Publications by authors named "Shalev A"

Article Synopsis
  • Rising mental health issues among children and adolescents are significant globally, with pediatricians as key players in addressing these challenges due to a shortage of mental health professionals and resources.
  • A Delphi study involving 92 experts aimed to redefine pediatricians' roles in mental health care, focusing on topics like risk identification and parental guidance.
  • Results showed strong agreement on pediatricians' involvement in mental health support, but opinions varied on prescribing medication and service changes, highlighting the need for more mental health training for pediatricians and a structured approach to care.*
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Diabetes treatment options have improved dramatically over the last 100 years, however, close to 2 million individuals in the U.S. alone live with type 1 diabetes (T1D) and are still dependent on multiple daily insulin injections and/or continuous insulin infusion with a pump to stay alive and no oral medications are available.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

At the 39th meeting of the International Society of Traumatic Stress Studies, four leading scientists and clinicians were invited to reflect on their careers, focusing on the biological mechanisms and markers of traumatic stress. Dr. Raul Andero has contributed to understanding how stress alters memory networks in the brain, influencing the development of novel treatments.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The recent worldwide surge of warfare and hostilities exposes increasingly large numbers of individuals to traumatic events, placing them at risk of developing posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and challenging both clinicians and service delivery systems. This overview summarizes and updates the core knowledge of the genetic, molecular, and neural circuit features of the neurobiology of PTSD and advances in evidence-based psychotherapy, pharmacotherapy, neuromodulation, and digital treatments. While the complexity of the neurobiology and the biological and clinical heterogeneity of PTSD have challenged clinicians and researchers, there is an emerging consensus concerning the underlying mechanisms and approaches to diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of PTSD.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Context: Diabetes is a heterogenic disease and distinct clusters have emerged, but the implications for diverse populations have remained understudied.

Objective: Apply cluster analysis to a diverse diabetes cohort in the US Deep South.

Design: Retrospective hierarchical cluster analysis of electronic health records from 89 875 patients diagnosed with diabetes between January 1, 2010, and December 31, 2019, at the Kirklin Clinic of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, an ambulatory referral center.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Planned oocyte cryopreservation (OC) is gaining popularity, but some women struggle to obtain enough oocytes due to poor ovarian response, which can be classified using the POSEIDON system.
  • In a study of 160 patients, 39.4% were identified as POSEIDON patients, showing significant differences compared to non-POSEIDON patients in terms of hormone levels and oocyte retrieval.
  • The findings indicate that POSEIDON patients have a higher need for fertility medications and retrieve fewer oocytes, highlighting the importance of this classification for patient counseling and management in OC procedures.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Circulating miRNAs are increasingly being considered as biomarkers in various medical contexts, but the value of analyzing isomiRs (isoforms of canonical miRNA sequences) has not frequently been assessed. Here we hypothesize that an in-depth analysis of the full circulating miRNA landscape could identify specific isomiRs that are stronger biomarkers, compared to their corresponding miRNA, for identifying increased CV risk in patients with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD)-a clinical unmet need. Plasma miRNAs were sequenced with next-generation sequencing (NGS).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Knowledge graphs are increasingly used for representing knowledge, but their complexity and the diversity of sources make integration difficult due to semantic incompatibilities.
  • The Biomedical Translator Consortium has created a question-answering system called the Translator, which aids human reasoning by addressing biomedical queries related to various diseases.
  • A monthly "Question-of-the-Month Challenge" has been established to explore specific issues like drug-related liver injury and coronavirus, providing insights and identifying technical challenges to enhance the Translator system, while also comparing it to Large Language Models like ChatGPT.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Peripartum cardiomyopathy (PPCM) is a rare but potentially devastating complication of pregnancy. Although the pathophysiology of PPCM is not fully understood, there are known risk factors for developing PPCM, which are maternal and gestation related. In the first wave of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, we witnessed an elevated incidence of PPCM among COVID-19 survivors.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Echocardiographic stress tests are often used to evaluate patients who complain of chest pain. However, some patients fail to reach the target heart rate required for the test to be conclusive (usually defined as 85% of the predicted maximal heart rate based on the patient's age) and are often sent for additional imaging tests, such as myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI) or cardiac computed tomography angiography (CTA). Few studies have evaluated the effectiveness of these additional tests in patients who present with chest pain but did not meet the heart rate requirements for a stress test.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Unlabelled: Verapamil promotes functional β-cell mass and improves glucose homeostasis in diabetic mice and humans with type 1 diabetes (T1D). Now, our global proteomics analysis of serum from subjects with T1D at baseline and after 1 year of receiving verapamil or placebo revealed IGF-I as a protein with significantly changed abundance over time. IGF-I, which promotes β-cell survival and insulin secretion, decreased during disease progression, and this decline was blunted by verapamil.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has been associated with altered emotion processing and modulation in specific brain regions, i.e., the amygdala, insula, and medial prefrontal and anterior cingulate cortices.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Human and mouse genetics have delivered numerous diabetogenic loci, but it is mainly through the use of animal models that the pathophysiological basis for their contribution to diabetes has been investigated. More than 20 years ago, we serendipidously identified a mouse strain that could serve as a model of obesity-prone type 2 diabetes, the BTBR (Black and Tan Brachyury) mouse (BTBR T+ Itpr3tf/J, 2018) carrying the mutation. We went on to discover that the BTBR- mouse is an excellent model of diabetic nephropathy and is now widely used by nephrologists in academia and the pharmaceutical industry.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: To understand the perspectives of home health aides (HHAs) toward their own health and health behaviors, and how their job impacts both.

Data Sources And Study Setting: Interviews were conducted with 28 HHAs from 16 unique home care agencies from August 2021 to January 2022. The study was conducted in partnership with the 1199SEIU Training and Employment Fund, a labor-management fund of the largest health care union in the US.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: The weak link between subjective symptom-based diagnostic methods for posttraumatic psychopathology and objectively measured neurobiological indices forms a barrier to the development of effective personalized treatments. To overcome this problem, recent studies have aimed to stratify psychiatric disorders by identifying consistent subgroups based on objective neural markers. Along these lines, a promising 2021 study by Stevens et al.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Home health aides (HHAs) provide care to many adults with heart failure (HF) in the home. As the demand for HHAs increases, there is a need to promote HHAs' job satisfaction and retention. In this cross-sectional community-partnered study, we examined whether mutuality (e.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • The hippocampus and amygdala are key areas linked to PTSD, with changes in their sizes observed in those affected by the disorder.
  • A study involved 100 adult trauma survivors, examining MRI scans and PTSD diagnoses over 14 months to see if brain volume changes were pre-existing vulnerabilities or post-trauma consequences.
  • Results indicated that smaller volumes in the right hippocampus and certain subregions were associated with persistent PTSD, supporting the idea that these brain differences may predispose individuals to not recover from the disorder rather than resulting from ongoing stress or trauma.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Research Question: Does SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccination affect the ovarian reserve of infertile women undergoing IVF?

Design: This was a prospective observational study at a single university-affiliated IVF unit that included infertile women aged 18-44 years who were undergoing IVF/intracytoplasmic sperm injection between November 2020 and September 2021, had received two doses of SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccination and had undergone measurement of baseline anti-Müllerian hormone (AMH) concentration within the 12 months preceding their recruitment. AMH concentrations before and after vaccination were evaluated and compared.

Results: Overall, 31 women were included in the study.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • TXNIP plays a crucial role in pancreatic beta cell function, and its increase in diabetes negatively impacts glucose regulation; however, deleting TXNIP in beta cells can protect against diabetes in mice.
  • The study focused on creating a knockout mouse model that lacks TXNIP in alpha cells, revealing that these aTKO mice showed improved glucose tolerance and lower blood sugar levels after being on a high-fat diet compared to normal mice.
  • In diabetic conditions, the lack of TXNIP in alpha cells resulted in decreased glucagon secretion without altering insulin production, indicating that reduced TXNIP may help lower blood glucose by managing glucagon levels.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Long-term glucagon receptor (GCGR) agonism is associated with hyperglycemia and glucose intolerance, while acute GCGR agonism enhances whole-body insulin sensitivity and hepatic AKTSer473 phosphorylation. These divergent effects establish a critical gap in knowledge surrounding GCGR action. mTOR complex 2 (mTORC2) is composed of seven proteins, including RICTOR, which dictates substrate binding and allows for targeting of AKTSer473.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF