The University of North Texas Health Science Center (UNTHSC, UNT Health Science Center, or hsc) is a public academic health science center in Fort Worth, Texas. It is part of the University of North Texas System and was founded in 1970 as the Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine. UNT Health Science Center now consists of five graduate schools with a total enrollment of 2,329 students (2020–21).UNT Health Science Center serves as home to several NIH-funded research programs and currently leads all Texas medical and health science centers in research growth. The Health Science Center also houses laboratories for TECH Fort Worth, a non-profit biochemistry incubator, as well as the Atrium Gallery, a non-profit public art exhibition space which holds 8-10 arts shows each year.
Sex and gender are fundamental determinants of health, disease risk, and treatment responses, yet they remain inconsistently and inadequately integrated into biomedical research. Despite major funding and regulatory policies over the past two decades, sex and gender continue to be treated primarily as descriptive variables rather than drivers of discovery. As the Organization for the Study of Sex Differences (OSSD) marks twenty years of leadership in this field, this policy statement articulates OSSD’s position on best practices for the integration of sex and gender in health research. Drawing on empirical evidence, landmark policies, and persistent gaps in implementation, this statement provides clear guidance for researchers, funders, and journals. OSSD explicitly recommends prespecified sex- and gender-responsive questions, appropriate study design and statistical power, transparent analysis and reporting, and accountability mechanisms to translate into practice. Adoption of these standards is essential to improving scientific rigor, reproducibility, and clinical relevance.
This investigation was designed to test the hypothesis that heart failure (HF) attenuates coronary vasodilation and autoregulation and that deficits in contractile function are proportionally related to reductions in the volume of myocardial perfusion and oxygen delivered per beat. Utilizing a pacing-induced model of HF in Ossabaw swine, we determined that chronic pacing at 180 beats/min for 4 weeks significantly reduced baseline coronary flow by 45
Abstract Tourette Syndrome and other tic disorders (TD) are common, highly heritable neurodevelopmental conditions with complex genetic architectures. We conducted a genome-wide association study of 13,247 TD cases and 536,217 European ancestry controls and identified six independent genome-wide significant loci, including a pleiotropic signal at 3p21 shared with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, among other traits. Gene prioritization highlighted 20 genes, including PCDH9, HCN1, NCKIPSD, WDR6, DALRD3 , and CELSR3 . Integrative analyses provide genetic support for the role of cortico-striato-thalamo-cortical circuits in TD pathophysiology and further localize TD genetic risk to specific cell types, including dopamine D1- and D2-receptor-positive medium spiny neurons, cortical pyramidal neurons, and oligodendrocyte-lineage cells. We further demonstrate extensive genetic correlations with neurodevelopmental and psychiatric traits, but not with neurological disorders. These findings advance our understanding of the genetic basis of TD, pinpointing specific genes and cell types that drive pathophysiology and providing a foundation for future mechanistic studies.
BackgroundAlzheimer's disease (AD) affects 55 million people worldwide, projected to reach 139 million by 2050; yet, most machine learning (ML)-based AD classifiers have been developed in Non-Hispanic White (NHW) cohorts, limiting generalizability.ObjectiveAssess ethnic differences in AD prediction using classification performance and feature importance derived from multimodal neuroimaging biomarkers across African American (AA), Hispanic, and NHW participants.MethodsSupport vector machine classifiers were applied to multimodal neuroimaging data from a multi-ethnic cohort, incorporating structural magnetic resonance imaging measures, diffusion tensor imaging metrics, and positron emission tomography-based amyloid and tau measures. Models classified cognitively unimpaired (CU) versus cognitively impaired (CI) individuals and mild cognitive impairment (MCI) versus AD dementia, with and without adjustment for age, sex, and education.ResultsClassification performance varied by ethnicity and disease stage. NHW participants showed the strongest overall performance, particularly for CU versus CI, while Hispanic participants demonstrated high sensitivity and balanced performance for MCI versus AD. AA participants exhibited lower AUC and accuracy across tasks but maintained high negative predictive value. Demographic adjustment improved performance primarily for AA and NHW participants. Feature importance analyses revealed shared and population-specific patterns: tau positron emission tomography (PET) measures, especially posterior cingulate and lateral parietal standardized uptake value ratios, consistently ranked highest for CU versus CI across groups, whereas MCI versus AD classification diverged, with amyloid PET predominating in AA participants, tau PET in NHW participants, and mixed medial temporal atrophy and white matter signatures in Hispanics.ConclusionsShared early AD neuroimaging signatures exist across ethnic groups, but biomarker importance diverges at later disease stages, underscoring the need for ethnicity-aware ML models to improve prediction and equitable clinical translation.
Epidemiological studies have demonstrated that kidney aging is a risk factor for acute kidney injury (AKI) and chronic kidney disease (CKD). Therefore, understanding the mechanisms of kidney aging is key to designing novel anti-kidney aging strategies. In this regard, animal models of kidney aging are essential tools. In this review article, we focus on D-galactose (D-gal)-induced accelerated aging in rodents. This animal aging model is a popular and widely used experimental method in the field of aging and aging-related degenerative disorders. It has been shown that the major characteristics of the D-gal-induced aging process are increased oxidative stress, decreased antioxidant enzymes, elevated cell death, increased tissue fibrosis, and accumulation of inflammatory mediators. This review focuses on D-gal-induced kidney aging in mice and rats, with discussions on both kidney aging mechanisms and anti-kidney aging regimens using this model. It is our belief that D-gal induction of accelerated kidney aging will continue to be used as a convenient platform for elucidating kidney aging mechanisms and exploring novel anti-kidney aging targets that may slow down kidney aging and retard the development of aging-related renal disorders.
