Browsing by Author "Khan, Hafiz (TTUHSC)"
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Item Comprehensive Understanding of Hispanic Caregivers: Focus on Innovative Methods and Validations(2023) Sehar, Ujala (TTUHSC); Rawat, Priyanka (TTUHSC); Choudhury, Moumita (TTUHSC); Boles, Annette; Culberson, John (TTUHSC); Khan, Hafiz (TTUHSC); Malhotra, Keya; Basu, Tanisha (TTUHSC); Reddy, P. Hemachandra (TTU)Alzheimer's disease (AD) and Alzheimer's disease-related disorders (ADRD) are late-onset, age-related progressive neurodegenerative disorders, characterized by memory loss and multiple cognitive impairments. Current research indicates that Hispanic Americans are at an increased risk for AD/ADRD and other chronic conditions such as diabetes, obesity, hypertension, and kidney disease, and given their rapid growth in numbers, this may contribute to a greater incidence of these disorders. This is particularly true for the state of Texas, where Hispanics are the largest group of ethnic minorities. Currently, AD/ADRD patients are taken care by family caregivers, which puts a tremendous burden on family caregivers who are usually older themselves. The management of disease and providing necessary/timely support for patients with AD/ADRD is a challenging task. Family caregivers support these individuals in completing basic physical needs, maintaining a safe living environment, and providing necessary planning for healthcare needs and end-of-life decisions for the remainder of the patient's lifetime. Family caregivers are mostly over 50 years of age and provide all-day care for individuals with AD/ADRD, while also managing their health. This takes a significant toll on the caregiver's own physiological, mental, behavioral, and social health, in addition to low economic status. The purpose of our article is to assess the status of Hispanic caregivers. We also focused on effective interventions for family caregivers of persons with AD/ADRD involving both educational and psychotherapeutic components, and a group format further enhances effectiveness. Our article discusses innovative methods and validations to support Hispanic family caregivers in rural West Texas.Item Gender differences in prevalence of myocardial infarction in rural West Texans(2022) Khan, Hafiz (TTUHSC); Rasmussen, Drew (TTUHSC); Gittner, Lisaann (TTUHSC); Rafiq, Aamrin (TTU); Blakely, Summre (TTUHSC); Shabaneh, Obadeh (TTUHSC); Reddy, P. Hemachandra (TTUHSC)Background: Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States. Incidence rates of myocardial infarction (MI) in rural West Texas signify a lack of effective, risk-specific prevention programs. The purpose of this study was to identify gender-specific risk factors for MI in rural West Texans. Subjects and methods: Hospital patient data for those with and without a history of MI were obtained from the Project FRONTIER database for rural West Texas counties. We used statistical software, such as SPSS, R, and WinBUGS to detect and understand the nature of MI risk factors. Statistical methods including t-tests, Chi-squared, logistic regression, and a Bayesian approach were utilized to analyze data. Results: MI significant risk factors obtained for females were systolic blood pressure (p = 0.002), diastolic blood pressure (p = 0.004), pulse (p = 0.015), and smoking (p = 0.002). For males, these were glucose (p = 0.022), age (p = 0.050), body fat (p = 0.034), and smoking (p = 0.017). The mean risk parameter followed a normal distribution, while the precision parameter depicted skew for both sexes. Conclusions: Gender-specific differences in MI risk factors exist, and incorporating such variables can guide relevant policymaking to reduce MI incidence in rural West Texans.Item Lower activation in frontal cortex and posterior cingulate cortex observed during sex determination test in early-stage dementia of the Alzheimer type(2017) Rajmohan, Ravi (TTUHSC); Anderson, Ronald C. (TTU); Fang, Dan (TTU); Meyer, Austin G. (TTUHSC); Laengvejkal, Pavis (TTUHSC); Julayanont, Parunyou (TTUHSC); Hannabas, Greg (TTUHSC); Linton, Kitten (TTUHSC); Culberson, John (TTUHSC); Khan, Hafiz (TTUHSC); Toledo, John De (TTUHSC); Reddy, P. Hemachandra (TTUHSC); O'Boyle, Michael W. (TTU)Face-labeling refers to the ability to classify faces into social categories. This plays a critical role in human interaction as it serves to define concepts of socially acceptable interpersonal behavior. The purpose of the current study was to characterize, what, if any, impairments in face-labeling are detectable in participants with early-stage clinically diagnosed dementia of the Alzheimer type (CDDAT) through the use of the sex determination test (SDT). In the current study, four (1 female, 3 males) CDDAT and nine (4 females, 5 males) age-matched neurotypicals (NT) completed the SDT using chimeric faces while undergoing BOLD fMRI. It was expected that CDDAT participants would have poor verbal fluency, which would correspond to poor performance on the SDT. This could be explained by decreased activation and connectivity patterns within the fusiform face area (FFA) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). DTI was also performed to test the association of pathological deterioration of connectivity in the uncinate fasciculus (UF) and verbally-mediated performance. CDDAT showed lower verbal fluency test (VFT) performance, but VFT was not significantly correlated to SDT and no significant difference was seen between CDDAT and NT for SDT performance as half of the CDDAT performed substantially worse than NT while the other half performed similarly. BOLD fMRI of SDT displayed differences in the left superior frontal gyrus and posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), but not the FFA or ACC. Furthermore, although DTI showed deterioration of the right inferior and superior longitudinal fasciculi, as well as the PCC, it did not demonstrate significant deterioration of UF tracts. Taken together, early-stage CDDAT may represent a common emerging point for the loss of face labeling ability.Item Mechanisms and techniques to enhance the security of big data analytic framework with MongoDB and Linux Containers(2022) Mailewa, Akalanka; Mengel, Susan (TTU); Gittner, Lisa (TTU); Khan, Hafiz (TTUHSC)The frequency and scale of unauthorized access cases and misuses of data access privileges are a growing concern of many organizations. The protection of confidential data, such as social security numbers, financial information, etc., of the customers and/or employees is among the key responsibilities of any organization, and damage to such sensitive data can easily pose a threat to the future of a business and the security of the customers. Therefore, this paper proposes and implements some security mechanisms and techniques, such as secure authentication, secure authorization, and encryption, to assure the overall security of a big data analytic framework with MongoDB free community edition. This paper presents the fourth phase of our continuous research where in the first phase we proposed a data analytic framework with MongoDB and Linux Containers (LXCs) with basic security requirements. Next, in the second phase we proposed a vulnerability analysis testbed to find vulnerabilities associated with the system. Finally, in the third phase we discussed in detail root causes and some prevention techniques of vulnerabilities found in the system. In addition, this paper introduces a new security mechanism for privacy preserving data handling with MongoDB to ensure the privacy of the data before being processed. Our results show, with our initial model of the analytic framework, how well our newly introduced security mechanisms work and how these security mechanisms and techniques can be used to assure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability (CIA) of any data science project conducted on our proposed analytic framework. In addition, these security mechanisms and techniques help us to strengthen the current system against zero-day attacks where attacks on vulnerabilities that have not been patched or made public yet. Therefore, our vulnerability analysis testbed which is proposed in the second phase of this research will not be able to finds vulnerabilities related to zero-day attacks.Item Tumor-Infiltrating Lymphocytes (TILs) as a Biomarker of Abscopal Effect of Cryoablation in Breast Cancer: A Pilot Study(2022) Khan, Sonia Y. (TTUHSC); Melkus, Michael W. (TTUHSC); Rasha, Fahmida (TTUHSC); Castro, Maribel (TTUHSC); Chu, Victoria (TTUHSC); Brandi, Luis (TTUHSC); Khan, Hafiz (TTUHSC); Gill, Harvinder Singh (TTU); Pruitt, Kevin (TTUHSC); Layeequr Rahman, Rakhshanda (TTUHSC)Background: Morphological evaluation of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) in breast cancer is gaining momentum as an immunological biomarker. This experiment evaluates the role of TILs in distant tumors as a measure of abscopal effect from cryoablation of breast cancer. Methods: BALB/c mice underwent bilateral orthotopic transplant with 4T1-12B (triple-negative) cells. At 2 weeks, left tumors were treated by either resection (standard of care group) or cryoablation (intervention group) followed by resection of the distant right tumors 1 week posttreatment. TIL scores were calculated from hematoxylin and eosin-stained sections and phenotyped for cytotoxic T-lymphocyte (CTL) markers by immunofluorescence. Primarily resected tumors served as baseline (Tbaseline), whereas resected distant right-sided served as the readout for abscopal effect (AbsRes or AbsCryo). Mice were monitored for tumor recurrence and metastasis. Results: The AbsCryo had a significant mean (SD) increase in stromal (2.8 [1.1]%; p = 0.015) and invasive margin TILs (50 [12]%; p = 0.02) compared with TBaseline (1.0 [0]% and 31 [4.9]%, respectively). CTL phenotyping revealed a significant increase in mean (SD) CD8+ T cells (15.7 [12.1]; p = 0.02) and granzyme B (4.8 [3.6]; p = 0.048) for the AbsCryo compared with TBaseline (5.2 [4.7] and 2.4 [0.9], respectively). Posttreatment, the cryoablation group had no recurrence or metastasis, whereas the resected group showed local recurrence and lung metastasis in 40% of the mice. Postprocedure increase in TIL score of distant tumors was associated with decrease in tumor relapse (p = 0.02). Conclusions: Cryoablation induced a robust tumor-specific TIL response compared with resection, suggesting an abscopal effect leading to the prevention of cancer recurrence and metastasis.