4,116 results match your criteria: "University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill[Affiliation]"

Systematic review on maternal dietary patterns during pregnancy and offspring allergy.

Pediatr Allergy Immunol

December 2024

Section of Pediatric Allergy and Immunology, University of Colorado, Children's Hospital Colorado, Denver, Colorado, USA.

Allergic diseases including food allergy, atopic dermatitis, asthma, and allergic rhinitis are increasing. Nutritional intake may play a role in this increase. Systematic reviews indicate that intake of specific nutrients and foods does not prevent allergic diseases.

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Background: Rural communities have been significantly affected by opioid use disorder (OUD) and related harms but have less access to evidence-based medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD), such as buprenorphine. Given the shortage of specialists in these areas, rural primary care is an important setting to expand buprenorphine access, but implementation is limited.

Objective: To explore implementation climate factors that support or hinder buprenorphine implementation in rural primary care.

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Guided by communication accommodation theory, we studied 27 physician reports of patient-physician advanced cancer communication during the COVID-19 pandemic. Advanced cancer communication requires recognizing patients' psychosocial states and collaboratively engaging patients empathetically to develop the shared understanding necessary to guide decision-making. However, physicians found their communication underaccommodated, stemming from personal protection equipment, social distancing, and telemedicine.

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Structures in the 5' untranslated regions (UTRs) of mRNAs can physically modulate translation efficiency by impeding the scanning ribosome or by sequestering the translational start site. We assessed the impact of stable protein binding in 5'- and 3'-UTRs on translation efficiency by targeting the MS2 coat protein to a reporter RNA via its hairpin recognition site. Translation was assessed from the reporter RNA when co-expressed with MS2 coat proteins of varying affinities for the RNA, and at different expression levels.

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The rise in antibiotic resistance limits the availability of antibiotics to treat bacterial infections. Despite this, antibiotic development pipelines remain sparse which makes using adjuvants to reverse antibiotic resistance a promising therapeutic strategy. The use of vancomycin, a frontline antibiotic used to treat hospitalized patients with methicillin-resistant (MRSA) infections, is complicated by high rates of treatment failure.

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Purpose: AIM-Back is an embedded pragmatic clinical trial (ePCT) with cluster randomization designed to increase access and compare the effectiveness of two different non-pharmacological care pathways for low back pain (LBP) delivered within the Veteran Administration Health Care System (VAHCS). This manuscript describes baseline characteristics of AIM-Back participants as well as the representativeness of those referred to the AIM-Back program by sex, age, race, and ethnicity, relative to Veterans with low back pain at participating clinics.

Participants: To be eligible for AIM-Back, Veterans were referred to the randomized pathway at their clinic by trained primary care providers (Referral cohort).

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Unlabelled: In 2021, the US Surgeon General issued a national advisory citing an epidemic of isolation and loneliness. Even before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, approximately half of people in the US reported experiencing measurable levels of loneliness. Despite localized and select cross-sectional studies highlighting even higher increases in isolation/loneliness during the COVID-19 pandemic, additional research is needed, particularly for youth and young adults.

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Article Synopsis
  • Phytoplankton in lakes capture atmospheric CO2 and convert it to organic carbon (OC), but most OC is recycled back to the atmosphere as CO and methane (CH), contributing to climate change.
  • * The research identifies a 3.1-fold increase in CO-equivalent emissions over the next century, exacerbated by climate warming.
  • * While climate change boosts phytoplankton growth in many lakes, it can also negatively impact their ability to sequester CO-eq, potentially weakening this feedback loop over time.
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Background: Providing supportive services to patients and their caregivers is essential to quality cancer care, yet the depth, availability, and infrastructure underlying these services remains unknown in community practice. We assessed these factors among practices within the National Cancer Institute Community Oncology Research Program (NCORP) to guide priorities for comprehensive supportive service(s) development and inform implementation of evidence-based interventions in clinical practice.

Methods: Supportive care leaders at NCORP practices completed online surveys regarding availability of services to patients and caregivers within seven domains, service infrastructure (e.

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Purpose: Psychological distress, including anxiety and depression, is common among adults with CF, associating with poor quality of life, lung function, and healthcare utilization. This 3-year, multi-site, telehealth-delivered randomized trial sought to determine whether Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT with CF) is superior to supportive psychotherapy (SP), in improving psychological functioning for adults with CF.

Methods: One hundred twenty-four adults with CF and elevated anxiety and/or depressive symptoms were recruited coincident with the first COVID lockdown, from Thomas Jefferson University Hospitals, University of Virginia, Augusta University, Duke University Medical Center, and social media.

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With Apologies to Monty Python: Is Every Cell Sacred?

Am J Psychiatry

December 2024

Bowles Center for Alcohol Studies (Price, McElligott) and Departments of Psychiatry and Pharmacology (McElligott), University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.

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Background/objectives: Kaposi sarcoma (KS) is a common lymphatic endothelial cancer among children with and without HIV in central and eastern Africa. Despite its clinical heterogeneity, its various clinical phenotypes are often grouped together in staging and treatment algorithms. Patients with KS tumor-associated edema, referring to hard, non-pitting lesions which often lead to chronic disability, represent a unique, understudied subgroup of children with KS.

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Article Synopsis
  • Hyaluronan (HA) is an important molecule involved in various biological processes and has implications in health and disease, such as tissue hydration and tumor growth.
  • Traditional methods for measuring HA often lack sensitivity and specificity, particularly for lower molecular weights, which limits their effectiveness.
  • This study presents a new method using LC-MS/MS, capable of detecting HA at very low levels and successfully applied it to analyze HA levels in mouse tissues, showing significant changes in response to liver injury.
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Evidence-based obstetric guidance in the setting of a global intravenous fluid shortage.

Am J Obstet Gynecol MFM

December 2024

Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Division of Maternal Fetal Medicine, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC (Heerboth, Trawick, Coviello, and Quist-Nelson).

Intravenous fluid (IVF) administration is a ubiquitous medical intervention. Although there are clear benefits to IVF in certain obstetric scenarios, IVF is often given in unindicated circumstances; the ongoing IVF shortage highlights an opportunity to reduce unindicated IVF in obstetrics. This document provides evidence-based recommendations to reduce IVF use within general obstetric practice.

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The heterotrimeric protein phosphatase 2A (PP2A) complex catalyzes about half of Ser/Thr dephosphorylations in eukaryotic cells. A CAG repeat expansion in the neuron-specific protein PP2A regulatory subunit PPP2R2B gene causes spinocerebellar ataxia type 12 (SCA12). We established five monoallelic missense variants in PPP2R2B (four confirmed as de novo) as a cause of intellectual disability with developmental delay (R149P, T246K, N310K, E37K, I427T).

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The PRIMED Consortium: Reducing disparities in polygenic risk assessment.

Am J Hum Genet

December 2024

Center for Genomic Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA; Programs in Metabolism and Medical & Population Genetics, Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA.

Article Synopsis
  • Polygenic risk scores (PRSs) could enhance disease risk prediction, but their current effectiveness is compromised for non-European populations, creating potential health disparities.
  • The PRIMED Consortium aims to improve PRS performance by aggregating diverse genetic data on a cloud platform and evaluating ethical implications related to its implementation.
  • Focused on cardiometabolic diseases and cancer, PRIMED seeks to promote equity in polygenic risk assessment through collaboration across multiple research sites and organizations.
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Background: Traumatic stress is associated with high rates of problematic alcohol use, but how the persistent effects of trauma impact sensitivity to alcohol remain unknown. This study examined the persistent effects of traumatic stress exposure on sensitivity to alcohol and underlying neurobiological mechanisms in rats.

Methods: Male (N=98) and female (N=98) Long-Evans rats were exposed to the predator odor TMT, and two weeks later, molecular, neuronal, and behavioral sensitivity to alcohol were assessed.

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Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is notoriously difficult to treat due to the lack of targetable receptors and sometimes poor response to chemotherapy. The transforming growth factor beta (TGFβ) family of proteins and their receptors (TGFRs) are highly expressed in TNBC and implicated in chemotherapy-induced cancer stemness. Here, we evaluated combination treatments using experimental TGFR inhibitors (TGFβi), SB525334 (SB), and LY2109761 (LY) with paclitaxel (PTX) chemotherapy.

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An ideal tumor-specific immunomodulatory therapy should both preferentially target the tumor, while simultaneously reduce the immunosuppressive environment within the tumor. This guiding principle led us to explore engineering Siglec-15 (S15) targeted bispecific antibody (bsAb) to enhance therapy against triple negative breast cancer (TNBC). S15 appears to be exclusively expressed on macrophages and diverse tumor cells, including human and mouse 4T1 TNBC.

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Mesenchymal stem cell (MSC)-derived extracellular vesicles (EVs) are a promising treatment for myocardial infarction (MI), but their therapeutic efficacy is limited by inefficient accumulation at the target site. A minimally invasive MSC EV therapy that enhances EV accumulation at the disease site and extends EV retention could significantly improve post-infarct cardiac regeneration. Here, we show that EVs decorated with the next-generation of high-affinity (HiA) heterodimerizing leucine zippers, termed HiA Zippersomes, amplify targetable surface areas through in situ crosslinking and exhibited ~7-fold enhanced accumulation within the infarcted myocardium in mice after 3 days and continued to be retained up to Day 21, surpassing the performance of unmodified EVs.

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Purpose: Toxicities associated with stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) are important when considering treatment and supportive management for patients with brain metastases. We herein assessed the association between brain metastasis location and risk of toxicity after SRS.

Methods: We conducted a retrospective institutional review of patients treated with SRS for brain metastases between 2008 and 2023.

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Interleukin-12 decorated nanosized semiflexible Immunofilaments enable directed targeting and augmented IFNγ responses of natural killer cells.

Acta Biomater

January 2025

Department of Medical BioSciences, Radboudumc, Geert Grooteplein 26, Nijmegen, GA 6525, the Netherlands; Division of Immunotherapy, Oncode Institute, Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, GA 6525, Netherlands. Electronic address:

Immunotherapies are a powerful strategy to treat cancer by modulating the immune system to raise an anti-tumor immune response. A prime example of immunotherapies are cytokines - small immunomodulatory molecules that are widely used to stimulate immune cells. Undirected administration of cytokines, however, can cause severe side effects, preventing the use of potent cytokines, such as Interleukin (IL)-12, which induces IFNγ responses by cytotoxic effector lymphocytes, including NK cells.

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Background: In the United States (US), transgender women of color experience cyclical, interlocking systems of structural and institutional oppression rooted in racism and transphobia, which fuel economic vulnerability. Together, cycles of intersecting racism, transphobia, and economic vulnerability create conditions that give rise to extreme HIV inequities among transgender women of color. Microeconomic interventions - designed to improve financial standing by increasing income generation and access to financial resources through entrepreneurship, cash transfers, and training - have the potential to address structural factors underlying HIV inequities.

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