Publications by authors named "Thomas Carton"

Background: Guidelines recommend lifelong care with adult congenital heart disease (ACHD) specialists for adults with congenital heart disease (CHD). However, such gaps in visits at specialized ACHD centers have not been well-characterized from diverse US settings.

Methods: This retrospective study analyzed data from 12 centers in the national Patient-Centered Clinical Research Network.

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Background: Although routine outpatient visits with adult congenital heart defect (ACHD) specialists have been recommended, the evidence to support this remains sparse.

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the association between outpatient ACHD visits and emergent admissions.

Methods: This observational study used standardized electronic health record data from 13 health centers from January 1, 2015 through December 31, 2019.

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Background: Real-world data reported by patients and extracted from electronic health records (EHRs) are increasingly leveraged for research, policy, and clinical decision-making. However, it is not always obvious the extent to which these 2 data sources agree with each other.

Objective: This study aimed to evaluate the concordance of variables reported by participants enrolled in an electronic cohort study and data available in their EHRs.

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DNA-encoded libraries are increasingly important in hit identification at the early stage of the drug discovery process. The approach relies on efficient methods for synthesis of drug-like compounds attached to coding DNA sequences. Many reactions employed for library synthesis are inefficient and result in significant DNA-damage, incomplete conversion and the formation of side products, which compromise the fidelity of the resulting library.

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There is growing interest in the benefits of probiotic supplementation during pregnancy and lactation, but evidence supporting the beneficial effects for mother-infant dyads remains scarce. This study assessed the effects of probiotic supplementation on infection frequency and immunity in pregnant women and infants, and on microbiome establishment during the first month of life. At 28 weeks of gestation, 180 healthy pregnant women were randomized to receive either a placebo ( = 90) or a probiotic supplement ( = 90), Prenatis™, containing 5 billion CFU/day of Rosell-11 and HA-132.

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People with HIV may be at increased risk for long COVID after acute SARS-CoV-2 infection. We investigated the association between HIV and long COVID in two large electronic health record databases. Using data from the Patient-Centered Clinical Research Network (PCORnet) and the National Clinical Cohort Collaborative (N3C) from 1/1/2018 to 4/30/2024, our analytic sample included individuals aged ≥21 years with SARS-CoV-2.

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Epidemiologic research has found worsening behavioral health in the USA since 2020. Local policies may have contributed to these patterns and associated disparities. However, scant research has systematically documented county-level COVID-19-era policymaking or empirically investigated its health impacts.

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Pregnancy alters immune responses and clinical manifestations of COVID-19, but its impact on Long COVID remains uncertain. This study investigated Long COVID risk in individuals with SARS-CoV-2 infection during pregnancy compared to reproductive-age females infected outside of pregnancy. A retrospective analysis of two U.

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The benefits and challenges of electronic health records (EHRs) as data sources for clinical and epidemiologic research have been well described. However, several factors are important to consider when using EHR data to study novel, emerging, and multifaceted conditions such as postacute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection or long COVID. In this article, we present opportunities and challenges of using EHR data to improve our understanding of long COVID, based on lessons learned from the National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded RECOVER (REsearching COVID to Enhance Recovery) Initiative, and suggest steps to maximize the usefulness of EHR data when performing long COVID research.

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Introduction: A lack of coordinated federal guidance led to substantial heterogeneity in local COVID-19 policies across US states and counties. Local government policies may have contributed to increases in anxiety and mental health disparities during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods: We analysed associations between composite policy scores for containment and closure, public health or economic support from the US COVID-19 County Policy Database and self-reported anxiety scores (Generalised Anxiety Disorder-7) from COVID-19 Citizen Science participants between 22 April 2020 and 31 December 2021.

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Background: Incidence estimates of post-acute sequelae of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection, also known as long COVID, have varied across studies and changed over time. We estimated long COVID incidence among adult and pediatric populations in 3 nationwide research networks of electronic health records (EHRs) participating in the RECOVER (Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery) Initiative using different classification algorithms (computable phenotypes).

Methods: This EHR-based retrospective cohort study included adult and pediatric patients with documented acute SARS-CoV-2 infection and 2 control groups: contemporary coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)-negative and historical patients (2019).

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Background: Modernization of public health data systems is a national priority. Improved chronic disease surveillance can provide more timely, accurate, and local measures to inform public health policy and intervention. Although electronic health record (EHR) data have great potential for surveillance, population coverage is non-random, which may result in biased estimates.

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Background: It is increasingly recognized that policies played a role in mitigating or exacerbating health inequities during the COVID-19 pandemic. While US counties were particularly active in policymaking, limited work has characterized geographic and temporal variation in pandemic-era policymaking at the local level, a prerequisite for later studies examining the health effects of these policies. This paper fills this gap by characterizing county-level COVID-19-related policy trajectories over time using a novel national policy database and innovative methods.

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Rationale: Short-term weight loss is possible in a variety of settings. However, long-term, free-living weight loss maintenance following structured weight loss interventions remains elusive.

Objective: The purpose was to study body weight trajectories over 2 years of intensive lifestyle intervention (ILI) and up to 4 years of follow-up versus usual care (UC).

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Importance: In the US, there are more than 1.5 million adults living with congenital heart disease (CHD). The Congenital Heart Initiative (CHI) is a digital, online, patient-empowered registry that was created to advance multicenter research and improve clinical care by gathering patient-reported outcomes (PROs) in adults with CHD.

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Article Synopsis
  • * A study found that as age increases, the likelihood of older adults receiving antiviral treatment decreases, with only 35.2% of those aged 90 and above receiving it.
  • * Among patients aged 65 and older, those who did not receive antiviral treatment were more likely to suffer severe outcomes, indicating a need for improved antiviral access for older populations.
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Background: SARS-CoV-2-infected patients may develop new conditions in the period after the acute infection. These conditions, the post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection (PASC, or Long COVID), involve a diverse set of organ systems. Limited studies have investigated the predictability of Long COVID development and its associated risk factors.

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Article Synopsis
  • PCORnet is a major research network that standardizes clinical data from various health systems and expanded its infrastructure in 2018 to support public health surveillance of chronic diseases and COVID-19.
  • Enhancements included a new table for patient zip codes and a modular program for generating population health statistics; case studies showed significant findings for conditions like atrial fibrillation and cirrhosis.
  • By August 2023, most PCORnet sites were able to provide detailed patient data, demonstrating its potential to improve public health surveillance with comprehensive data across different health conditions.
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Background: Data modernization efforts to strengthen surveillance capacity could help assess trends in use of preventive services and diagnoses of new chronic disease during the COVID-19 pandemic, which broadly disrupted health care access.

Methods: This cross-sectional study examined electronic health record data from US adults aged 21 to 79 years in a large national research network (PCORnet), to describe use of 8 preventive health services (N = 30,783,825 patients) and new diagnoses of 9 chronic diseases (N = 31,588,222 patients) during 2018 through 2022. Joinpoint regression assessed significant trends, and health debt was calculated comparing 2020 through 2022 volume to prepandemic (2018 and 2019) levels.

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Paxlovid has been approved for use in patients who are at high risk for severe acute COVID-19 illness. Evidence regarding whether Paxlovid protects against Post-Acute Sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection (PASC), or Long COVID, is mixed in high-risk patients and lacking in low-risk patients. With a target trial emulation framework, we evaluated the association of Paxlovid treatment within 5 days of SARS-CoV-2 infection with incident Long COVID and hospitalization or death from any cause in the post-acute period (30-180 days after infection) using electronic health records from the Patient-Centered Clinical Research Networks (PCORnet) RECOVER repository.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study investigates how the characteristics and frequency of post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection (PASC) differ between those infected by the ancestral strain in 2020 and the Delta variant in 2021.
  • It analyzes a significant dataset of around 27 million patients across New York and Florida to assess new health conditions arising 31-180 days post COVID-19 infection.
  • Key findings reveal that during the ancestral strain period, issues like pulmonary fibrosis and dyspnea were prominent, while the Delta variant was mainly associated with an increased risk of pulmonary embolism.
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Background: Little is known about post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection (PASC) after acquiring SARS-CoV-2 infection during pregnancy. We aimed to evaluate the association between acquiring SARS-CoV-2 during pregnancy compared with acquiring SARS-CoV-2 outside of pregnancy and the development of PASC.

Methods: This retrospective cohort study from the Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery (RECOVER) Initiative Patient-Centred Clinical Research Network (PCORnet) used electronic health record (EHR) data from 19 U.

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Estimates of post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection (PASC) incidence, also known as Long COVID, have varied across studies and changed over time. We estimated PASC incidence among adult and pediatric populations in three nationwide research networks of electronic health records (EHR) participating in the RECOVER Initiative using different classification algorithms (computable phenotypes). Overall, 7% of children and 8.

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Background: Preventing and treating post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection (PASC), commonly known as Long COVID, has become a public health priority. Researchers have begun to explore whether Paxlovid treatment in the acute phase of COVID-19 could help prevent the onset of PASC.

Methods And Findings: We used electronic health records from the National Clinical Cohort Collaborative (N3C) to define a cohort of 410,026 patients who had COVID-19 since April 1, 2022, and were eligible for Paxlovid treatment due to risk for progression to severe COVID-19.

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Background: An increasing number of studies have described new and persistent symptoms and conditions as potential post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 infection (PASC). However, it remains unclear whether certain symptoms or conditions occur more frequently among persons with SARS-CoV-2 infection compared with those never infected with SARS-CoV-2. We compared the occurrence of specific COVID-associated symptoms and conditions as potential PASC 31- to 150-day following a SARS-CoV-2 test among adults and children with positive and negative test results.

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