field (ULF; 0.064-T) portable magnetic resonance imaging (pMRI) in patients undergoing ECMO and to investigate the ABI frequency and types with ULF-pMRI.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Injuries to tendons and ligaments are highly prevalent in the musculoskeletal system. Current treatments involve autologous transplants with limited availability and donor site morbidity. Tissue engineering offers a new approach through temporary load-bearing scaffolds.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • * Researchers used cryogenic electron microscopy to reveal the structure of an ANV-like particle, which is made up of 60 capsid proteins forming an icosahedral shape with crown-like spikes.
  • * The spike structure may help ANVs evade the immune system by concealing essential parts while showcasing diverse regions to confuse antibodies, offering insights into their immune interactions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Acute respiratory viral infections, such as pneumovirus and respiratory picornavirus infections, exacerbate disease in COPD and asthma patients. A research program targeting respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) led to the discovery of GS-7682 (), a novel phosphoramidate prodrug of a 4'-CN-4-aza-7,9-dideazaadenosine -nucleoside GS-646089 () with broad antiviral activity against RSV (EC = 3-46 nM), human metapneumovirus (EC = 210 nM), human rhinovirus (EC = 54-61 nM), and enterovirus (EC = 83-90 nM). Prodrug optimization for cellular potency and lung cell metabolism identified 5'-methyl [()-hydroxy(phenoxy)phosphoryl]-l-alaninate in combination with 2',3'-diisobutyrate promoieties as being optimal for high levels of intracellular triphosphate formation and .

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The development of safe and effective broad-spectrum antivirals that target the replication machinery of respiratory viruses is of high priority in pandemic preparedness programs. Here, we studied the mechanism of action of a newly discovered nucleotide analog against diverse RNA-dependent RNA polymerases (RdRps) of prototypic respiratory viruses. GS-646939 is the active 5'-triphosphate metabolite of a 4'-cyano modified C-adenosine analog phosphoramidate prodrug GS-7682.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Dual tasking (i.e., concurrent performance of motor and cognitive task) is significantly impaired in older adults with mild cognitive impairment (OAwMCI) compared to cognitively intact older adults (CIOA) and has been associated with increased fall risk.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: For stroke patients with unknown time of onset, mismatch between diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) and fluid-attenuated inversion recovery (FLAIR) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) can guide thrombolytic intervention. However, access to MRI for hyperacute stroke is limited. Here, we sought to evaluate whether a portable, low-field (LF)-MRI scanner can identify DWI-FLAIR mismatch in acute ischemic stroke.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Early detection of acute brain injury (ABI) is critical to intensive care unit (ICU) patient management and intervention to decrease major complications. Head CT (HCT) is the standard of care for the assessment of ABI in ICU patients; however, it has limited sensitivity compared to MRI. We retrospectively compared the ability of ultra-low-field portable MR (ULF-pMR) and head HCT, acquired within 24 h of each other, to detect ABI in ICU patients supported on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The use of tissue engineering to address the shortcomings of current procedures for tendons and ligaments is promising, but it requires a suitable scaffold that meets various mechanical, degradation-related, scalability-related, and biological requirements. Macroporous textile scaffolds made from appropriate fiber material have the potential to fulfill the first three requirements. This study aimed to investigate the biocompatibility, sterilizability, and functionalizability of a multilayer braided scaffold.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • The study aimed to assess the safety and effectiveness of ultra-low-field portable MRI (ULF-pMRI) for detecting acute brain injuries (ABI) in patients on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) support.* -
  • Conducted at two academic centers, the study involved 50 patients, with successful imaging and a low incidence of adverse events; ABI was found in 44% of patients, mostly ischemic strokes.* -
  • ULF-pMRI proved to be a safe and potentially more sensitive method for detecting ischemic brain injuries compared to traditional head CT scans, indicating its usefulness in clinical settings and further research.*
View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Orolingual angioedema (OA) is a serious but rare side effect of thrombolytic therapy, specifically after administering tenecteplase, requiring prompt treatment.
  • A 67-year-old male patient experienced OA after receiving tenecteplase for an acute stroke, and initial treatments with antihistamines and steroids were ineffective.
  • Despite the administration of a C1 esterase inhibitor, the patient's condition worsened, leading to intubation, but he eventually improved and was extubated after 30 hours, highlighting the need for quick and effective management of OA in such cases.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Backpacks are common devices for carrying external posterior loads. However, relatively little is known about how these external loads affect the ability to recover from balance loss. In this exploratory investigation, 16 young adults (8 female, 8 male) performed forward and backward lean-and-release balance recovery trials, while wearing a backpack that was unloaded or loaded (at 15% of individual body weight).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Reactive balance is postulated to be attentionally demanding, although it has been underexamined in dual-tasking (DT) conditions. Further, DT studies have mainly included only one cognitive task, leaving it unknown how different cognitive domains contribute to reactive balance. This study examined how DT affected reactive responses to large-magnitude perturbations and compared cognitive-motor interference (CMI) between cognitive tasks.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

According to the Feigl-Reichenbach-Salmon-Schurz pragmatic justification of induction, no predictive method is guaranteed or even likely to work for predicting the future; but if anything will work, induction will work-at least when induction is employed at the meta-level of predictive methods in light of their track records. One entertains a priori all manner of esoteric prediction methods, and is said to arrive a posteriori at the conclusion, based on the actual past, that object-level induction is optimal. Schurz's refinements largely solve the notorious short-run problem.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Dual-tasking can cause cognitive-motor interference (CMI) and affect task performance. This study investigated the effects of age, gait speed, and type of cognitive task on CMI during gait. Ten younger and 10 older adults walked on a pressure-sensitive GAITRite walkway which recorded gait speed and step length.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Remdesivir is an phosphoramidate prodrug that releases the monophosphate of nucleoside GS-441524 () into lung cells, thereby forming the bioactive triphosphate . , an analog of ATP, inhibits the SARS-CoV-2 RNA-dependent RNA polymerase replication and transcription of viral RNA. Strong clinical results for have prompted interest in oral approaches to generate .

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Biomimetic scaffolds recreating key elements of the architecture and biological activity of the extracellular matrix have enormous potential for soft tissue engineering applications. Combining appropriate mechanical properties with select biological cues presents a challenge for bioengineering, as natural materials are most bioactive but can lack mechanical integrity, while synthetic polymers have strength but are often biologically inert. Blends of synthetic and natural materials, aiming to combine the benefits of each, have shown promise but inherently require a compromise, diluting down favorable properties in each polymer to accommodate the other.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: The aim of this study is to investigate the safety and feasibility of ultrasound-guided nerve block prior to biopsy of potentially neurogenic tumors.

Materials And Methods: A retrospective review of the medical record from June 2017 to June 2022 identified ultrasound-guided biopsies of potentially neurogenic tumors that were performed with a pre-procedural nerve block. Patient demographics, biopsy site, number of passes, needle gauge, use of sedation, pathology results, and procedural complications were recorded and summarized.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

As many as 70% of Australian patients report they would prefer to die at home, yet only 14% achieve this goal and this hospitalization adds to overall healthcare expenditure. Providing caregivers with practical means for managing symptoms at home facilitates home deaths for palliative care patients and reduces the financial healthcare burden. The aim of this paper is to understand the experience of caregivers administering subcutaneous medications at home to palliative care patients.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

(1) Background: Fifty percent of patients supported on veno-arterial extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (VA-ECMO) are concurrently supported with an intra-aortic balloon pump (IABP). Acute brain injury (ABI) is a devastating complication related to ECMO and IABP use. The standard of care for ABI diagnosis requires transport to a head CT (HCT) scanner.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Purpose: Ultralow-field (ULF) point-of-care MRI systems allow image acquisition without interrupting medical provision, with neonatal clinical care being an important potential application. The ability to measure neonatal brain tissue T is a key enabling technology for subsequent structural image contrast optimization, as well as being a potential biomarker for brain development. Here we describe an optimized strategy for neonatal T mapping at ULF.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The relationship between cognitive demands and postural control is controversial. Mental fatigue paradigms investigate the attentional requirements of postural control by assessing balance after a prolonged cognitive task. However, a majority of mental fatigue research has focused on cognition and sports performance, leaving balance relatively underexamined.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF