Publications by authors named "Isabel Jones"

Burn injuries remain a complex clinical challenge, particularly in reconstructive settings where donor sites are limited. Integra Dermal Regeneration Template (IDRT), a bilayer dermal substitute, facilitates neodermis formation and supports functional and aesthetic recovery following burn trauma. This narrative review and expert opinion synthesizes current literature and clinical experience on the application of IDRT in post-burn reconstruction.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: The evidence that the severity of burn inhalation injury (BII) impacts clinical outcomes is inconsistent. This may be due to misclassification arising from the subjectivity in bronchoscopically grading BII using systems such as the Abbreviated Injury Score (AIS). This study aimed to evaluate inter- and intra-rater reliability in the grading of BII using the AIS.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

New non-destructive tools with single-cell resolution are needed to reliably assess B cell and NK cell function for applications including adoptive cell therapy and immune profiling. Optical metabolic imaging (OMI) is a label-free method that measures the autofluorescence intensity and lifetime of the metabolic cofactors NAD(P)H and FAD to quantify metabolism at a single-cell level. Here, we demonstrate that OMI can resolve metabolic changes between primary human quiescent and IL-4/anti-CD40 activated B cells and between quiescent and IL-12/IL-15/IL-18 activated NK cells.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: This meta-analysis aimed to quantify sensitization rates following allograft usage and determine whether allografts have an increased risk of long-term sensitization compared to alternative therapies in burn patients.

Methods: Systematic review, meta-analysis and meta-regression of post-operative sensitization in burn patients were performed following Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) guidance (Prospero registration: CRD42024497137). Database searches were conducted on MEDLINE, Embase, CENTRAL using ProQuest Dialog.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Understanding primate dietary plasticity provides insights into trait evolution and resilience to environmental change. Here, we investigate the feeding ecology of mandrills (Mandrillus sphinx), a species that forms groups of close to 1000 individuals, which presumably impacts feeding ecology by creating exceptionally high feeding competition. Mandrills are also threatened by habitat loss and climate change, and a full understanding of their dietary plasticity is essential to ongoing conservation efforts.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

We present a seasonal classification system to improve the temporal framing of comparative scientific analysis. Research often uses yearly aggregates to understand inherently seasonal phenomena like harvests, monsoons, and droughts. This obscures important trends across time and differences through space by including redundant data.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Determining how fully tropical forests regenerating on abandoned land recover characteristics of old-growth forests is increasingly important for understanding their role in conserving rare species and maintaining ecosystem services. Despite this, our understanding of forest structure and community composition recovery throughout succession is incomplete, as many tropical chronosequences do not extend beyond the first 50 years of succession. Here, we examined trajectories of forest recovery across eight 1-hectare plots in middle and later stages of forest succession (40-120 years) and five 1-hectare old-growth plots, in the Barro Colorado Nature Monument (BCNM), Panama.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Burn inhalation injury (BII) is a major cause of burn-related mortality and morbidity. Despite published practice guidelines, no consensus exists for the best strategies regarding diagnosis and management of BII. A modified DELPHI study using the RAND/UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles) Appropriateness Method (RAM) systematically analysed the opinions of an expert panel.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Unlabelled: The frequency and severity of wildfires in the Western United States have increased over recent decades, motivating hypotheses that wildfires contribute to the incidence of coccidioidomycosis, an emerging fungal disease in the Western United States with sharp increases in incidence observed since 2000. While coccidioidomycosis outbreaks have occurred among wildland firefighters clearing brush, it remains unknown whether fires are associated with an increased incidence among the general population.

Methods: We identified 19 wildfires occurring within California's highly endemic San Joaquin Valley between 2003 and 2015.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Many low- and middle-income communities face interconnected challenges related to infectious diseases, food insecurity, and water access, which lack effective solutions.
  • A study in West Africa shows that agricultural development can inadvertently increase schistosomiasis by promoting the growth of invasive aquatic vegetation that hosts disease-carrying snails; however, removing this vegetation led to lower infection rates in schoolchildren and no long-term negative impact on water quality.
  • The removal process not only provided a cost-effective alternative for livestock feed but also helped return nutrients to agriculture while offering substantial public health benefits, creating a promising model for addressing poverty, disease, and environmental sustainability simultaneously.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

While much progress has been achieved over the last decades, malaria surveillance and control remain a challenge in countries with limited health care access and resources. High-resolution predictions of malaria incidence using routine surveillance data could represent a powerful tool to health practitioners by targeting malaria control activities where and when they are most needed. Here, we investigate the predictors of spatio-temporal malaria dynamics in rural Madagascar, estimated from facility-based passive surveillance data.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

New non-destructive tools are needed to reliably assess lymphocyte function for immune profiling and adoptive cell therapy. Optical metabolic imaging (OMI) is a label-free method that measures the autofluorescence intensity and lifetime of metabolic cofactors NAD(P)H and FAD to quantify metabolism at a single-cell level. Here, we investigate whether OMI can resolve metabolic changes between human quiescent versus IL4/CD40 activated B cells and IL12/IL15/IL18 activated memory-like NK cells.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Classic evolutionary theory attributes sexual dimorphism mainly to sexual and fecundity selection, but emerging evidence suggests that resource competition also plays a significant role.
  • The study used stable isotope ratios in animal tissues to analyze the relationship between ecological divergence between sexes and body size dimorphism across various species.
  • Findings indicate a modest but significant link between sexual size dimorphism and ecological differences, particularly when there are greater opportunities for dietary divergence, supporting the idea that ecological factors can influence the evolution of sexual dimorphism.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Soil conditions are key for ecosystem restoration, influencing how well ecosystems recover after agricultural use and deforestation.
  • Soil resistance and recovery vary based on local factors like climate and soil type; for example, areas with high-activity clay show significant changes in soil properties when forested land is converted to cropland.
  • Findings suggest that while some soil properties improve during forest regrowth, others like phosphorus levels may decline, highlighting the complex dynamics of soil health in tropical ecosystems.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Billions of people living in poverty are at risk of environmentally mediated infectious diseases-that is, pathogens with environmental reservoirs that affect disease persistence and control and where environmental control of pathogens can reduce human risk. The complex ecology of these diseases creates a global health problem not easily solved with medical treatment alone.

Methods: We quantified the current global disease burden caused by environmentally mediated infectious diseases and used a structural equation model to explore environmental and socioeconomic factors associated with the human burden of environmentally mediated pathogens across all countries.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Migratory species are protected under international legislation; their seasonal movements across international borders may therefore present opportunities for understanding how global conservation policies translate to local-level actions across different socio-ecological contexts. Moreover, local-level management of migratory species can reveal how culture and governance affects progress towards achieving global targets. Here, we investigate potential misalignment in the two-way relationship between global-level conservation policies (i.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Drought is an understudied driver of infectious disease dynamics. Amidst the ongoing southwestern North American megadrought, California (USA) is having the driest multi-decadal period since 800 CE, exacerbated by anthropogenic warming. In this study, we aimed to examine the influence of drought on coccidioidomycosis, an emerging infectious disease in southwestern USA.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • The text discusses progress made by sustainable development practitioners in reducing human infectious diseases while promoting conservation through a systematic literature review of 46 proposed solutions.
  • Some solutions showed medium to high-quality evidence of success, but there were significant evidence gaps indicating a need for further research.
  • Stakeholders are encouraged to use the Review and an online database to discover, customize, or innovate new win-win interventions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Humans live in complex socio-ecological systems where we interact with parasites and pathogens that spend time in abiotic and biotic environmental reservoirs (e.g., water, air, soil, other vertebrate hosts, vectors, intermediate hosts).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Infectious disease risk is driven by three interrelated components: exposure, hazard, and vulnerability. For schistosomiasis, exposure occurs through contact with water, which is often tied to daily activities. Water contact, however, does not imply risk unless the environmental hazard of snails and parasites is also present in the water.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Schistosome parasites, affecting over 200 million people mainly in sub-Saharan Africa, show varied infection risks based on the distribution of their intermediate host snails.
  • The study examines schistosomiasis risk in 16 villages along the Senegal River, focusing on the spatial distribution of snails and their relationship to human infections of two species, S. haematobium and S. mansoni.
  • Results indicate that S. haematobium infection risk increases with snail habitat up to 120 meters from shore and larger water access sites, while S. mansoni risk relates to smaller, sheltered sites without a positive correlation to snail habitat.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Computer vision, specifically convolutional neural networks (CNNs), is explored for classifying environmental stages of parasites and their snail hosts in public health, focusing on schistosomiasis as a case study.
  • The study trained a CNN on a dataset of over 10,600 images from the Senegal River Basin, achieving high accuracy (99% for snails and 91% for cercariae) comparable to expert guidelines.
  • Results indicate that such machine learning models could assist in identifying disease vectors in remote areas, enhancing public health efforts by providing a practical tool for classification using smartphones.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Major burns complicated by stress ulceration and perforation of the stomach or duodenum is a recognized clinical phenomenon. Colonic perforation in burns patients is not common, and the overall incidence, diagnosis, intervention undertaken and mortality is incompletely described in the literature.

Method: We performed a systematic review of the literature on severe burns resulting in colonic perforation during the initial admission period.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Schistosomiasis, or "snail fever", is a parasitic disease affecting over 200 million people worldwide. People become infected when exposed to water containing particular species of freshwater snails. Habitats for such snails can be mapped using lightweight, inexpensive and field-deployable consumer-grade Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), also known as drones.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF