Publications by authors named "R Ahima"

Introduction: Type 2 diabetes increases the risk of Alzheimer's disease (AD) dementia. Insulin signaling dysfunction exacerbates tau protein phosphorylation, a hallmark of AD pathology. However, the comprehensive impact of diabetes on patterns of AD-related phosphoprotein in the human brain remains underexplored.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background And Objectives: Individuals with low income or from minoritized racial or ethnic groups experience a high burden of hypertension and other chronic conditions (eg, diabetes, chronic kidney disease, and mental health conditions) and often lack access to specialist care when compared to their more socially advantaged counterparts. We used a mixed-methods approach to describe the deployment of a Remote Collaborative Specialist Panel intervention aimed at the comprehensive and coordinated management of patients with hypertension and comorbid conditions to address health disparities.

Methods: Participants of the collaborative care/stepped care arm of the Reducing Inequities in Care of Hypertension: Lifestyle Improvement for Everyone (RICH LIFE) Project, a cluster-randomized trial comparing the effectiveness of enhanced standard of care to a multilevel intervention (collaborative care/stepped care) for improving blood pressure control and reducing disparities, were included.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • - Central centrifugal cicatricial alopecia (CCCA) primarily affects Black women and is characterized by scarring that leads to hair loss; conventional treatments focus on inflammation rather than the underlying fibrotic issues.
  • - A study was conducted to assess the effects of low-dose oral metformin, an antidiabetic drug with antifibrotic properties, on clinical symptoms and gene expression in CCCA patients unresponsive to standard treatments.
  • - Results from 12 participants showed that after at least 6 months of metformin treatment, many experienced symptom improvement and some showed hair regrowth, with gene analysis indicating beneficial changes in pathways related to skin and hair development.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Inositol phosphates are critical signaling messengers involved in a wide range of biological pathways in which inositol polyphosphate multikinase (IPMK) functions as a rate-limiting enzyme for inositol polyphosphate metabolism. IPMK has been implicated in cellular metabolism, but its function at the systemic level is still poorly understood. Since skeletal muscle is a major contributor to energy homeostasis, we have developed a mouse model in which skeletal muscle IPMK is specifically deleted and examined how a loss of IPMK affects whole-body metabolism.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: To examine the associations of renin-angiotensin system (RAS) inhibitor use with postmortem brain insulin signaling and neuropathology.

Methods: Among Religious Orders Study participants, 150 deceased and autopsied older individuals (75 with diabetes matched to 75 without by age at death, sex, and education) had measurements of insulin receptor substrate-1 (IRS-1) and RAC-alpha serine/threonine protein kinase (AKT1) collected in the prefrontal cortex using ELISA and immunohistochemistry. Alzheimer's disease (AD), brain infarcts, and cerebral vessel pathology data were assessed by systematic neuropathologic evaluations.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF