Publications by authors named "Sexton J"

Background: Globose neurofibrillary tangles (NFTs) are found in subcortical areas of post-mortem brain from individuals with the second most common primary tauopathy, progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP). The degree of cognitive impairment in secondary tauopathies such as Alzheimer's disease (AD) correlates with the presence of NFTs, which originally appear in the entorhinal cortex before spreading throughout the hippocampus. In contrast, the degree of hippocampal tau pathology in PSP is thought to be limited, consistent with the view that cognitive impairment in PSP is predominantly subcortical.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: Our primary objectives are to assess whether intraarticular corticosteroid injections are superior to saline injections with regards to thumb base pain after 4 weeks, and to compare the efficacy of steroid injections, saline injections, and an occupational therapy intervention on thumb base pain after 12 weeks in people with painful inflammatory osteoarthritis (OA) of the first carpometacarpal (CMC-1) joint.

Design: In this three-armed, double-blind, randomized multicenter trial, 354 participants with painful inflammatory CMC-1 OA from six Norwegian hospitals are recruited. Participants are randomized 1:1:1 to intraarticular steroid or saline injections in the CMC-1 joint or a multimodal occupational therapy intervention.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Stillbirths happen globally every 17 seconds, leading to almost 2 million cases annually, and the common measure used, stillbirth rate, often overlooks important gestational age-specific trends.
  • This study focused on analyzing stillbirth trends in Australia from 1998 to 2018, using three different methodologies to calculate stillbirth rates based on gestational age and risk: GS-SBR, FAR, and ccFAR.
  • Results showed that the FAR and ccFAR measures provided a more accurate understanding of stillbirth risk as pregnancy progresses, highlighting distinct trends that could assist clinicians in their decision-making.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: As most people now have established hybrid immunity, the need for regular, updated SARS-CoV-2 vaccine boosters in patients with immune-mediated inflammatory diseases (IMIDs) is unclear. The study aim was to assess humoral and cellular immunogenicity of a fifth bivalent vaccine dose in patients with IMID on tumour necrosis factor inhibitors (TNFi).

Methods: In the longitudinal, observational Nor-vaC study, we assessed anti-spike and neutralising antibodies against Wuhan, Omicron BA.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The rapid advancement of high-content, single-cell technologies like robotic confocal microscopy with multiplexed dyes (morphological profiling) can be leveraged to reveal fundamental biology, ranging from microbial and abiotic stress to organ development. Specifically, heterogeneous cell systems can be perturbed genetically or with chemical treatments to allow for inference of causal mechanisms. An exciting strategy to navigate the high-dimensional space of possible perturbation and cell type combinations is to use generative models as priors to anticipate high-content outcomes in order to design informative experiments.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objectives: The objectives of this study are to identify a therapeutic serum level for adalimumab associated with remission and low disease activity in patients with rheumatoid arthritis.

Methods: Associations between serum adalimumab trough levels and disease activity were examined using longitudinal data from a 48-week randomised phase III trial including patients with tumour necrosis factor inhibitor-naïve rheumatoid arthritis with active disease starting adalimumab treatment. Disease activity was classified according to 28-joint Disease Activity Score (DAS28)-erythrocyte sedimentation rate and C reactive protein (CRP) levels.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background And Aims: Drug-induced liver injury (DILI) is a major failure mode in pharmaceutical development. This study aims to address the limitations of existing preclinical models by assessing a high-throughput, microfluidic liver-on-a-chip system, termed "Curio Barrier Liver Chips," and its capacity to recapitulate the effects of chronic hepatotoxic drug treatment through metabolic and phenotypic characterization.

Methods: Curio Barrier liver chips (Curiochips), fabricated in an 8 × 2 well configuration, were utilized to establish three dimensional liver organoid cultures.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Bacteroidota are crucial for gut health by breaking down polysaccharides, aided by specific lipoproteins.
  • Despite their significance, the production of these lipoproteins in these bacteria is not well understood.
  • Recent findings identified a new protein, Lnb, that contributes to lipoprotein synthesis, suggesting the presence of a novel family of acyltransferases and challenging existing beliefs about this process in gram-negative bacteria.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The porcine and human heart are remarkably similar in cardiac physiology and biochemistry. Translational research involving the porcine biomedical model is becoming increasingly applicable for the study of human cardiac function in health and disease. Presently, few protocols exist for collecting experimentally viable cardiac tissue from large animal models, particularly during neonatal maturation.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Integrating weather forecasts into decision support systems empowers farmers to optimise irrigation schedules, thereby boosting crop yields and conserving water. However, inaccurate forecasts can jeopardise productivity and irrigation efficiency. This study combines a crop model with a stochastic pseudo-weather forecast algorithm to: (1) determine the reliability needed in a weather forecast algorithm for effective irrigation management; and (2) assess the impact of weather forecast reliability on the productivity and environmental footprint of various maize cropping systems across diverse climates.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Importance: Compromised well-being in health care workers (HCWs) is detrimental to the workforce, organizations, and patients.

Objective: To test the effectiveness of Well-Being Essentials for Learning Life-Balance (WELL-B), a web-based continuing education program to deliver brief, evidence-based, reflective, psychological interventions to improve 4 dimensions of HCW well-being (ie, emotional exhaustion, emotional thriving, emotional recovery, and work-life integration).

Design, Setting, And Participants: A randomized clinical trial (RCT) of US inpatient and outpatient HCWs randomized 1:1 was conducted from January 3 through May 31, 2023, using a web-based intervention.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objectives: Patients with gout need to adhere to medication over time to achieve good outcomes. We assessed self-reported adherence to medication with urate lowering therapy (ULT) 5 years after a treat-to-target intervention and studied how non-adherence was related to baseline demographic and disease variables.

Methods: Patients in the NOR-Gout observational study were included after a recent gout flare and serum urate >360 µmol/L.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Understanding cellular responses to SARS-CoV-2 immunisations is important for informing vaccine recommendations in patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and other vulnerable patients on immunosuppressive therapies. This study investigated the magnitude and quality of T cell responses after multiple SARS-CoV-2 vaccine doses and COVID-19 breakthrough infection.

Methods: This prospective, observational study included patients with IBD and arthritis on tumour necrosis factor inhibitors (TNFi) receiving up to four SARS-CoV-2 vaccine doses.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The general population is exposed to many chemicals which have putative, but incompletely understood, links to breast cancer. Cell Painting is a high-content imaging-based in vitro assay that allows for unbiased measurements of concentration-dependent effects of chemical exposures on cellular morphology. We used Cell Painting to measure effects of 16 human exposure relevant chemicals, along with 21 small molecules with known mechanisms of action, in non-tumorigenic mammary epithelial cells, the MCF10A cell line.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objectives: To explore the agreement between patient-reported flare status and clinically significant flare status in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) in sustained remission.

Method: Patients with RA in remission for ≥12 months on stable treatment were included in the ARCTIC REWIND tapering trials and pooled 12-month data used in current analyses. Patient-reported flare status was assessed according to the Outcome Measures in Rheumatology flare questionnaire; 'Are you having a flare of your RA at this time?' (yes/no).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: Interstitial lung disease (ILD) is one of the most common pulmonary manifestations of rheumatoid arthritis (RA), but its prevalence has not been investigated in psoriatic arthritis (PsA). The role of methotrexate (MTX) in ILD development remains under debate. This study (1) compares the incidences of ILD in patients with RA or PsA initiating a first biologic disease-modifying antirheumatic drug (bDMARD) to that in the general population, and (2) investigates the role of MTX comedication on ILD incidence.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • * The patient was treated using a hybrid procedure that combined open surgery to remove blood clots with endovascular techniques to protect the vertebral artery from embolic issues.
  • * Post-procedure, the patient regained normal pulse and function in the affected arm, and no signs of stroke were found; however, the case highlights that there are few documented instances of using embolic protection in such urgent cases.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Macrophage metabolic plasticity is central to inflammatory programming, yet mechanisms of coordinating metabolic and inflammatory programs during infection are poorly defined. Here, we show that type I interferon (IFN) temporally guides metabolic control of inflammation during methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infection. We find that staggered Toll-like receptor and type I IFN signaling in macrophages permit a transient energetic state of combined oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS) and aerobic glycolysis followed by inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS)-mediated OXPHOS disruption.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objectives: To compare disease activity as assessed by ultrasonography (US) between rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients with and without anxiety or depression, and to compare clinical disease activity and sociodemographic measures between these patient groups.

Methods: Anxious or depressed patients were identified by EuroQoL-5D-3L question "I am not/moderately/extremely anxious or depressed." US assessments of 36 joints and 4 tendons were performed and power Doppler (PD) and grey scale (GS) sum scores calculated (both range 0-120).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Purpose: Heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1) is a crucial enzyme in heme metabolism, facilitating the breakdown of heme into biliverdin, carbon monoxide, and free iron. Renowned for its potent cytoprotective properties, HO-1 showcases notable antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and anti-apoptotic effects. In this review, the authors aim to explore the profound impact of HO-1 on cardiac senescence and its potential implications in myocardial infarction (MI).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Introduction: Breast cancer is the second most diagnosed cancer, as well as the primary cause of cancer death in women worldwide. Of the different breast cancer subtypes, triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is particularly aggressive and is associated with poor prognosis. Black women are two to three times more likely to be diagnosed with TNBCs than white women.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Gene flow can have rapid effects on adaptation and is an important evolutionary tool available when undertaking biological conservation and restoration. This tool is underused partly because of the perceived risk of outbreeding depression and loss of mean fitness when different populations are crossed. In this article, we briefly review some theory and empirical findings on how genetic variation is distributed across species ranges, describe known patterns of gene flow in nature with respect to environmental gradients, and highlight the effects of gene flow on adaptation in small or stressed populations in challenging environments (e.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF