Publications by authors named "Poulter M"

This study aimed to assess and comparatively analyse two menus from a Young Offenders Institution (YOI). One menu from 2019, and one from 2022, with the objective of identifying any improvements in meeting dietary guidelines. Cross-sectional and comparative analysis.

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  • Infertility affects many couples in Canada, and a new online program was created to help women dealing with it by offering support through videos about feelings and relationships.
  • In a study, 21 women tried out this program, and most found it helpful, completing the videos and doing extra homework each week.
  • Although some women suggested adding more content, overall, people liked the program and felt it was credible, but relationship satisfaction didn’t change much after using it.
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  • Prisoners generally face worse health and mental health issues compared to the general population, prompting a review of nutrition-based interventions in prisons that focus on mental health and behaviour outcomes.
  • The review included 11 quantitative studies, which primarily examined the effects of nutritional supplements, diet changes, and education on prison populations, though results were varied and showed limited significant improvements.
  • Future research should seek to create more uniform study designs to better evaluate how nutrition can positively impact the health of prisoners.
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Background: Infertility-the inability to achieve pregnancy despite ≥12 months of focused attempts to conceive-is experienced by 1 in 6 couples. Women typically carry a disproportionate share of the psychological burden associated with infertility, experiencing poor quality of life, and 30%-40% experiencing depressive mood or anxiety. Unfortunately, currently available psychological interventions targeting infertility-related distress are associated with modest effects.

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Clostridioides difficile infection (CDI) is the fifth leading cause of death from nonmalignant gastrointestinal disease in the United States. The contribution of resistance to C. difficile-active antibiotics to the outcomes of CDI is unclear.

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As COVID-19 transmission control measures are gradually being lifted, a sensitive and rapid diagnostic method for large-scale screening could prove essential for monitoring population infection rates. However, many rapid workflows for SARS-CoV-2 detection and diagnosis are not amenable to the analysis of large-volume samples. Previously, our group demonstrated a technique for SARS-CoV-2 nanoparticle-facilitated enrichment and enzymatic lysis from clinical samples in under 10 min.

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Congregate living poses one of the highest risk situations for the transmission of respiratory viruses including SARS-CoV-2. University dormitories exemplify such high-risk settings. We demonstrate the value of using building-level SARS-CoV-2 wastewater surveillance as an early warning system to inform when prevalence testing of all building occupants is warranted.

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The COVID-19 pandemic caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is an unprecedented event requiring frequent adaptation to changing clinical circumstances. Convalescent immune plasma (CIP) is a promising treatment that can be mobilized rapidly in a pandemic setting. We tested whether administration of SARS-CoV-2 CIP at hospital admission could reduce the rate of ICU transfer or 28-day mortality or alter levels of specific antibody responses before and after CIP infusion.

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The diversification of analytical tools for diagnosis of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is imperative for effective virus surveillance and transmission control worldwide. Development of robust methods for rapid, simple isolation of viral RNA permits more expedient pathogen detection by downstream real-time reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (real-time RT-PCR) to minimize stalled containment and enhance treatment efforts. Here, we describe an automatable rotationally driven microfluidic platform for enrichment and enzymatic extraction of SARS-CoV-2 RNA from multiple sample types.

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Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is a zoonotic RNA virus characterized by high transmission rates and pathogenicity worldwide. Continued control of the COVID-19 pandemic requires the diversification of rapid, easy to use, sensitive, and portable methods for SARS-CoV-2 sample preparation and analysis. Here, we propose a method for SARS-CoV-2 viral enrichment and enzymatic extraction of RNA from clinically relevant matrices in under 10 min.

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Immune dysregulation is characteristic of the more severe stages of SARS-CoV-2 infection. Understanding the mechanisms by which the immune system contributes to COVID-19 severity may open new avenues to treatment. Here, we report that elevated IL-13 was associated with the need for mechanical ventilation in 2 independent patient cohorts.

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  • Multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) is a serious, life-threatening condition linked to COVID-19 that affects multiple organs and shows signs of immune system activation.
  • The exact cause of MIS-C and the severe organ damage it causes are not fully understood, but it has been linked to the human herpesvirus 6 (HHV-6), which can remain dormant in the body and may reactivate during inflammatory responses.
  • A case study revealed a strong correlation between high HHV-6 levels and a specific form of the virus (iciHHV-6) in a MIS-C patient, suggesting that more research is needed to investigate the potential role of iciHHV-6 in the syndrome's development.
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Wastewater-based monitoring for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) at the individual building level could be an efficient, passive means of early detection of new cases in congregate living settings, but this approach has not been validated. Preliminary samples were collected from a hospital and a local municipal wastewater treatment plant. Molecular diagnostic methods were compared side by side to assess feasibility, performance, and sensitivity.

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Immune dysregulation is characteristic of the more severe stages of SARS-CoV-2 infection. Understanding the mechanisms by which the immune system contributes to COVID-19 severity may open new avenues to treatment. Here we report that elevated interleukin-13 (IL-13) was associated with the need for mechanical ventilation in two independent patient cohorts.

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Rationale: The COVID-19 pandemic caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is an unprecedented event requiring rapid adaptation to changing clinical circumstances. Convalescent immune plasma (CIP) is a promising treatment that can be mobilized rapidly in a pandemic setting.

Objectives: We tested whether administration of SARS-CoV-2 CIP at hospital admission could reduce the rate of ICU transfer or 28 day mortality.

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Background: Implementation of the Accelerate PhenoTM Gram-negative platform (RDT) paired with antimicrobial stewardship program (ASP) intervention projects to improve time to institutional-preferred antimicrobial therapy (IPT) for Gram-negative bacilli (GNB) bloodstream infections (BSIs). However, few data describe the impact of discrepant RDT results from standard of care (SOC) methods on antimicrobial prescribing.

Methods: A single-center, pre-/post-intervention study of consecutive, nonduplicate blood cultures for adult inpatients with GNB BSI following combined RDT + ASP intervention was performed.

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Background: is the leading health care-associated pathogen, but clinicians lack a test that can reliably differentiate colonization from infection. Health care costs attributed to are substantial, but the economic burden associated with false positives is poorly understood.

Methods: A propensity score matching model for cost per hospitalization was developed to estimate the costs of both true infection and false positives.

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The emergence of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has resulted in a pandemic of the respiratory disease coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Antibody testing is essential to identify persons exposed to the virus and potentially in predicting disease immunity. 183 COVID-19 patients (68 of whom required mechanical ventilation) and 41 controls were tested for plasma IgG, IgA and IgM against the SARS-CoV-2 S1, S2, receptor binding domain (RBD) and N proteins using the MILLIPLEX SARS-CoV-2 Antigen Panel.

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We describe 4 children (11-17 years in age) at our institution with acute appendicitis in the setting of SARS-CoV-2 infection, suggesting a possible association. Providers should consider testing for this infection in patients with severe gastrointestinal symptoms, in order to take appropriate transmission based precautions, until more is understood.

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  • There is an urgent need for models using biomarkers to predict mortality and recurrence rates in patients with Clostridioides difficile infection (CDI), allowing for tailored treatment options.
  • In a study of 341 CDI inpatients, levels of 17 cytokines were measured, revealing that higher levels of TNF-α and IL-8 significantly increased mortality risk while elevated CCL-5 was associated with lower risk.
  • A logistic regression model developed from this data showed strong predictive abilities for both 90-day mortality (AUC 0.91) and recurrence (AUC 0.77), suggesting that immune profiling could lead to more personalized treatment strategies for CDI patients.
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Neuronal spiking activity encoding working memory (WM) is robust in primate association cortices but weak or absent in early sensory cortices. This may be linked to changes in the proportion of neuronal types across areas that influence circuits' ability to generate recurrent excitation. We recorded neuronal activity from areas middle temporal (MT), medial superior temporal (MST), and the lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC) of monkeys performing a WM task and classified neurons as narrow (NS) and broad spiking (BS).

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Objective: To assess relationships between resilience, frailty and outcomes in geriatric rehabilitation inpatients.

Methods: Eighty-nine inpatients had Brief Resilience Scale (BRS) and frailty index (FI-CGA) completed. Pearson's or Spearman's correlation was used to determine correlation between BRS, FI-CGA and covariates.

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Women without regular health care providers or a medical home routinely fail to complete recommended cervical cancer screening. At-home self-collection of samples to test for high-risk strains of human papillomavirus (hrHPV) can improve screening rates. This study documents acceptability and feasibility of community lay navigator (LN)-facilitated at-home self-collection for underscreened women in Appalachian Virginia.

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Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) latency and reactivation rely on a complex interplay between cellular differentiation, cell signaling pathways, and viral gene functions. HCMV reactivation in dendritic cells (DCs) is triggered by IL-6 and extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK)-mitogen-activated protein kinase signaling. However, activation of the same pathway fails to reactivate HCMV in other myeloid cell types, despite this signaling axis being active in those cells.

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