Biomedical subjects

Craig Johnson

Publications and source records attributed to Craig Johnson.

17 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2025

Steroid hormone biosynthesis and dietary related metabolites associated with excessive daytime sleepiness.

BACKGROUND: Excessive daytime sleepiness (EDS) is a complex sleep problem that affects approximately 33% of the United States population. Although EDS usually occurs in conjunction with insufficient sleep and other sleep and circadian disorders, recent studies have shown unique genetic markers and metabolic pathways underlying EDS. Here, we aimed to further elucidate the biological profile of EDS using large-scale single- and pathway-level metabolomics analyses. METHODS: Metabolomics data were available for 877 metabolites in 6071 individuals from the Hispanic Community Health Study/Study of Latinos (HCHS/SOL). EDS was assessed using the Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS) questionnaire. We performed linear regression for each metabolite on the continuous ESS score, adjusting for demographic, lifestyle, and physiological confounders, and in sex specific groups. Subsequently, gaussian graphical modelling was performed coupled with pathway and enrichment analyses to generate a holistic interactive network of the metabolomic profile of EDS associations. FINDINGS: We identified seven metabolites belonging to steroids, sphingomyelin, and long-chain fatty acids sub-pathways in the primary model associated with EDS, and an additional three metabolites in the male-specific analysis. INTERPRETATION: Our findings indicate that an EDS metabolomic profile is characterised by endogenous and dietary metabolites within the steroid hormone biosynthesis pathway, with some pathways that differ by sex. These pathways may be useful for understanding the causes or consequences of EDS and related sleep disorders. FUNDING: Details regarding funding supporting this work and all studies involved are provided in the acknowledgements section.

Humans↗

PubMed2006

Nasal chondromesenchymal hamartoma: radiographic and histopathologic analysis of a rare pediatric tumor.

Nasal chondromesenchymal hamartoma (NCMH) is an extremely rare benign pediatric tumor that was described in 1998. Only 19 cases are reported in the literature. We present a 15-year-old girl with nasal obstruction and recurrent sinusitis. Her medical history was significant for a rare ovarian tumor and pleuropulmonary blastoma. CT demonstrated a partially calcified soft-tissue mass obstructing the nasal cavity. The patient underwent endoscopic surgical excision. Histologic and immunohistochemical analyses of the tumor were consistent with NCMH. The imaging characteristics of the tumor are reviewed. NCMH may be part of a syndrome associated with other pediatric neoplastic and dysplastic disease.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2006

Splenic rupture following colonoscopy: two cases with CT findings.

Splenic injury following colonoscopy is extremely rare. We report a 75-year-old woman and a 35-year-old woman who presented to the emergency room with left upper quadrant and left shoulder pain following colonoscopy. Both patients were diagnosed by computed tomography (CT) with splenic injuries and hemoperitoneum. One patient was successfully managed conservatively, and one patient needed emergent open splenectomy. The possibility of splenic injury should be considered in post-colonoscopy patients with left upper quadrant or left shoulder pain.

Abdominal Pain↗

PubMed2006

Smoking in eating disorders.

OBJECTIVE: Smoking has been reported as an appetite and weight control method in eating disorders; however, few studies have explored patterns of smoking across subtypes of eating disorders. The aim of this paper was to explore the patterns and prevalence of smoking behavior in 1,524 women from two of the multisite Price Foundation Genetic studies. METHOD: Smoking behavior was assessed in 306 individuals with anorexia nervosa-restricting type (RAN), 186 with anorexia nervosa-purging type (PAN), 180 with anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa (ANBN), 107 with anorexia nervosa-binging type (BAN), 71 individuals with purging type-bulimia nervosa (PBN), and 674 female community controls. We compared smoking prevalence and smoking behaviors across eating disorder (ED) subtypes and in comparison to controls using the Fagerstrom Test of Nicotine Dependence (FTND). RESULTS: Overall, women with eating disorders reported higher rates of smoking and greater nicotine dependence than controls. Women with binge/purge subtypes of eating disorders reported the highest rates of smoking of all of the subtypes. Smoking in eating disorders was related to impulsive personality traits. CONCLUSIONS: Women with eating disorders appear to be at increased risk for smoking, particularly those who binge eat and/or purge and display impulsive personality characteristics. Given the high prevalence, the impact of ongoing smoking on maintenance of eating disorders symptoms is worthy of both clinical and research attention.

Adult↗

PubMed2006

Features associated with excessive exercise in women with eating disorders.

OBJECTIVE: Excessive exercise and motor restlessness are observed in a substantial number of patients with eating disorders. This trait has been studied extensively among animal models of activity anorexia nervosa (AN) and may hold particular interest as an endophenotype for AN. We explored features associated with excessive exercise across subtypes of eating disorders. METHOD: Participants were female probands and affected female relatives from the multi-site international Price Foundation Genetic Studies with diagnoses of AN, bulimia nervosa (BN), and both AN and BN or eating disorder not otherwise specified (ED-NOS) (N=1,857). Excessive exercise was defined based on responses to the Structured Interview for Anorexic and Bulimic Disorders (SIAB). RESULTS: Among the eating disorder diagnostic groups, excessive exercise was most common among the purging subtype of AN. Individuals who reported excessive exercise also reported lower minimum BMI, younger age at interview, higher scores on anxiety, perfectionism, and eating disorder symptom measures, more obsessions and compulsions, and greater persistence. CONCLUSION: Excessive exercise may be associated particularly with the purging subtype of AN as well as with a constellation of anxious/obsessional temperament and personality characteristics among women with eating disorders.

Adult↗

PubMed2005

Relationships between features associated with vomiting in purging-type eating disorders.

OBJECTIVE: Vomiting is a pernicious symptom of eating disorders. We explored the relation between the symptom of vomiting and features of eating disorder course and severity, personality traits, and Axis I and II comorbidity in individuals with purging-type eating disorders. METHOD: The sample included participants from the multisite, international Price Foundation Genetic Studies, who had an eating disorder diagnosis (anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, or eating disorder not otherwise specified) and had data available for the frequency of purging behaviors (n = 1,048). Axis I disorders, personality disorders, trait anxiety, perfectionism, and temperament and character dimensions were included as possible correlates. RESULTS: The presence of vomiting was associated with less regular laxative use, lower self-directedness, organization, personal standards, and higher novelty seeking. CONCLUSION: Vomiting remains a prevalent and potentially destructive symptom of eating disorders, with significant dental and medical morbidity. Our findings suggest that certain clinical and personality variables distinguish individuals with purging-type eating disorders who vomit from those who do not, although there were no marked differences in Axis I or II comorbidity. Specifically targeting treatment to decrease duration of exposure to this dangerous symptom continues to be an important clinical objective.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2004

Efficacy of quality criteria to identify potentially harmful information: a cross-sectional survey of complementary and alternative medicine web sites.

BACKGROUND: Many users search the Internet for answers to health questions. Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) is a particularly common search topic. Because many CAM therapies do not require a clinician's prescription, false or misleading CAM information may be more dangerous than information about traditional therapies. Many quality criteria have been suggested to filter out potentially harmful online health information. However, assessing the accuracy of CAM information is uniquely challenging since CAM is generally not supported by conventional literature. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study is to determine whether domain-independent technical quality criteria can identify potentially harmful online CAM content. METHODS: We analyzed 150 Web sites retrieved from a search for the three most popular herbs: ginseng, ginkgo and St. John's wort and their purported uses on the ten most commonly used search engines. The presence of technical quality criteria as well as potentially harmful statements (commissions) and vital information that should have been mentioned (omissions) was recorded. RESULTS: Thirty-eight sites (25%) contained statements that could lead to direct physical harm if acted upon. One hundred forty five sites (97%) had omitted information. We found no relationship between technical quality criteria and potentially harmful information. CONCLUSIONS: Current technical quality criteria do not identify potentially harmful CAM information online. Consumers should be warned to use other means of validation or to trust only known sites. Quality criteria that consider the uniqueness of CAM must be developed and validated.

Complementary Therapies↗

PubMed2004

Gender, ethnicity, self-esteem and disordered eating among college athletes.

OBJECTIVE: This study was undertaken to compare ethnic and gender differences regarding self-esteem and various disordered eating attitudes and behaviors among elite college athletes. METHOD: A total of 1445 student athletes from 11 Division I schools were surveyed using a 133-item questionnaire. RESULTS: White female athletes reported significantly lower self-esteem than Black female, Black male and White male athletes. Black female athletes' self-esteem was equal to both Black and White male athletes. White female athletes reported significantly higher drive for thinness, body dissatisfaction, and more disturbed eating behaviors than Black female and both groups of male athletes. DISCUSSION: The current study demonstrates that White female athletes appear to be most at risk for having difficulty with eating disorders. Their reporting of significantly lower self-esteem indicates that this may be a risk factor that is more characteristic of this ethnic group. Questions are raised about what factors exist in the Black female culture that protect them from low self-esteem and disordered eating attitudes and behaviors.

Adult↗

PubMed2004

Personality characteristics of women before and after recovery from an eating disorder.

BACKGROUND: Previous studies of personality characteristics in women with eating disorders primarily have focused on women who are acutely ill. This study compares personality characteristics among women who are ill with eating disorders, recovered from eating disorders, and those without eating or other Axis I disorder pathology. METHOD: Female participants were assessed for personality characteristics using the Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI): 122 with anorexia nervosa (AN; 77 ill, 45 recovered), 279 with bulimia nervosa (BN; 194 ill, 85 recovered), 267 with lifetime histories of both anorexia and bulimia nervosa (AN + BN; 194 ill, 73 recovered), 63 with eating disorder not otherwise specified (EDNOS; 31 ill, 32 recovered), and 507 without eating or Axis I disorder pathology. RESULTS: Women ill with all types of eating disorders exhibited several TCI score differences from control women, particularly in the areas of novelty-seeking, harm avoidance, self-directedness, and cooperativeness. Interestingly, women recovered from eating disorders reported higher levels of harm avoidance and lower self-directedness and cooperativeness scores than did normal control women. CONCLUSIONS: Women with eating disorders in both the ill and recovered state show higher levels of harm avoidance and lower self-directedness and cooperativeness scores than normal control women. Although findings suggest that disturbances may be trait-related and contribute to the disorders' pathogenesis, additional research with more representative community controls, rather than our pre-screened, normal controls, is needed to confirm these impressions.

Adult↗

PubMed2004

Pelvic reconstruction using vertical rectus abdominis musculocutaneous flaps.

Coverage of complex perineal wounds resulting from surgical and radiation therapy results in significant morbidity. Acute complications occur in 25% to 60% of patients. Serious complications occur in 25% to 46% of patients. Musculocutaneous or omental flaps are used as primary or salvage procedures for nonhealing perineal wounds. Vertical rectus abdominis flaps are ideally suited to bring nonirradiated tissue into defects associated with radical surgical extirpation procedures and irradiated fields.A retrospective review of 73 cases using a vertical rectus abdominis flap for perineal reconstruction is reported. Acute perineal wound complications occurred in 17.8%, while serious complications requiring reoperation occurred in only 3.5%. There was 1 complete flap failure. Primary healing occurred in 84.9% of patients, with 94.5% of patients obtaining a healed perineal wound within 30 days. These results support the use of the transpelvic vertical rectus flap in difficult perineal wound reconstruction.

Adult↗

PubMed2004

Expression of the high mobility group proteins HMGI(Y) correlates with malignant progression in Barrett's metaplasia.

Expression of the high mobility group proteins HMGI(Y) has been shown to be a marker of malignancy in thyroid and pancreatic lesions and to correlate significantly with malignant progression in the colon. The aim of this study was to determine whether HMGI(Y) expression is associated with malignant progression in Barrett's metaplasia (BM). Immunoperoxidase staining for HMGI(Y) was performed on sections of formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded endoscopic esophageal biopsies from 42 patients with BM. These consisted of 19 biopsies negative for dysplasia (ND), 16 with low-grade dysplasia (LGD)/indeterminate for dysplasia (IND), and 7 with high-grade dysplasia (HGD)/adenocarcinoma (CA). The percentage of positive cells was recorded, and nuclear HMGI(Y) immunoreactivity in >10% of the cells was considered positive. Statistical analysis was performed using Fisher's exact test. Positive HMGI(Y) staining was detected in 2 of 19 (11%) cases ND, 5 of 16 (30%) LGD/IND cases, and 7 of 7 (100%) HGD/CA cases. Biopsies with HGD/CA were significantly more likely to be positive for HMGI(Y) than biopsies ND (P < 0.0001) or with LGD/IND (P = 0.0046). We conclude that HMGI(Y) expression is significantly associated with malignant progression in BM. Additional studies are needed to determine whether BM biopsies that are ND or LGD/IND and positive for HMGI(Y) are more likely to progress to adenocarcinoma.

Adenocarcinoma↗

PubMed2004

Jail drug and alcohol treatment program reduces recidivism in nonviolent offenders: a longitudinal study of Monroe County, New York's, Jail Treatment Drug and Alcohol Program.

Substance abuse treatment has become the new fashion for reducing recidivism among inmates. But the question is, does this work? Various studies have been done tracking the same cohort of inmates over time to assess the validity of treatment. This study assesses one treatment program's success over 5 years to determine if drug and alcohol treatment reduces recidivism among nonviolent, short-term (sentence of less than a year) inmates. Monroe County's drug treatment program demonstrates that for 1 year after receiving the treatment, three different cohorts of nonviolent, short-term inmates (1995, 1998, and 2000) were found to be substantially less likely to be recidivists than control group inmates.

Alcoholism↗

PubMed2004

Inter-observer agreement for quality measures applied to online health information.

Many quality criteria have been developed to rate the quality of online health information. However, few instruments have been validated for inter-observer reliability. Therefore, we assessed the degree to which two raters agree upon the presence or absence of information based on 22 popularly cited quality criteria on a sample of 21 complementary and alternative medicine websites. Our preliminary analysis showed a poor inter-rater agreement on 10 out of the 22 quality criteria. Therefore, we created operational definitions for each of the criteria, decreased the allowed choices and defined a location to look for the information. As a result 15 out of the 22 quality criteria had a kappa >0.6. We conclude that even with precise definitions some commonly used quality criteria to assess the quality of health information online cannot be reliably assessed. However, inter-rater agreement can be improved by providing precise operational definitions.

Complementary Therapies↗

PubMed2004

Cancer-related complementary and alternative medicine online: factors affecting information retrieval.

Cancer patients increasingly turn to the Internet for health information. As the use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) is also increasing, we studied the likelihood that consumers will incidentally encounter CAM information while searching the Internet and the factors that influence CAM information retrieval. We evaluated results retrieved from ten cancer-related searches in six common search engines, and found that 16.2% of 1121 results contained CAM information. Sponsored (i.e. paid) results contained more CAM information than non-sponsored results (38% vs. 7.5%, p<0.001). Sponsored results in the Overture and Google search engines accounted for 51% and 39% of results on the first page. These search engines also retrieved the most CAM web pages. The type of cancer used as the search keyword did not influence the number of CAM-related web pages retrieved. However, the synonyms of cancer used as search keywords differed in their retrieval of CAM web pages (p<0.001). We conclude that clinicians should help consumers recognize sponsored listings and encourage search engines to clearly identify sponsored results.

Complementary Therapies↗

PubMed2003

Predictors of disordered eating in a sample of elite Division I college athletes.

OBJECTIVE: The present study sought to investigate the relationship between a number of areas of elite student-athletes' lives and disordered eating. METHOD: We surveyed 1445 elite Division I athletes at 11 different institutions and in 11 different sports. Hierarchical regression was used to indicate specific areas of the participants' collegiate experience that may be associated with disordered eating attitudes and symptomatology. RESULTS: Results demonstrate that the variables entered into each model predicted between 40.5% and 46.4% of the variance for the restriction of food, body dissatisfaction, and drive for thinness. Categories of variables that generally predicted the most variance for each dependent measure were demographics, athletic involvement, and personality. Of the 11 sports included in the analysis, wrestling and gymnastics demonstrated elevated levels of drive for thinness, food restriction, and purging behavior compared to other athletes. DISCUSSION: Findings suggest that in elite athletes gender, ethnicity, sport, and self-esteem are associated with several behaviors and attitudes indicative of disordered eating.

Journal Article↗

PubMed2003

Learner centered software design to empower physiology education.

Misconceptions in physiology undermine students' knowledge. New uses of technology in education offer interesting alternatives to correct these problems. This poster presents a design strategy based in user-centered design and the result of such process: an interactive program to support learning of respiratory physiology. This is an ongoing project, and future efforts will measure the effectiveness of this design tool in medical education.

Computer-Assisted Instruction↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Littoral cell angioma.

Littoral cell angioma (LCA) is an extremely rare primary splenic tumor. There are few MRI and scintigraphic characteristics described. These characteristics may be most helpful in differentiating LCA from other primary vascular tumors. We present a 54-year-old woman found on CT to have a 7-cm mass within an enlarged spleen. LCA was diagnosed by ultrasound (US)-guided biopsy. She was successfully treated with laparoscopic splenectomy. The CT, MRI, US, and Tc99m-RBC scan characteristics are described along with histologic and immunohistochemical correlation.

Diagnosis, Differential↗