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Social determinants of health (SDH) are the external conditions in which a child and his or her family live, work, learn, and play that can impact quality of health. The impact of SDH is often negative when a child is living in poverty. We utilized the HealthBegins Upstream Risks Screening Tool to evaluate children and families attending a low-income clinic in Southern Ohio/Northern Kentucky. Results were used to connect the children and their families to local community resources to address the SDH areas of greatest need. Population data on these children and their families informed the screening process and reinforced the need for this non-clinical, social service. Undergraduate and graduate students were effective in obtaining information to address SDH in the primary care setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT The objective of this study was to understand the effect of pre-repair rotator cuff chronicity on post-repair healing outcomes using a chronic and acute multi-tendon rat rotator cuff injury model. Full-thickness dual tendon injuries (supra- and infraspinatus) were created unilaterally in adult male Sprague Dawley rats, and left chronically detached for 8 or 16 weeks. After chronic detachment, tears were repaired and acute dual tendon injuries were created and immediately repaired on contralateral shoulders. Tissue level outcomes for bone, tendon, and muscle were assessed 4 or 8 weeks after repair using histology, microcomputed tomography, biomechanical testing, and biochemical assays. Substantial gap formation was seen in 35% of acute repairs and 44% of chronic repairs. Gap formation negatively correlated with mechanical and structural outcomes for both healing time points regardless of injury duration. Bone and histomorphometry, as well as biomechanics, were similar between acute and chronic injury and repair regardless of chronicity and duration of healing. This study was the first to implement a multi-tendon rotator cuff injury with surgical repair following both chronic and acute injuries. Massive tear in a rodent model resulted in gap formation regardless of injury duration which had detrimental effects on repair outcomes. © 2013 Orthopaedic Research Society. Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Orthop Res 32:439-447, 2014. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Metabolic oligosaccharide engineering (MOE) is a maturing technology capable of modifying cell surface sugars in living cells and animals through the biosynthetic installation of non-natural monosaccharides into the glycocalyx. A particularly robust area of investigation involves the incorporation of azide functional groups onto the cell surface, which can then be further derivatized using 'click chemistry.' While considerable effort has gone into optimizing the reagents used for the azide ligation reactions, less optimization of the monosaccharide analogs used in the preceding metabolic incorporation steps has been done. This study fills this void by reporting novel butanoylated ManNAc analogs that are used by cells with greater efficiency and less cytotoxicity than the current 'gold standard,' which are peracetylated compounds such as Ac4ManNAz. In particular, tributanoylated, N-acetyl, N-azido, and N-levulinoyl ManNAc analogs with the high flux 1,3,4- O-hydroxyl pattern of butanoylation were compared with their counterparts having the pro-apoptotic 3,4,6- O-butanoylation pattern. The results reveal that the ketone-bearing N-levulinoyl analog 3,4,6- O-Bu3ManNLev is highly apoptotic, and thus is a promising anti-cancer drug candidate. By contrast, the azide-bearing analog 1,3,4- O-Bu3ManNAz effectively labeled cellular sialoglycans at concentrations ∼3- to 5-fold lower (e.g., at 12.5-25 µM) than Ac4ManNAz (50-150 µM) and exhibited no indications of apoptosis even at concentrations up to 400 µM. In summary, this work extends emerging structure activity relationships that predict the effects of short chain fatty acid modified monosaccharides on mammalian cells and also provides a tangible advance in efforts to make MOE a practical technology for the medical and biotechnology communities. Biotechnol. Bioeng. 2012; 109:992-1006. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to compare the diagnostic performance of diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) and dynamic contrast-enhanced (DCE) imaging for prostate cancer (PCa) detection by performing a meta-analysis of studies evaluating these techniques within the same patient cohort., Methods: Evidence-based online databases were searched for studies reporting the performance of DWI and DCE in PCa detection in the same patient cohorts using histopathology as reference standard and providing sufficient data to construct 2 × 2 contingency tables. Pooled estimates of diagnostic performance were computed across included studies., Results: Of 80 initial studies identified, 5 studies (total of 265 patients and 1730 prostatic regions) met criteria for inclusion in the meta-analysis. Pooled sensitivity was 58.4% (95% confidence interval [CI], 53.5%-63.1%) for DWI and 55.3% (95% CI, 50.4%-60.1%) for DCE. Pooled specificity was 89.0% (95% CI, 87.2%-0.7%) for DWI and 87.9% (95% CI, 86.0%-89.6%) for DCE. At summary receiver-operating-characteristic analysis, area-under-the-curve was 0.810 (0.059) for DWI and 0.786 (0.079) for DCE. Heterogeneity across studies was high for sensitivity and specificity [inconsistency index (I), >90%], although heterogeneity of specificity was substantially improved after excluding an outlier study in terms of diagnostic threshold (I = 0.0%-68.8%). Relative performance of DWI and DCE remained similar after this exclusion, Conclusions: There was a paucity of studies comparing DWI and DCE in the same patient cohorts, and heterogeneity among these studies was substantial. Nevertheless, performance of DWI and DCE was similar across identified studies, with both techniques showing substantially better specificity than sensitivity. Larger studies with uniform methodology are warranted to further understand relative merits of the 2 techniques.