T cells; Disease susceptibility; Lupus; Sex factors in disease
Females are more susceptible to autoimmune disease than males. In several mouse models of disease, castration of males exacerbates disease while androgen treatment ameliorates disease. These data suggest hormones can have an influence on disease...
Females have a higher incidence of autoimmune diseases than males for reasons that are currently unknown. CD4+CD25+ regulatory T cells play an important role in the maintenance of immunological homeostasis and self-tolerance by suppressing...
Inflammation is now recognized as an important factor in several age-related diseases such as arthritis, atherosclerosis, multiple sclerosis and diabetes. In each case, sub-clinical chronic inflammation occurs over years and leads to progressive...
Griffithsin (GRFT) is a carbohydrate binding protein derived from the red alga Griffithisia sp. that has been shown to effectively interfere with the cellular attachment and infectivity of a number of viruses, including HIV-1. However, it is...
Graft rejection; Diagnostic imaging; Postoperative care
The fourth hand transplant recipient in Louisville lost his graft at nine months post transplant from ischemia due to severe graft arteriopathy. Conventional imaging techniques and clinical measurements, including CT angiography and measurements of...
Cancer accounts for nearly one-quarter of deaths in the United States, exceeded only by heart diseases. Despite the development of various strategies to treat cancer, it remains one of the most deadly diseases worldwide due to the limited effects...
The purpose of this dissertation was to describe the development and validation of the Sorokin Psycho-Social Love Inventory (SPSLI) and the testing of a Predictor Model of love actions for people who experienced divorce. The SPSLI is based on five...
Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a fibrotic lung disease with poor prognosis.
To address this disease broadly, the candidate engaged in clinical work, literature
analysis, database analysis, and laboratory work. The clinical work culminated...
The vaccinia virus complement control protein (VCP) is involved in the modulation of the host inflammatory response during vaccinia virus infection. It possesses the ability to inhibit both classical and alternative pathways of complement...
Dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA) is a C-19 adrenal steroid and the most abundant circulating hormone in humans. Since circulating levels decline in late adulthood, treatment of humans with DHEA has been suggested to have beneficial health effects....
Complement, an early recognition system of innate immunity that senses local tissue damage and infection, cross-talks with and regulates other signaling systems, including Toll-like receptor (TLR) pathways. In the context of periodontitis,...
Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is an idiopathic pervasive neurodevelopmental disorder associated with various neuropathologies and immunological dysfunctions. Cytokines are regulatory proteins that facilitate communication between the immune and...
Monophosphoryl Lipid A (MPLA), a derivative of LPS endotoxin, is a TLR4 agonist that displays as little as 0.1-1% as much toxicity as its parent molecule while retaining immunostimulatory properties. We discovered that MPLA activates a TRIF-biased...
Tobacco smoke is a strong and independent risk factor for several chronic systemic diseases and also increases susceptibility to a multitude of bacterial infections, including periodontal infections. Periodontitis is a chronic inflammatory disease...
While investigating estrogen response element (ERE) binding properties of Erα in de-identified human breast cancer extracts, additional proteins were observed that recognized ERE sequences (ERE-BP). In order to unravel the apparent role of these...
Because of limitations in randomized controlled trials, medical researchers are often forced to rely upon studies of observational data. Confounding is a major difficulty encountered in such studies that can create considerable bias in estimates of...
Fertility, Human, in art; Fertility, Human, in literature; Kollwitz, Käthe, 1867-1945; Woolf, Virginia, 1882-1941
Though Virginia Woolf’s and Kathe Kollwitz's personal histories and specific cultural circumstances were quite different, their aesthetics share fundamental qualities. This dissertation demonstrates that both artists affirm memory, the maternal,...
