UW Neurological Surgery Recent PubMed Publications

Glaucoma is a leading cause of blindness. Current glaucoma medications work by lowering intraocular pressure (IOP), a risk factor for glaucoma, but most treatments do not directly target the pathological changes leading to increased IOP, which can manifest as medication resistance as disease progresses. To identify physiological modulators of IOP, we performed genome- and exome-wide association analysis in >129,000 individuals with IOP measurements and extended these findings to an analysis of...

OBJECTIVE: Emerging SARS-COV-2 variants are spurring the development of adapted vaccines as public health authorities plan for fall vaccinations. This study estimated the number of infections and hospitalizations prevented by three potential booster strategies for adults (≥18 years) in the United States: boosting with either Moderna's (1) licensed first generation monovalent vaccine mRNA-1273 (ancestral strain) or (2) candidate bivalent vaccine mRNA-1273.214 (ancestral + BA.1 variant of concern...

Background and objective Athletics is the leading cause of pediatric concussion, and depression is a major comorbidity associated with concussion in the pediatric population. Prior studies have described the risk of depression after concussion in high school-, collegiate-, and elite-level athletes, but there is scarce data on younger athletes. Interpretation of existing research on the association of depression with concussions in youth athletes is complicated by diverse study designs, varying...

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Scalp pseudoaneurysms occur most commonly because of trauma and are often in the superficial temporal artery due to the lack of soft tissue coverage between skin and bone, making it more vulnerable anatomically.¹^(,)² Pseudoaneurysms of the occipital artery (OA) also occur but are extremely rare.^(2-4) An 80-year-old man presented with scalp bleeding and a small left-sided posterior scalp laceration after a fall and head strike 10 days prior. He was admitted and during his 2-week hospital stay,...

CONCLUSIONS: Most vascular surgery program and associate PDs were dissatisfied with USMLE step 1 going pass/fail with most indicating prescreening applicants using both step 1 and step 2 clinical knowledge (CK) during the residency and fellowship selection processes. In the absence of a scored step 1, the top factors for interviewing and ranking integrated vascular surgery residency and fellowship candidates included letters of recommendation, dedication to specialty, research, USMLE step 2 CK,...

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The hallmark of severe COVID-19 involves systemic cytokine storm and multi-organ failure including testicular injury and germ cell depletion. The ACE2 receptor is also expressed in the resident testicular cells however, SARS-CoV-2 infection and mechanisms of testicular injury are not fully understood. The testicular injury can likely result either from direct virus infection of resident cells or by exposure to systemic inflammatory mediators or virus antigens. We here characterized SARS-CoV-2...

Excess death estimates have great value in public health, but they can be sensitive to analytical choices. Here we propose a multiverse analysis approach that considers all possible different time periods for defining the reference baseline and a range of 1 to 4 years for the projected time period for which excess deaths are calculated. We used data from the Human Mortality Database on 33 countries with detailed age-stratified death information on an annual basis during the period 2009-2021. The...

The Circle of Willis is a redundant network of blood vessels that perfuses the brain. The ring-like anatomy mitigates the negative effects of stroke by activating collateral pathways that help maintain physiological perfusion. Previous studies have investigated the activation of these pathways during embolic stroke and internal carotid artery occlusion. However, the role of collateral pathways during cerebral vasospasm - an involuntary constriction of blood vessels after subarachnoid hemorrhage...

KRAS is the most commonly mutated oncogene in human cancers with limited therapeutic options, thus there is a critical need to identify novel targets and inhibiting agents. The 78-kDa glucose-regulated protein GRP78, which is upregulated in KRAS cancers, is an essential chaperone and the master regulator of the unfolded protein response (UPR). Following up on our recent discoveries that GRP78 haploinsufficiency suppresses both KRAS^(G12D)-driven pancreatic and lung tumorigenesis, we seek to...

CONCLUSIONS: These results provide neuroimaging evidence of WM microstructural differences underpinning mTBI phenotypes identified from neuropsychological assessments and show differing longitudinal trajectories of these biological effects. These findings suggest diffusion MRI can provide short- and long-term imaging biomarkers of resilience.

CONCLUSIONS: Patients with LS exhibited significantly more sleep-related cardiorespiratory disturbances and sleep fragmentation when compared with neurotypical children with OSA. Given that these findings are plausibly detrimental to health and development, sleep evaluation in patients with similar conditions should be encouraged for early management.

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CONCLUSIONS: In a large cohort of patients undergoing elective neuroendovascular intervention, no patients were identified for whom routine postprocedural CTH alone meaningfully altered their clinical care. Routine CTH is not necessary after uncomplicated elective neuroendovascular interventions performed with careful postprocedural neurological assessment.

Recent studies suggest that ultra-high dose rates of proton radiation (>40 Gy/s; FLASH) confer less toxicity to exposed healthy tissue and reduce cognitive decline compared with conventional radiation dose rates (~1 Gy/s), but further preclinical data are required to demonstrate this sparing effect. In this study, postnatal day 11 (P11) rats were treated with whole brain irradiation with protons at a total dose of 0, 5, or 8 Gy, comparing a conventional dose rate of 1 Gy/s vs. a FLASH dose rate...

Clinical significance of increased clopidogrel response measured by VerifyNow P2Y12 assay is unclear; management guidelines are lacking in the context of neuroendovascular intervention. Our objective was to assess whether increased clopidogrel response predicts complications from endovascular aneurysm treatment requiring dual antiplatelet therapy. A single-institution, 9-year retrospective study of patients undergoing endovascular treatments for ruptured and unruptured aneurysms requiring...

CONCLUSIONS: Individual-level social risk factors are associated with increased risk for unplanned hospital readmissions, post-discharge ED visits, and extended LOS. While individual-level social risk factors are currently documented on an ad-hoc basis in EHRs, standardized SDoH screening tools using validated metrics could help eliminate bias in the collection of SDoH data and facilitate social risk screening.

Prospective economic evaluations conducted alongside clinical trials have become an increasingly popular approach in evaluating the cost-effectiveness of a public health initiative or treatment intervention. These types of economic studies provide improved internal validity and accuracy of cost and effectiveness estimates of health interventions and have the advantage of jointly observing health and economics outcomes of trial participants compared to simulation or decision-analytic models....