Access for All: How Libraries, Publishers, and Vendors Can Collaborate on Accessible Products

According to the 2016 Disability Statistics Annual Report, “The overall rate of people with disabilities in the US population in 2015 was 12.6%.” This means tens of millions of people in the United States alone, but making work accessible serves a far larger population even than that. As has often been noted, most of us, if we live long enough, will experience a disability at some point. Many of the steps taken to create accessible texts makes them better, more reader-friendly, and more usable to everyone—those with or without impairments. This session’s focus on accessibility will consider how libraries, publishers, and vendors can work together to ensure that all readers can access electronic books and texts. Organized by the AUPress’s Library Relations Committee, this panel features librarians, publishers, and vendors who will discuss what they’re doing to engage with accessibility challenges and opportunities. This session will be of benefit to librarians providing access to materials for patrons, publishers putting out accessible materials, and vendors providing services that increase accessibility of materials for all readers. The session also will focus on how these groups can partner and learn from one another to create more and better accessible products

Frontiers in Academic Ebook Delivery: Deploying the Library Driven Platform

Explore new and emerging initiatives in academic ebook delivery from University of Michigan Press, including their Fulcrum platform, and LYRASIS' work to expand SimplyE to academic titles

Low-Dose Radiation Therapy Impacts Microglial Inflammatory Response without Modulating Amyloid Load in Female TgF344-AD Rats

Background: Low-dose radiation therapy (LD-RT) has demonstrated in preclinical and clinical studies interesting properties in the perspective of targeting Alzheimer's disease (AD), including anti-amyloid and anti-inflammatory effects. Nevertheless, studies were highly heterogenous with respect to total doses, fractionation protocols, sex, age at the time of treatment and delay post treatment. Recently, we demonstrated that LD-RT reduced amyloid peptides and inflammatory markers in 9-month-old TgF344-AD (TgAD) males. Objective: As multiple studies demonstrated a sex effect in AD, we wanted to validate that LD-RT benefits are also observed in TgAD females analyzed at the same age. Methods: Females were bilaterally treated with 2 Gy×5 daily fractions, 2 Gy×5 weekly fractions, or 10 fractions of 1 Gy delivered twice a week. The effect of each treatment on amyloid load and inflammation was evaluated using immunohistology and biochemistry. Results: A daily treatment did not affect amyloid and reduced only microglial-mediated inflammation markers, the opposite of the results obtained in our previous male study. Moreover, altered fractionations (2 Gy×5 weekly fractions or 10 fractions of 1 Gy delivered twice a week) did not influence the amyloid load or neuroinflammatory response in females. Conclusions: A daily treatment consequently appears to be the most efficient for AD. This study also shows that the anti-amyloid and anti-inflammatory response to LD-RT are, at least partly, two distinct mechanisms. It also emphasizes the necessity to assess the sex impact when evaluating responses in ongoing pilot clinical trials testing LD-RT against AD.</p

Failure to tolerate continuous subcutaneous treprostinil in pediatric pulmonary hypertension patients

Abstract Continuous subcutaneous (SubQ) treprostinil is an effective therapy for pediatric patients diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension (PH). To date, the clinical characteristics and factors associated with failure to tolerate this therapy have not been described. The purpose was to describe patient‐reported factors contributing to SubQ treprostinil intolerance in pediatric patients with PH. A retrospective descriptive study was performed at 11 participating sites in the United States and Canada for patients younger than 21 years of age diagnosed with PH who failed treatment to tolerate SubQ treprostinil between January 1, 2009, and December 31, 2019. All data were summarized using descriptive statistics. Forty‐one patients met the inclusion criteria. The average age at SQ treprostinil initiation, and length of treatment, was 8.6 years and 22.6 months, respectively. The average maximum dose, concentration, and rate were 95.8 ng/kg/min, 6.06 mg/mL, and 0.040 mL/h, respectively. The reasons for failure to tolerate SubQ treprostinil included intractable site pain (73.2%), frequent site changes (56.1%), severe site reactions (53.7%), infections (26.8%), and noncompliance/depression/anxiety (17.1%). Thirty‐nine (95.1%) patients transitioned to a prostacyclin therapy with 23 patients transitioning to intravenous prostacyclin, 5 to inhaled prostacyclin, 5 to oral prostacyclin, and 7 to a prostacyclin receptor agonist. A subset of pediatric PH patients failed to tolerate SubQ treprostinil infusions despite advances in SubQ site maintenance and pain management strategies. Intractable site pain, frequent SubQ site changes, and severe localized skin reactions were the most common reasons for failure