Recent UMass Chan Publications

The thymus is the primary site of T cell development, central to the establishment of self-tolerance and adaptive immune function. In mammals, the thymus undergoes age-related involution, resulting in a global decline in immune function. The thymus has some regenerative ability that relies on pre-existing thymic remnants but is insufficient to prevent involution. Here, we show that the juvenile ax...

Hypertensive disorders of pregnancy (HDP) are a leading cause of maternal and infant mortality and morbidity worldwide. This prospective cohort study investigated the association of racial and ethnic disparities in HDP and explored the potential mediation effect of environmental chemical exposures on excess HDP risk among non-Hispanic Black pregnant people. A total of 3,279 pregnant people were in...

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The Functional Annotation of Variants Online Resource (FAVOR), http://favor.genohub.org, is a whole genome variant annotation database and portal that provides comprehensive variant functional annotations of all possible variants across the genome. It can facilitate the analysis of whole-genome sequencing studies, support the interpretation of variant functional impacts, and help prioritize causal...

Cholangiocarcinoma (CCA) is a liver cancer subtype with poor survival rates. KRAS mutations are found in 15-40% of CCA, representing a new potential treatment target. Whether KRAS inhibition leads to CCA tumor regression is unknown, partly due to the lack of conditional animal models. A conditional TRE.Kras^(G12D)/Trp53 knock-out (TKP) CCA mouse model is engineered using the transposon system and ...

CONCLUSION: We recommend developing and refining a biopsychosocial outcome measurement tool that addresses unique aspects of IGMV. These findings contribute to a growing consensus on how to measure actionable, patient-centered data on biopsychosocial interventions for chronic pain.

The Woven EndoBridge (WEB) device treats wide-necked bifurcation aneurysms, but occlusion rates vary. This study aims to identify factors associated with immediate WEB device occlusion. Data from patients treated with WEB devices across 36 sites were analyzed. Machine learning algorithms and ordinal regression models were developed to predict immediate incomplete occlusion for ruptured and unruptu...

Acute lymphadenopathy has a wide range of possible etiologies, ranging from self-limiting viral infections to life-threatening malignancy. Point of care ultrasound (POCUS) can play a crucial role in identifying lymphadenopathy and ruling out other potential causes of soft tissue swelling, such as hernias, abscesses, and malignancies. Furthermore, POCUS enables the characterization of lymphadenopat...

OBJECTIVE: Identifying social determinants of mental health (SDOMH) in patients with opioid use disorder (OUD) is crucial for estimating risk and enabling early intervention. Extracting such data from unstructured clinical notes is challenging due to annotation complexity and requires advanced natural language processing (NLP) techniques. We propose the Human-in-the-Loop Large Language Model Inter...

CONCLUSIONS: Since ER after EVAR and FEVAR proved to be a marker of increase risk for 5-year reintervention and rupture, these patients have a uniquely high-risk phenotype that warrants vigilant surveillance and underscores the need for rigorous preoperative risk stratification and planning. Understanding factors associated with ER allows healthcare professionals to identify high-risk patients, le...

CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest the colour scheme of some ONP packaging was designed to indicate the flavour and nicotine concentration. These characteristics may influence consumers' beliefs about ONPs, and appeal to different populations. AI tools can be valuable in the surveillance of those ONP packaging features.

CONCLUSIONS: Bimekizumab treatment resulted in sustained improvements in patient-reported symptoms and their impacts across the full disease spectrum of axSpA over 2 years, underscoring its long-term potential for improving patients' daily lives.

Surgical needles have evolved to optimize tissue approximation while minimizing tissue damage. Needle point geometry is a critical operative factor that impacts surgical dexterity. This study aims to compare the effects of taper point (TP) and reverse cutting (RC) needles on tissue damage and anastomotic bleeding risk across different tissue types and needle diameters.Two experimental models were ...

Adherens junctions (AJs) stabilize cell contacts by coupling adhesion molecules to the cytoskeleton. AJ proteins have been studied extensively in epithelia, but less is known about their roles in other cell types. Here, we describe a role for AJ proteins in C. elegans glia. Previously, we showed that C. elegans glia use the adhesion molecule SAX-7/L1CAM to anchor the dendritic endings of URX and B...

HLA-A*23:23:02 differs from the most closely related allele A*23:23:01 by a single synonymous substitution in exon 3.

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Several risk assessment models (RAMs) guide standardized prophylaxis to prevent venous thromboembolism (VTE) in trauma patients. The Caprini, Trauma Embolic Scoring System (TESS), and Greenfield Risk Assessment Profile (RAP) have been validated individually, but their predictive powers have not been directly compared in the general trauma population. This study evaluated the discriminatory ability...

Coronaviruses include various strains that reside in natural animal reservoirs, with zoonotic transmission posing risks to both domesticated animals and human health. Recent efforts to address coronavirus infections have focused on developing inhibitors targeting the main protease (M^(pro)), some of which exhibit potential broad-spectrum efficacy. This study presents crystal structures of four cli...

CONCLUSIONS: Our results indicate that the improvement of 4D-RMC (MAC) over 4D-RMC (AAC) is marginal in terms of lesion detectability and visual quality, which may be attributed to the simple NCAT phantom simulation, but otherwise suggest that AAC may be sufficient for clinical use. However, further evaluation of the MAC technique using more physiologically realistic digital phantoms that incorpor...

Background/Objectives: BrdU (5'-bromo-2'-deoxyuridine), a synthetic thymidine (T) analog, is widely used to study cell proliferation and DNA synthesis. To precisely identify where and when DNA replication starts and terminates, it is essential to determine the BrdU incorporation rate and sites at a single-nucleotide resolution. Although several deep learning-based methods have been developed for d...

Whether artificial intelligence (AI) analysis of single-lead ECG (1 L ECG) can predict incident AF is unknown. In the VITAL-AF trial (ClinicalTrials.gov NCT03515057, registered 2/24/2021) of primary care patients aged ≥65 years undergoing handheld 1 L ECG screening, we tested three AI approaches to incident AF prediction, and compared the best model to the CHARGE-AF risk score. In a test set of 4,...

Prior work has demonstrated that higher surprisal, a measure quantifying the unexpectedness of a trigger exposure, predicts headache onset over 12 to 24 h. However, these analyses relied on retrospective expectations of trigger exposure formed after extended data collection. To operationalize surprisal prospectively, Bayesian methods could update expectations dynamically over time. The objective o...

The inner membrane domain (IMD) is a metabolically active and laterally discrete membrane domain initially discovered in Mycobacterium smegmatis. The IMD correlates both temporally and spatially with the polar cell envelope elongation in M. smegmatis. Whether or not a similar membrane domain exists in pathogenic species remains unknown. Here, we show that the IMD is a conserved membrane structure ...

CONCLUSIONS: In AIS patients with DMVO and unsuccessful or partial recanalization after MT, IVT did not significantly improve clinical outcomes. Additionally, IVT did not increase the risk of hemorrhagic complications. These findings suggest that while IVT preceding MT is safe in this context, it may not improve outcomes for patients with unsuccessful MT.

Measuring fidelity to the components of the coordinated specialty care (CSC) model is a critical step in understanding the success of first episode of psychosis (FEP) programs. This study assessed the fidelity of nine Massachusetts CSC programs on a well-validated fidelity measure (the FEP Services Fidelity Scale: FEPS-FS 1.1) and a locally adapted measure (the Massachusetts Psychosis Fidelity Sca...

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Cryoelectron tomography (cryo-ET) enables three-dimensional visualization of molecular structures within tissue and intact cells, providing a powerful tool for studying the spatial organization of biological components at nanometer resolution. Realizing this potential, particularly for submegadalton complexes, is facilitated by fiducial-based labeling. Gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) have emerged as po...

Genetic tests for behavioral and personality traits in dogs are now being marketed to pet owners, but their predictive accuracy has not been validated. To evaluate the reliability of such tests, we analyzed data from Darwin's Ark, a community science initiative that includes over 3,000 dogs with both genetic data and individual-level behavioral phenotypes. None of the candidate variants had signif...

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