1,677 results match your criteria: "San Francisco VA Medical Center.[Affiliation]"

Antibodies are critical tools for research into extracellular vesicles (EVs) and other extracellular nanoparticles (ENPs), where they can be used for their identification, characterization, and isolation. However, the lack of a centralized antibody platform where researchers can share validation results thus minimizing wasted personnel time and reagents, has been a significant obstacle. Moreover, because the performance of antibodies varies among assay types and conditions, detailed information on assay variables and protocols is also of value.

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Background: Nearly 2.9 million older Americans with lower incomes live in subsidized housing. While regional and single-site studies show that this group has higher rates of healthcare utilization compared to older adults in the general community, little is known about healthcare utilization nationally nor associated risk factors.

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Background: Numerous studies demonstrate associations between serum concentrations of 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25[OH]D) and a variety of common disorders, including musculoskeletal, metabolic, cardiovascular, malignant, autoimmune, and infectious diseases. Although a causal link between serum 25(OH)D concentrations and many disorders has not been clearly established, these associations have led to widespread supplementation with vitamin D and increased laboratory testing for 25(OH)D in the general population. The benefit-risk ratio of this increase in vitamin D use is not clear, and the optimal vitamin D intake and the role of testing for 25(OH)D for disease prevention remain uncertain.

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Rationale & Objective: Tubulointerstitial damage is a feature of early chronic kidney disease (CKD), but current clinical tests capture it poorly. Urine biomarkers of tubulointerstitial health may identify risk of CKD.

Study Design: Prospective cohort (Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities [ARIC]) and case-cohort (Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis [MESA] and Reasons for Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke [REGARDS]).

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Background: A higher difference in estimated glomerular filtration rate by cystatin C versus creatinine (eGFRDiff = eGFRCys - eGFRCreat) is associated with decreased frailty risk. Since eGFRCreat is influenced by muscle more than eGFRCys, muscle mass may explain this association. Previous work could not account for this when considering regional muscle measures by imaging.

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Background And Hypothesis: Brain development/aging is not uniform across individuals, spawning efforts to characterize brain age from a biological perspective to model the effects of disease and maladaptive life processes on the brain. The brain age gap represents the discrepancy between estimated brain biological age and chronological age (in this case, based on structural magnetic resonance imaging, MRI). Structural MRI studies report an increased brain age gap (biological age > chronological age) in schizophrenia, with a greater brain age gap related to greater negative symptom severity.

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Psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy: where is the psychotherapy research?

Psychopharmacology (Berl)

August 2024

Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA.

Rationale: Psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy (PAP) has emerged as a potential treatment for a variety of mental health conditions, including substance use disorders and depression. Current models of PAP emphasize the importance of psychotherapeutic support before, during, and after ingestion of a psychedelic to maximize safety and clinical benefit. Despite this ubiquitous assumption, there has been surprisingly little empirical investigation of the "psychotherapy" in PAP, leaving critical questions about the necessary and sufficient components of PAP unanswered.

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Objective: Accurate identification of lupus nephritis (LN) cases is essential for patient management, research and public health initiatives. However, LN diagnosis codes in electronic health records (EHRs) are underused, hindering efficient identification. We investigated the current performance of International Classification of Diseases (ICD) codes, 9th and 10th editions (ICD9/10), for identifying prevalent LN, and developed scoring systems to increase identification of LN that are adaptable to settings with and without LN ICD codes.

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Article Synopsis
  • - The study aimed to analyze how general endoscopists' ability to predict the histologic features of small colorectal polyps improved when using a computer-aided diagnosis (CADx) system during real-life colonoscopies in the U.S.
  • - Results showed that while both unassisted and CADx-assisted predictions had similar sensitivity (around 90%), the assisted group's specificity was significantly higher, allowing more polyps to be resected or left untreated.
  • - Despite the benefits seen in a clinical setting, the study noted that the use of CADx might not yield the same results in other real-world scenarios.
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  • The study focused on the relationship between the absorbed dose of radiation in lesions and the response of tumors in patients treated with Lu-PSMA-617 radiopharmaceutical therapies.
  • It analyzed data from 50 patients with a total of 335 lesions, assessing responses after two treatment cycles and measuring factors like prostate-specific antigen (PSA) levels and lesion-based absorbed doses.
  • The findings revealed that a higher lesion-based response was linked to better PSA responses; however, the baseline absorbed dose was only weakly associated with these responses.
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Background And Hypothesis: Social and academic adjustment deteriorate in the years preceding a psychotic disorder diagnosis. Analyses of premorbid adjustment have recently been extended into the clinical high risk for psychosis (CHR) syndrome to identify risk factors and developmental pathways toward psychotic disorders. Work so far has been at the between-person level, which has constrained analyses of premorbid adjustment, clinical covariates, and conversion to psychosis.

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Article Synopsis
  • Choline is a crucial nutrient needed by the body for processes like building cell membranes and neurotransmission, with the brain having the highest demand for it.
  • The protein FLVCR2, found in cells at the blood-brain barrier, is identified as the main transporter for choline into the brain, unlike another related protein, FLVCR1, which is not as active there.
  • Research includes structural analysis of FLVCR2 using cryo-electron microscopy, which shows how choline binds and is transported, offering potential insights for delivering therapies into the brain more effectively.
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Effects of residential socioeconomic polarization on high blood pressure among nursing home residents.

Health Place

May 2024

Department of Epidemiology and Population Health, School of Medicine, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA; Geriatric Research Education and Clinical Center, VA Palo Alto Health Care System, Palo Alto, CA, USA.

Objective: Neighborhood concentration of racial, income, education, and housing deprivation is known to be associated with higher rates of hypertension. The objective of this study is to examine the association between tract-level spatial social polarization and hypertension in a cohort with relatively equal access to health care, a Veterans Affairs nursing home.

Methods: 41,973 long-term care residents aged ≥65 years were matched with tract-level Indices of Concentration at the Extremes across four socioeconomic domains.

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Importance: Limited evidence exists on the association between initiation of antihypertensive medication and risk of fractures in older long-term nursing home residents.

Objective: To assess the association between antihypertensive medication initiation and risk of fracture.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This was a retrospective cohort study using target trial emulation for data derived from 29 648 older long-term care nursing home residents in the Veterans Health Administration (VA) from January 1, 2006, to October 31, 2019.

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is a 12-part series of thematically linked mini-essays with accompanying illustrations that explore the many dimensions of family medicine as interpreted by individual family physicians and medical educators in the USA and elsewhere around the world. In 'IX: people and places-diverse populations and locations of care', authors address the following themes: 'LGBTQIA+health in family medicine', 'A family medicine approach to substance use disorders', 'Shameless medicine for people experiencing homelessness', '''Difficult" encounters-finding the person behind the patient', 'Attending to patients with medically unexplained symptoms', 'Making house calls and home visits', 'Family physicians in the procedure room', 'Robust rural family medicine' and 'Full-spectrum family medicine'. May readers appreciate the breadth of family medicine in these essays.

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Association of Race and Ethnicity With Postoperative Gabapentinoid and Opioid Prescribing Trends for Older Adults.

J Surg Res

June 2024

Division of Geriatrics, University of California San Francisco School of Medicine, San Francisco, California; San Francisco VA Medical Center, San Francisco, California.

Background: Disparities in opioid prescribing by race/ethnicity have been described in many healthcare settings, with White patients being more likely to receive an opioid prescription than other races studied. As surgeons increase prescribing of nonopioid medications in response to the opioid epidemic, it is unknown whether postoperative prescribing disparities also exist for these medications, specifically gabapentinoids.

Methods: We conducted a retrospective cohort study using a 20% Medicare sample for 2013-2018.

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2023 ISTH update of the 2022 ISTH guidelines for antithrombotic treatment in COVID-19.

J Thromb Haemost

June 2024

Department of Medicine, Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine at Hofstra/Northwell, Hempstead, New York, USA; Institute of Health System Science, Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research, Manhasset, New York, USA.

Based on emerging evidence from the COVID-19 pandemic, the International Society on Thrombosis and Haemostasis (ISTH) guidelines for antithrombotic treatment in COVID-19 were published in 2022. Since then, at least 16 new randomized controlled trials have contributed additional evidence, which necessitated a modification of most of the previous recommendations. We used again the American College of Cardiology Foundation/American Heart Association methodology for assessment of level of evidence (LOE) and class of recommendation (COR).

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Background: The Veterans Health Administration tracks urine drug tests (UDTs) among patients on long-term opioid therapy (LTOT) and recommends discussing the health effects of cannabis use.

Objective: To determine the occurrence of cannabis-related discussions between providers and patients on LTOT during six months following UDT positive for cannabis, and examine factors associated with documenting cannabis use.

Design: We identified patients prescribed LTOT with a UDT positive for cannabis in 2019.

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Contemporary risk of biochemical recurrence after radical prostatectomy in the active surveillance era.

Urol Oncol

June 2024

Department of Urology, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles; Samuel Oschin Comprehensive Cancer Institute, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, CA. Electronic address:

Objectives: To assess whether contemporary risks of biochemical recurrence (BCR) after radical prostatectomy (RP) in the AS era differ from historical estimates due to changes in tumor risk case mix and improvements in risk stratification.

Materials And Methods: We sampled 6,682 men who underwent RP for clinically localized disease between 2000 and 2017 from the VA SEARCH database. Kaplan Meier analysis was used to calculate incidence of BCR before and after 2010 overall and within tumor risk subgroups.

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Posttreatment imaging of γ-emissions after peptide receptor radionuclide therapy (PRRT) can be used to perform quantitative dosimetry as well as assessment response using qualitative measures. We aimed to assess the impact of qualitative posttreatment imaging on the management of patients undergoing PRRT. In this retrospective study, we evaluated 100 patients with advanced well-differentiated neuroendocrine tumors undergoing PRRT, who had posttreatment SPECT/CT imaging at 24 h.

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