Recent UMass Chan Publications

Safety-net emergency departments (EDs) are a critical component of the US health care system, delivering emergency care for patients in need, including vulnerable populations. EDs provide unscheduled acute care for patients 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, regardless of a person's ability to pay. In addition, EDs have transformed beyond their traditional roles of providing emergency services and bei...

With generative artificial intelligence demonstrating potential in dermatologic education, assessment of skin tone diversity is imperative to ensure comprehensive patient care. Evaluating DALL-E3, Midjourney, and DreamStudio Beta, we generated five images for eight common dermatologic conditions designated by the American Academy of Dermatology. The Massey-Martin Skin Color Scale was used to evalu...

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Congenital cytomegalovirus (cCMV) is the leading infectious cause of neonatal neurological impairment worldwide, but the viral factors enabling vertical spread across the placenta remain undetermined. The pentameric complex (PC), composed of the subunits gH/gL/UL128/UL130/UL131A, has been demonstrated to be important for entry into nonfibroblast cells in vitro. These findings link the PC to broad ...

Zika virus (ZIKV) poses a significant threat due to its association with severe neurological complications, particularly during pregnancy. Although viruses exhibit tropism for neural cells, including astrocytes, the role of these cells in controlling ZIKV replication remains unclear. In this study, we demonstrated that ZIKV induces caspase-1 activation in primary astrocytes despite the absence of ...

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CONCLUSIONS: Despite considering context in the design and piloting of two implementation strategies, success was limited. Future success will require including the perspectives of those with lived experience to inform processes to identify eligible individuals without creating additional stigma or furthering distrust among those who may be ineligible.

The synthesis of bioactive oxazoles is often inefficient, and the reported methods remain largely unexplored for complex derivatives. To circumvent this issue, we have utilized a metal-free, photomediated [3 + 2] cycloaddition reaction between diazo compounds and nitriles, leading to a step- and reagent-economical synthesis of bioactive oxazoles. These exciting developments guided us in the effici...

Koala retrovirus-A (KoRV-A) is spreading through wild koalas in a north-to-south wave while transducing the germ line, modifying the inherited genome as it transitions to an endogenous retrovirus. Previously, we found that KoRV-A is expressed in the germ line, but unspliced genomic transcripts are processed into sense-strand PIWI-interacting RNAs (piRNAs), which may provide an initial "innate" for...

CONCLUSIONS: For patients with OUD using IMF, shared decision-making is an acceptable approach to buprenorphine initiation in the outpatient setting. It can enhance patient autonomy and lead to an individualized approach to OUD care.

Patient presentations to the emergency department for mental health evaluations are common, with an estimated 1 in 4 adult visits made for this reason. These presentations are often accompanied by vague symptomatology, which may make it difficult to determine if they are because of another medical condition. Previous evaluations may bias future presentations, leading to premature closure before co...

Machine learning (ML) has the potential to revolutionize healthcare, allowing healthcare providers to improve patient-care planning, resource planning and utilization. Furthermore, identifying key-risk-factors and interaction-effects can help service-providers and decision-makers to institute better policies and procedures. This study used COVID-19 electronic health record (EHR) data to predict fi...

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common heart rhythm abnormality and is a leading cause of heart failure and stroke. This large-scale meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies increased the power to detect single-nucleotide variant associations and found more than 350 AF-associated genetic loci. We identified candidate genes related to muscle contractility, cardiac muscle development an...

CONCLUSIONS: ENT during MT for MeVO stroke occurs infrequently and does not significantly affect the clinical outcomes. These findings suggest ENT risk should not deter clinicians from performing MT in patients with MeVO. Further prospective studies are needed to validate these results.

Representation of professionals from populations affected by health disparities is crucial for equality in healthcare practice and research. Undergraduate research programs focused on health disparities can deeply impact students' self-efficacy, interest, and persistence in health and research-focused careers. In this study, we designed, implemented, and evaluated a novel summer undergraduate rese...

Genetic suppression occurs when the phenotypic defects caused by a deleterious mutation are rescued by another mutation. Suppression interactions are of particular interest for genetic diseases, as they identify ways to reduce disease severity, thereby potentially highlighting avenues for therapeutic intervention. To what extent suppression interactions are influenced by the genetic background in ...

The study is part of investigations on relationships between water content, structure, and rates of chemical reactions in amorphous systems. This paper reports Asn deamidation of a hexapeptide in an amorphous liquid matrix, glycerol with water concentration of 1 to 30 wt%, at 50 °C. Using an amorphous liquid system allows focusing on the chemical and structural features of water effects, by minimi...

During mammalian reproduction, sperm are delivered to the female reproductive tract bathed in a complex medium known as seminal fluid, which plays key roles in signaling to the female reproductive tract and in nourishing sperm for their onwards journey. Along with minor contributions from the prostate and the epididymis, the majority of seminal fluid is produced by a somewhat understudied organ kn...

Each year, more than 100,000 Americans die from an overdose. Most of these deaths are attributed to high-potency opioids, including fentanyl. People who use drugs face multiple barriers to treatment including access, knowledge of options, and adverse medical experiences. In 2022, Worcester County, Massachusetts saw a sharp increase in overdose deaths. In response, our team, based in Central Massac...

CONCLUSION: Residential segregation is associated with greater air pollution exposure, which is in turn associated with variability in hippocampal features among recent trauma survivors. Further research is needed to assess relationships between other environmental factors and trauma and stress-related disorders.

Human longevity is a sex-biased process in which sex chromosomes and sex-specific immunity may play a crucial role in the health and lifespan disparities between men and women. Generally, women have a higher life expectancy than men, exhibiting lower infection rates for a broad range of pathogens, which results in a higher prevalence of female centenarians compared to males. Investigation of the i...

Antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs) have emerged as a powerful class of therapeutics capable of suppressing gene expression with remarkable specificity. However, the clinical applications of ASOs have been limited by delivery challenges and toxicities, particularly when repeated or high dosing is required. In the study by Tsuboi et al., the authors present serinol nucleic acid (SNA)-modified gapmer ...

A 46-y-old male was swimming in the Connecticut River near Hatfield, Massachusetts, when he suffered an unprovoked attack from a North American beaver (Castor canadensis). The beaver attacked the man 3 separate times, inflicting multiple bite wounds to his arms and torso, ultimately attaching itself to his arm without releasing. The patient was brought to our emergency department, where the wounds...

Prior studies have investigated the association between vitiligo and sensorineural hearing loss in adults; based on this potential association, we aimed to investigate the association of vitiligo with hearing loss in children. This was conducted as an IRB-approved multi-center retrospective analysis of pure tone audiometry and otoacoustic emission testing of 158 pediatric vitiligo patients compare...

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INTRODUCTION: Integrating patient navigation (PN) interventions in hepatitis C virus (HCV) elimination efforts enhances HCV treatment cascade outcomes from screening to cure. Nonetheless, little is known about how the patient-navigator working alliance influences the effectiveness of PN interventions. This study among persons who inject drugs (PWID) living with HCV aimed to assess the association ...

Managing acute pain in the Emergency Department (ED) is one of the primary roles of an Emergency Physician (EP), but the constraints of using opiate sparing medications provide an additional challenge for EPs to circumnavigate. In an effort to avoid opioids, many EPs have turned to ultrasound-guided nerve blocks (UGNBs), which have demonstrated outstanding analgesia, in addition to a strong safety...

The increased risk for psychosocial burden and suicidality in people with epilepsy compared to the general population is a well-established global public health concern. Suicidality risk is also increased in patients with functional seizures. The timely identification of patients at highest risk for psychosocial burden and self-harm is vital. This can pose a significant challenge for multidiscipli...