Innovations in Preconception Care: Optimizing Health for All Individuals.

Optimizing the overall health of individuals prior to pregnancy can improve both pregnancy and lifelong health outcomes. Despite extremely high financial expenditure on birth in the United States, maternal and infant mortality rates continue to rise. Moreover, significant racial and ethnic disparities persist in perinatal health outcomes.

Overexpression of human DNA polymerase theta is a biomarker of aggressive and DNA repair-deficient papillary thyroid cancers.

Background: DNA polymerase theta (POLQ) is an enzyme that repairs double-strand DNA breaks. POLQ is overexpressed in several cancer types, and increased expression is associated with a poor prognosis. Ablating POLQ function in vitro increases drug sensitivity to agents that cause double-strand DNA breaks, including chemotherapies and ionizing radiation.

Preliminary translation of 'Reducing Disability in Alzheimer's Disease' among individuals with intellectual disabilities and caregiver dyads.

Background: The Reducing Disability in Alzheimer's Disease in Kansas City (RDAD-KC) intervention has been shown to improve the health of individuals with dementia and caregiver dyads. This manuscript reports the results of implementing the RDAD among individuals with intellectual disabilities and caregiver dyads.

Methods: Nine community agencies deployed the 12-week intervention.

A Collaborative Approach to Dementia Inclusion in Social Work Education: The Dementia Intensive.

There are 5.8 million Americans with Alzheimer's disease and this number is rising. Social Work can play a key role.

Randomized clinical trial of a brief, scalable intervention for mental health sequelae in college students during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This randomized clinical trial aimed to determine feasibility, acceptability, and initial efficacy of brief Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) skills videos in reducing psychological distress among college students during the COVID-19 pandemic. Over six weeks, 153 undergraduates at a large, public American university completed pre-assessment, intervention, and post-assessment periods. During the intervention, participants were randomized to receive animated DBT skills videos for 14 successive days (n = 99) or continue assessment (n = 54).

Transient Tertiary Structures of Disordered Dynein Intermediate Chain Regulate its Interactions with Multiple Partners.

The N-terminal domain of dynein intermediate chain (N-IC) is central to the cytoplasmic dynein 'cargo attachment subcomplex' and regulation of motor activity. It is a prototypical intrinsically disordered protein (IDP), serving as a primarily disordered polybivalent molecular scaffold for numerous binding partners, including three dimeric dynein light chains and coiled coil domains of dynein partners dynactin p150 and NudE. At the very N-terminus, a 40 amino acid single alpha helix (SAH) forms the major binding site for both p150 and NudE, while a shorter nascent helix (H2) separated from SAH by a disordered linker, is necessary for tight binding to dynactin p150 but not to NudE.

Prevention and management of infections after exposure to ionising radiation.

Ionising radiation impacts many organ systems, each of which comprises a level of immunity to infectious disease. Bone marrow toxicity after radiation results in a predisposition to leukopenia and subsequent susceptibility to bacterial, viral, and fungal infections. Radiation-induced damage to mucosal, integumentary, and solid organ structures disrupts additional lines of innate defense.

Genetic Mapping of a new allele, in .

Genetic screens provide a mechanism to identify genes involved with different cellular and organismal processes. Using a Flp/FRT screen in the eye we identified mutations that result in alterations and de-regulation of cell growth and division. From this screen a group of undergraduate researchers part of the Fly-CURE consortium mapped and characterized a new allele of the gene ,

Real-time Mental Health Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on College Students: Ecological Momentary Assessment Study.

Background: College students' mental health may be disproportionally affected by the COVID-19 pandemic because of the abrupt shift off campus and subsequent loss of a social network and potential long-term impact on job prospects.

Objective: We sought to assess the nature of COVID-19's mental health impact among a sample of undergraduates who were experiencing the pandemic as it occurred in real time.

Methods: In total, 140 college students completed smartphone-based ecological momentary assessments of anxiety and optimism related to COVID-19 and other generic mental health variables 6 times daily.

Ethical issues raised by intergenerational monitoring in clinical trials of germline gene modification.

As research involving gene editing continues to advance, we are headed in the direction of being able to modify the human germline. Should we reach a point where an argument can be made that the benefits of preventing unborn children and future generations from inheriting genetic conditions that cause tremendous suffering outweigh the risks associated with altering the human germline, the next step will be to design clinical trials using this technology in humans. These clinical trials will likely require careful follow-up and monitoring of future generations born with altered genes.

Effectiveness of "Reducing Disability in Alzheimer's Disease" Among Dyads With Moderate Dementia.

Replications of evidence-based dementia care receiver-caregiver dyad interventions in the community are scarce. We aimed to assess the effectiveness of the Kansas City implementation of Reducing Disability in Alzheimer's Disease (RDAD) among a convenience sample of dyads with moderate dementia, which addressed needs identified by nine participating community agencies. We hypothesized that dyads' mental health and physical activity outcomes would improve from baseline to end-of-treatment.

Allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation with non-myeloablative conditioning for patients with hematologic malignancies: Improved outcomes over two decades.

We have used a non-myeloablative conditioning regimen for allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation for the past twenty years. During that period, changes in clinical practice have been aimed at reducing morbidity and mortality from infections, organ toxicity, and graft-versus-host disease. We hypothesized that improvements in clinical practice led to better transplantation outcomes over time.

Assessing an intervention to improve the safety of automatic stop orders for inpatient antimicrobials.

Background: Automatic stop orders (ASOs) for antimicrobials have been recommended as a component of antimicrobial stewardship programs, but may result in unintentional treatment interruption due to failure of providers to re-order an antimicrobial medication. We examined the impact of a multifaceted intervention designed to reduce the potential harms of interrupting antimicrobial treatment due to ASOs.

Methods: An intervention was implemented that included pharmacist review of expiring antimicrobials as well as provider education to encourage use of a long-term antimicrobial order set for commonly used prophylactic antimicrobials.

Aripiprazole for the Management of Antipsychotic-Induced Hyperprolactinemia A Retrospective Case Series.

Objective: To demonstrate how effectively aripiprazole can be utilized to manage antipsychotic-induced hyperprolactinemia.

Methods: The files of 3 female patients with a history of psychotic illness and hyperprolactinemia who were treated at a state hospital between February 2018 and May 2019 were retrospectively analyzed. All were found to have elevated prolactin levels and underwent treatment with aripiprazole in addition to their concomitant medications.

Assessment of Inpatient Time Allocation Among First-Year Internal Medicine Residents Using Time-Motion Observations.

Importance: The United States spends more than $12 billion annually on graduate medical education. Understanding how residents balance patient care and educational activities may provide insights into how the modern physician workforce is being trained.

Objective: To describe how first-year internal medicine residents (interns) allocate time while working on general medicine inpatient services.

Health state utilities associated with treatment options for acute myeloid leukemia (AML).

Acute myeloid leukemia (AML) treatment typically involves remission induction chemotherapy followed by consolidation chemotherapy. New treatments for AML have recently been introduced, including a chemotherapy formulation called CPX-351, which is administered via less time-intensive IV infusion than the standard "7 + 3" continuous infusion regimen of cytarabine plus an anthracycline. The purpose of this study was to estimate utilities that could be used in economic modeling of AML treatment.

The Tri-phasic Role of Hydrogen Peroxide in Blood-Brain Barrier Endothelial cells.

Hydrogen peroxide (HO) plays an important role physiologically as the second messenger and pathologically as an inducer of oxidative stress in injury, ischemia and other conditions. However, it is unclear how HO influences various cellular functions in health and disease differentially, particularly in the blood-brain barrier (BBB). We hypothesized that the change in cellular concentrations of HO is a major contributor in regulation of angiogenesis, barrier integrity/permeability and cell death/apoptosis in BBB endothelial cells.

Cholesterol is enriched in the sphingolipid patches on the substrate near nonpolarized MDCK cells, but not in the sphingolipid domains in their plasma membranes.

Information about the distributions of cholesterol and sphingolipids within the plasma membranes of mammalian cells provides insight into the roles of these molecules in membrane function. In this report, high-resolution secondary ion mass spectrometry was used to image the distributions of metabolically incorporated rare isotope-labeled sphingolipids and cholesterol on the surfaces of nonpolarized epithelial cells. Sphingolipid domains that were not enriched with cholesterol were detected in the plasma membranes of subconfluent Madin-Darby canine kidney cells.