78 results match your criteria: "the University of Texas McGovern Medical School at Houston[Affiliation]"

Serum metabolome profiling in patients with mild cognitive impairment reveals sex differences in lipid metabolism.

Neurobiol Dis

November 2024

Department of Neurology, the University of Texas McGovern Medical School at Houston, TX, USA; The University of Texas Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Houston, TX, USA; UTHealth Consortium on Aging, the University of Texas McGovern Medical School, Houston, TX, USA. Electronic address:

Article Synopsis
  • Alzheimer's disease (AD) is more prevalent in women than in men, with factors beyond longevity, like metabolic changes, influencing this increased risk.
  • A study conducted metabolomic profiling of blood samples from male and female patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), revealing significant metabolic differences related to sex, particularly in lipid and peptide energy metabolism pathways.
  • The research identified specific metabolites unique to each sex, such as higher levels of 1-palmitoleoyl glycerol in females, suggesting these could be potential biomarkers to enhance our understanding of MCI and AD prevention strategies.
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Small molecule-based regulation of gene expression in human astrocytes switching on and off the G-quadruplex control systems.

J Biol Chem

November 2024

The Department of Neurology, The University of Texas McGovern Medical School at Houston, Houston, Texas, USA; The University of Texas Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Houston, Texas, USA; UTHealth Consortium on Aging, The University of Texas McGovern Medical School, Houston, Texas, USA. Electronic address:

A great deal of attention is being paid to strategies seeking to uncover the biology of the four-stranded nucleic acid structure G-quadruplex (G4) via their stabilization in cells with G4-specific ligands. The conventional definition of chemical biology implies that a complete assessment of G4 biology can only be achieved by implementing a complementary approach involving the destabilization of cellular G4s by ad hoc molecular effectors. We report here on an unprecedented comparison of the cellular consequences of G4 chemical stabilization by pyridostatin (PDS) and destabilization by phenylpyrrolocytosine (PhpC) at both transcriptome- and proteome-wide scales in patient-derived primary human astrocytes.

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Alzheimer's disease (AD) affects more women than men. Although women live longer than men, it is not longevity alone, but other factors, including metabolic changes, that contribute to the higher risk of AD in women. Metabolic pathways have been implicated in AD progression, but studies to date examined targeted pathways, leaving many metabolites unmeasured.

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Unlabelled: Normative values for intracardiac and extracardiac vascular structures help in understanding normal growth and changes over time in children; this normative data is not currently available for ECG-gated computed tomography angiography (CTA). We sought to establish ECG-gated CTA-derived normative values for the aortic root, aorta, and aortic arch in children. Aortic root, ascending aorta, aortic arch, and descending aorta were measured in systole and diastole in 100 subjects who had ECG-gated CTA at our center between January 2015 and December 2020 and met our inclusion criteria.

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Purpose: Normative values for intracardiac and extracardiac vascular structures help in understanding normal growth and changes over time in children; this normative data are not currently available for ECG-gated Computed Tomography Angiography (CTA). We sought to establish ECG-gated CTA derived normative values for the aortic root, aorta and aortic arch in children.

Methods And Results: Aortic root, ascending aorta, aortic arch, and descending aorta were measured in systole and diastole in 100 subjects who had ECG-gated CTA at our center between January 2015 through December 2020 and met our inclusion criteria.

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Patients with cardiovascular diseases who experience disease-related short-term events, such as hospitalizations, often exhibit diverse long-term survival outcomes compared to others. In this study, we aim to improve the prediction of long-term survival probability by incorporating two short-term events using a flexible varying coefficient landmark model. Our objective is to predict the long-term survival among patients who survived up to a pre-specified landmark time since the initial admission.

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Article Synopsis
  • - Macroautophagy is a complex process that can lead to cell death, influenced by various cell types and stressors, while ferroptosis is a specific kind of cell death related to lipid damage and iron dependency.
  • - Certain types of autophagy, like ferritinophagy and lipophagy, play a role in triggering ferroptotic cell death by degrading protective proteins, whereas others, such as reticulophagy, help protect cells from this damage.
  • - The review seeks to clarify the relationship between autophagy and ferroptosis, focusing on defining terms, outlining key components, discussing experimental techniques, and providing interpretation guidelines for ongoing research.
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Objectives: This study aimed to identify predictors associated with the tooth loss phenotype in a large periodontitis patient cohort in the university setting.

Methods: Information on periodontitis patients and nineteen factors identified at the initial visit was extracted from electronic health records. The primary outcome is tooth loss phenotype (presence or absence of tooth loss).

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In multivariate recurrent event data, each patient may repeatedly experience more than one type of event. Analysis of such data gets further complicated by the time-varying dependence structure among different types of recurrent events. The available literature regarding the joint modeling of multivariate recurrent events assumes a constant dependency over time, which is strict and often violated in practice.

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Non-invasive cardiac imaging like echocardiogram, cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (CMR), and computed tomography angiography (CTA) play a key role in the diagnosis, aid in management and follow-up of congenital heart disease patients. Normative data for intracardiac and extracardiac vascular structures in children are currently available for echocardiogram, CMR, and non-gated CTA. We sought to establish systolic and diastolic normative data for main and branch pulmonary arteries in children using electrocardiogram (ECG)-gated CTA.

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Acute pain management after trauma: What you need to know.

J Trauma Acute Care Surg

April 2024

From the Department of Surgery and Center for Translational Injury Research, The University of Texas McGovern Medical School at Houston, Houston, Texas.

Effective acute pain control is mandatory after injury. Opioids continue to be a pillar acute pain management of strategies despite not being as effective as some nonnarcotic alternatives. An acute pain management strategy after trauma should be thoughtful, effective, and responsible.

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Article Synopsis
  • Continuous tobacco use in cancer patients leads to higher healthcare costs and complications, while quitting smoking improves treatment outcomes and reduces costs.
  • A study at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center found that patients who quit smoking through the Tobacco Research and Treatment Program saved an average of $1,095 in healthcare costs over three months.
  • The findings suggest that implementing smoking cessation programs can enhance patient health and create economic efficiencies within the healthcare system, highlighting their importance in cancer prevention strategies.
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Pulmonary manifestations of amyloidosis.

Respir Med

November 2023

Department of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine, McGovern School of Medicine, University of Texas McGovern Medical School, Houston, TX, USA.

Amyloidosis is caused by abnormal protein deposition in various tissues, including the lungs. Pulmonary manifestations of amyloidosis may be categorized by areas of involvement, such as parenchymal, large airway and pleural involvement. We describe four distinct manifestations of amyloidosis involving the lung and review their clinical, radiological and pathological features and summarize the evidence for treatment in each of these presentations.

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Background: Stroke is a major cause of morbidity and mortality, and its incidence increases with age. While acute therapies for stroke are currently limited to intravenous thrombolytics and endovascular thrombectomy, recent studies have implicated an important role for the gut microbiome in post-stroke neuroinflammation. After stroke, several immuno-regulatory pathways, including the aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AHR) pathway, become activated.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study investigates how spinopelvic parameters and global spine morphology affect fracture location, fracture type, and neurological outcomes in patients with thoracolumbar trauma.
  • After reviewing 2,896 patients, 514 were selected based on specific criteria; data such as age, injury mechanism, and body type were collected, differentiating between high pelvic incidence (PI) and low PI patients.
  • Results revealed that high PI patients had fewer lower lumbar spine fractures than low PI patients, with fall from height being a major cause of neurological deficits, especially among those with certain types of injuries.
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Erythrocyte ENT1-AMPD3 Axis is an Essential Purinergic Hypoxia Sensor and Energy Regulator Combating CKD in a Mouse Model.

J Am Soc Nephrol

October 2023

National Medical Metabolomics International Collaborative Research Center, Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan, China.

Significance Statement: Hypoxia drives kidney damage and progression of CKD. Although erythrocytes respond rapidly to hypoxia, their role and the specific molecules sensing and responding to hypoxia in CKD remain unclear. In this study, we demonstrated in a mouse model that erythrocyte ENT1-AMPD3 is a master energy regulator of the intracellular purinergic hypoxic compensatory response that promotes rapid energy supply from extracellular adenosine, eAMPK-dependent metabolic reprogramming, and O 2 delivery, which combat renal hypoxia and progression of CKD.

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Tissue transglutaminase: a multifunctional and multisite regulator in health and disease.

Physiol Rev

January 2024

National Medical Metabolomics International Collaborative Research Center, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan, People's Republic of China.

Tissue transglutaminase (TG2) is a widely distributed multifunctional protein involved in a broad range of cellular and metabolic functions carried out in a variety of cellular compartments. In addition to transamidation, TG2 also functions as a Gα signaling protein, a protein disulfide isomerase (PDI), a protein kinase, and a scaffolding protein. In the nucleus, TG2 modifies histones and transcription factors.

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Pirh2-dependent DNA damage in neurons induced by the G-quadruplex ligand pyridostatin.

J Biol Chem

October 2023

Department of Neurology, The University of Texas McGovern Medical School, Houston, Texas, USA; The University of Texas Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Houston, Texas, USA; UTHealth Consortium on Aging, The University of Texas McGovern Medical School, Houston, Texas, USA. Electronic address:

Article Synopsis
  • The study focuses on the role of G-quadruplex (G4) DNA structures, formed by noncanonical base pairing among guanines, and their impact on gene expression in neurons.
  • Researchers used a ligand called pyridostatin (PDS) to stabilize G4 structures, which led to the discovery of 901 differentially expressed genes in neurons, affecting crucial processes like p53 signaling and memory functions.
  • The findings highlight a new mechanism involving the E3 ubiquitin ligase Pirh2, which is linked to DNA damage responses and increased G4-DNA levels, suggesting that G4 stabilization may influence both gene regulation and DNA integrity in neurons.
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Background: TERT gene amplification (TGA) is a mechanism of telomerase reverse transcriptase (TERT) upregulation frequently utilized by acral melanomas (AMs). Currently, the utility of TERT immunohistochemistry (IHC) to predict TGA status in AMs is poorly documented.

Methods: AMs (26 primary and 3 metastatic) and non-acral cutaneous melanomas (6 primary) were subjected to immunohistochemical analysis using anti-TERT antibody to demonstrate protein expression and fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) to assess genomic copy number alteration.

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Article Synopsis
  • * Significant progress has been made in understanding AD's mechanisms, focusing on factors like amyloid deposition, tau hyperphosphorylation, synaptic dysfunction, and oxidative stress.
  • * The review highlights the importance of G-quadruplexes (G4s) in DNA and RNA processes, suggesting that their imbalance may play a critical role in aging and the development of Alzheimer's disease.
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Background: This study aimed to identify predictors associated with tooth loss in a large periodontitis patient cohort in the university setting using the machine learning approach.

Methods: Information on periodontitis patients and 18 factors identified at the initial visit was extracted from electronic health records. A two-step machine learning pipeline was proposed to develop the tooth loss prediction model.

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Venous thromboembolism (VTE) is a common complication in hospitalized patients. Pharmacologic prophylaxis is used in order to reduce the risk of VTE events. The main purpose of this study is to compare the prevalence of deep vein thrombosis (DVT) and pulmonary embolism (PE) in patients admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) who received unfractionated heparin (UFH) versus enoxaparin as VTE prophylaxis.

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Surfactant protein a attenuates generalized and localized neuroinflammation in neonatal mice.

Brain Res

May 2023

Division of Neonatology, Department of Pediatrics, McGovern Medical School, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Houston, TX 77030, USA; Pediatric Research Center, Department of Pediatrics, McGovern Medical School, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Houston, TX 77030, USA. Electronic address:

Surfactant protein A (SP-A) has important roles in innate immunity and modulation of pulmonary and extrapulmonary inflammation. Given SP-A has been detected in rat and human brain, we sought to determine if SP-A has a role in modulating inflammation in the neonatal mouse brain. Neonatal wildtype (WT) and SP-A-deficient (SP-A) mice were subjected to three models of brain inflammation: systemic sepsis, intraventricular hemorrhage (IVH) and hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (HIE).

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