1,720,962 research outputs found
Reduced placental FOXP3 associated with subsequent infant allergic disease
No full textLetter to the editorSusan L. Prescott, Meri Tulic, Annette Osei Kumah, Tara Richman, Maxine Crook, David Martino, Janet A. Dunstan, Boris Novakovic, Richard Saffery, Vicki L. Clifto
Prenatal programming of the innate immune response following in utero exposure to inflammation: A sexually dimorphic process?
No full textMaternal infection and inflammation are common events during pregnancy. This article documents evidence that suggests such inflammation compromises the development of the fetal innate immune response, in support of an in utero origins hypothesis of neonatal and childhood inflammatory disease. The potential for this response to exhibit sex specificity is also explored, based on evidence of sexually dimorphic placental responses to maternal inflammation.Nicolette A Hodyl, Michael J Stark, Annette Osei-Kumah and Vicki L Clifto
Asthma during pregnancy
No full textAlso has ISBN 9781780840420Asthma is a serious complication that is often under-reported and undermanaged during pregnancy. The current guidelines for the care of pregnant asthmatics are similar to treating a nonpregnant asthmatic It is important to treat asthma exacerbations during pregnancy to avoid a poor outcome for the fetus. The best clinical approach for reducing exacerbation rates during pregnancy and improving the outcome for the fetus is through asthma education combined with an asthma self-management plan administered in a combined antenatal and respiratory clinic.Vicki L. Clifton, Brian Smith, Anil Roy, Annette Osei-Kumah, Nicolette Hodyl, Michael J. Stark, Nayana Parange & Zarqa Sai
Fetal glucocorticoid-regulated pathways are not affected by inhaled corticosteroid use for asthma during pregnancy
No full textRationale: Inhaled corticosteroids (ICS) are currently advised for the control of asthma during pregnancy, despite the lack of evidence regarding potential systemic effects on maternal, placental, and fetal systems. Objectives: To determine maternal plasma concentrations of cortisol, estriol, osteocalcin, and corticotropin-releasing hormone in pregnant women with asthma (n = 156) and without asthma (n = 51). Methods: During each trimester of pregnancy, the use and dose of ICS was recorded and blood samples were collected. Ultrasound was performed at 18 and 30 weeks' gestation, and birth weight and fetal sex were recorded at delivery. Measurements and Main Results: Maternal hormone concentrations were not affected by the presence of asthma; however, they were inhibited by ICS use in a dose-dependent manner. This was dependent on fetal sex: in pregnancies with a female, ICS was inversely associated with maternal cortisol in first trimester and inversely associated with maternal osteocalcin in second and third trimester. When pregnant with a male, no effect of ICS dose was observed on maternal cortisol, estriol, or osteocalcin levels, whereas corticotropin-releasing hormone levels were increased with ICS use only in the first trimester. Conclusions: Maternal glucocorticoid-regulated systems appeared susceptible to ICS only when pregnant with a female. Fetal adrenal function appeared unaffected by ICS in pregnancies of both males and females. This provides clinically important information suggesting that ICS do not exert effects on glucocorticoid-regulated pathways in the fetus, and therefore are unlikely to contribute to adverse effects on fetal growth and development.Nicolette A. Hodyl, Michael J. Stark, Annette Osei-Kumah, Maria Bowman, Peter Gibson and Vicki L. Clifto
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Distinct sex-specific gene expression changes in the placenta in association with childhood allergy
No full textBACKGROUND: The prevalence of allergic disease has risen significantly during recent years. A major component of the susceptibility to allergic disease is determined in prenatal life, when the placenta plays a central role in fetal growth and development. In this study, we aimed to identify the patterns of gene expression in the placenta that may program early immune function to increase susceptibility to allergy. METHODS: A set of immune genes known to be associated with asthma, allergy and inflammation were selected for analysis by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) on placental tissue from infants who did or did not develop an allergy by 2 years of age. Analysis was performed on males and females separately for each allergy type including eczema, rhinitis or asthma. RESULTS: Of 11 candidate allergy-associated genes tested by qRT-PCR, 4 were found to be associated with the development of specific childhood allergy types (P < 0.05). These included MMP9 for both males and females that developed eczema, TLR7 for females that developed eczema, KITL1 for males that developed rhinitis and ORMDL3 for females that developed asthma. CONCLUSIONS: This study has identified altered expression of placental genes involved in inflammation in association with the development of specific allergies in childhood. The current data provide supporting evidence implicating the placenta in programming the fetal immune system in early life.Astrud R Tuck, Luke E Grzeskowiak, Annette Osei-Kumah, Zarqa Saif, Suzanne M Edwards, Andrew Tai, Susan L Prescott, MeriTulic, Richard Saffery, and Vicki L Clifto
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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