Publications by authors named "Xiang Yang Lou"

Article Synopsis
  • * The study involved imaging and testing motor function in 24 patients with RBD, 39 with early-stage Parkinson's disease, and 25 control participants, revealing decreased activity in key brain areas for both RBD and Parkinson's disease patients.
  • * Findings showed that both RBD and Parkinson’s patients performed worse on motor tests compared to controls, particularly on a grip task, suggesting early impairments in motor function and brain structure related to RBD and its potential progression to Parkinson's disease.
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Correction for 'Malachite green: a long-buried water-soluble AIEgen with near-infrared fluorescence for living cell nucleus staining' by Yuan Luo , , 2024, , 1452-1455, https://doi.org/10.1039/D3CC05535C.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study addresses health-related stigma faced by individuals with chronic health conditions, highlighting its negative effects on mental and physical well-being.
  • Researchers created the Internalized Health-Related Stigma (I-HEARTS) Scale to measure this stigma across diverse health conditions, using feedback from affected individuals and health professionals.
  • The I-HEARTS Scale was validated through factor analysis, resulting in a reliable 25-item scale that identifies three key aspects of internalized stigma and helps indicate levels of stigma within the population studied.
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Objective: American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines recommend that febrile infants at low risk for invasive bacterial infection be discharged from the emergency department (ED) if primary care provider (PCP) follow-up occurs within 24 hours. We aimed to (1) assess the association between having electronic health record (EHR) documentation of a PCP and ED disposition and (2) describe documentation of potential barriers to discharge and plans for post-discharge follow-up in low-risk febrile infants.

Methods: We conducted a secondary analysis of a multicenter, cross-sectional study of low-risk febrile infants.

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Introduction: Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is currently the third-leading cause of cancer-related death in the United States. African Americans (AAs) with PDAC have worse survival in comparison to other racial groups. The COVID-19 pandemic caused significant stress to the healthcare system.

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In this secondary analysis of a multicenter investigation, we describe several gaps in the collection and management of pediatric race, ethnicity, and language data. These findings highlight the ongoing need for reliable data management processes as a crucial step toward advancing pediatric health equity.

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Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have led to rapid growth in detecting genetic variants associated with various phenotypes. Owing to a great number of publicly accessible GWAS summary statistics, and the difficulty in obtaining individual-level genotype data, many existing gene-based association tests have been adapted to require only GWAS summary statistics rather than individual-level data. However, these association tests are restricted to unrelated individuals and thus do not apply to family samples directly.

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Gene therapy is a potential treatment for Friedreich ataxia, with multiple programs on the horizon. The purpose of this study was to collect opinions about gene therapy from individuals 14 years or older with Friedreich ataxia or parents/caregivers of Friedreich ataxia patients who were diagnosed as children 17 or younger. Participants were asked to complete a survey after reading brief educational materials regarding gene therapy.

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In this multicenter, cross-sectional, secondary analysis of 4042 low-risk febrile infants, nearly 10% had a contaminated culture obtained during their evaluation (4.9% of blood cultures, 5.0% of urine cultures, and 1.

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Fluorescent imaging probes are crucial for exploring nucleus-related cellular events in live cells. Ideal probes should be photostable, small-sized, highly contrasted, and low in background. Here, we discovered that malachite green is a water-soluble near-infrared luminogen with aggregation-induced emission properties.

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Increasing levels of boron in water exceeding acceptable thresholds have triggered concerns regarding environmental pollution and adverse health effects. In response, significant efforts are being made to develop new adsorbents for the removal of boron from contaminated water. Among the various materials proposed, inorganic adsorbents have emerged as promising materials due to their chemical, thermal, and mechanical stability.

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Confidence interval for the difference of two proportions has been studied for decades. Many methods were developed to improve the approximation of the limiting distribution of test statistics, such as the profile likelihood method, the score method, and the Wilson method. For the Wilson interval developed by Beal (1987), the approximation of the Z test statistic to the standard normal distribution may be further improved by utilizing the continuity correction, in the observation of anti-conservative intervals from the Wilson interval.

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Importance: Febrile infants at low risk of invasive bacterial infections are unlikely to benefit from lumbar puncture, antibiotics, or hospitalization, yet these are commonly performed. It is not known if there are differences in management by race, ethnicity, or language.

Objective: To investigate associations between race, ethnicity, and language and additional interventions (lumbar puncture, empirical antibiotics, and hospitalization) in well-appearing febrile infants at low risk of invasive bacterial infection.

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Introduction: Certain subpopulations in the United States are highly vulnerable to tobacco initiation and addiction, and elimination of disparities among those groups is crucial to reducing the burden of tobacco use.

Aims And Methods: This study evaluated the racial and ethnic differences in smoking initiation of menthol flavored cigarettes and cigars among never-users, and in subsequent tobacco use among new users of menthol-flavored products, using longitudinal data from waves 1-4 of the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health Study. The outcomes of interest were new use of menthol-flavored products, and subsequent past 30-day and past 12-month cigarette and cigar smoking, irrespective of flavors, after initiation.

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Introduction: We describe the development and validation of a mixed-reality prostate biopsy (PBx) simulator with built-in guidance aids and real-time 3-dimensional visualization.

Methods: We evaluated our simulator during one-on-one training sessions with urology residents and attendings from 2018 to 2022. Participants performed freehand, side-fire, double-sextant transrectal ultrasound-guided systematic prostate biopsy (sPBx).

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Introduction: The generalizability of study findings may be influenced by pre-enrollment trial procedures, including the use of behavioral run-in periods. The study goals were to determine whether behavioral run-in periods and other pre-enrollment processes affect outcomes in randomized trials of behavioral weight loss interventions that have contributed to clinical guidelines.

Methods: The sample was behavioral weight loss intervention trials included in the 2018 U.

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Introduction: DNA mismatch repair deficient (dMMR) or microsatellite instability-high (MSI-H) colorectal cancer (CRC) is found in about 15% of early-stage diseases and 5% of metastatic diseases. We reviewed a large, single-institutional database after implementation of universal reflex dMMR/MSI-H testing in CRC to compare profiles of younger (≤50) and older (>50) patients.

Patients And Methods: Between 2009 and 2017, all patients diagnosed with CRC at the University of Florida underwent reflex somatic tumor testing for dMMR by immunohistochemistry (MLH1, PMS2, MSH2, MSH6), MSI by PCR, and Next-Generation Sequencing.

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Background: Group format weight loss interventions have benefits over individual format, but privacy concerns may limit their uptake.

Method: In this study, adults with obesity and interest in losing weight were recruited nationally online and randomly assigned to view one of eight videos describing a hypothetical, group behavioral weight loss intervention. Based on three fully crossed factors, the videos varied on privacy features of intervention (present or not); matching participants to group based on weight loss barriers (matched or not); and intervention format (online or in-person).

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In this study, a commercial cube-shaped open-celled cellulose sponge adsorbent was modified by in-situ co-precipitation of superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPION) and used to remove As(V) from aqueous solutions. Fe K-edge X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) and TEM identified maghemite as the main iron phase of the SPION nanoparticles with an average size 13 nm. Batch adsorption experiments at 800 mg/L showed a 63% increase of adsorption capacity when loading 2.

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Obstructive heart defects (OHDs) share common structural lesions in arteries and cardiac valves, accounting for ~25% of all congenital heart defects. OHDs are highly heritable, resulting from interplay among maternal exposures, genetic susceptibilities, and epigenetic phenomena. A genome-wide association study was conducted in National Birth Defects Prevention Study participants (N  = 3978; N  = 2507), investigating the genetic architecture of OHDs using transmission/disequilibrium tests (TDT) in complete case-parental trios (N  = 440; N  = 275) and case-control analyses separately in infants (N  = 1635; N  = 990) and mothers (case status defined by infant; N  = 1703; N  = 1078).

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Interleukin-1 (IL-1) plays a key role in carcinogenesis and several IL-1-targeted therapeutics are under investigation for the treatment of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC). We sought to broaden our understanding of how the family of IL-1 ligands and receptors impact the tumor immune landscape and patient survival in PDAC. Gene expression data and DNA methylation data for IL1A, IL1B, IL1RN, IL1R1, IL1R2, and IL1RAP was attained from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database and cross validated using the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database.

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Introduction: This study evaluated the patterns of smoking cessation at Wave 4 of the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH) Study among established cigarette smokers who were also current e-cigarettes users at Wave 3.

Methods: We assessed changes in smoking frequency at Wave 4 among established cigarette and e-cigarette users at Wave 3. The demographics of participants were analyzed as well as e-cigarettes device types, number of cigarettes smoked and time from waking up until the first cigarette.

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Hypothesis: The easy aggregation of superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPION) greatly reduces their adsorption performance for removing arsenic (As) from polluted water. We propose to exploit the porosity and good diffusion properties of a cube-shaped cellulose sponge for loading SPION to reduce the aggregation and to develop a composite adsorbent in the cm-scale that could be used for industrial applications.

Experiments: SPION were in-situ synthesized by co-precipitation using a commercial cube-shaped sponge (MetalZorb®) as support.

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Objective: Obesity is associated with epigenetic age acceleration (EAA), resulting in an increased risk of many age-related disorders. However, most studies have focused on the relationship of EAA with BMI. Whether any other obesity metric is more relevant to EAA remains unknown.

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Genes, including those with transgenerational effects, work in concert with behavioral, environmental, and social factors via complex biological networks to determine human health. Understanding complex relationships between causal factors underlying human health is an essential step towards deciphering biological mechanisms. We propose a new analytical framework to investigate the interactions between maternal and offspring genetic variants or their surrogate single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and environmental factors using family-based hybrid study design.

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