IUPUI Solution Center & Near Eastside Legacy Initiative

poster abstractThe JPMorgan Chase Foundation has awarded the IUPUI Solution Center a grant of $75,000 to support IUPUI’s initiative to increase student and faculty involvement in the Near Eastside of Indianapolis. The Chase – IUPUI Near Eastside Legacy Initiative (NELI) is designed to increase awareness of and activity in the Chase Legacy Center, and promote health, wellness, and education programming in the community through targeted communication and public health awareness strategies. Over two years, the initiative will involve more than 100 students, faculty, and community partners through research projects, class projects, and independent internships. The Solution Center will provide match support of$75,000 from its Community Venture Fund and serve as Project Manager for the initiative

Aging in Urban Communities, Neighborhood Senior Attachment and Youth Offending: New Roles and New Goals

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)Relationships among neighbors contribute to the well-being and outcomes of all who live within a neighborhood. Existing literature provides us with a wealth of information on individual seniors’ isolation but does not seem to consider how neighborhood factors add to the attachment of seniors. Given the increasing number of seniors in our society who have the ability to remain living in their neighborhoods as they age, this study focuses on understanding neighborhood attachment to seniors living in the community. Furthermore, emphasis was placed on the potential impact that senior attachment could have on youth as one subset life stage who reside in a neighborhood. This thesis describes the characteristics of neighborhoods that foster low, normal, and high levels of senior attachment in urban areas and explores the relationship this attachment has to neighborhood youth outcomes. This research opens the door for other scholars to begin to place greater emphasis on the understanding of neighborhood dynamics, intergenerational ties to seniors, and the well being of residents across the life course

The Significance of Race for Neighborhood Social Cohesion: Perceived Difficulty of Collective Action in Majority Black Neighborhoods

This article explores William Julius Wilson\u27s contentions about community cultural traits by examining racial differences in middle class neighborhoods\u27 levels of social cohesion. Specifically, we explore the perceived difficulty of these actions--as opposed to general pessimism about their outcomes--as a potential explanation for low levels of instrumental collective action in Black middle class neighborhoods. Our results indicate that, regardless of other neighborhood factors, majority Black neighborhoods have low levels of social cohesion. We also find that this racial disparity is statistically explained by shared perceptions about the amount of effort required to engage in group action in different neighborhoods. These findings emphasize that residence in a majority Black area---and the well-informed perceptions accompanying it-affect the lived experience of neighbors, even when they are middle class

Autopsy findings in late-onset Pompe disease: A case report and systematic review of the literature

Background Late-onset Pompe disease (LOPD) is a rare cause of declining proximal muscle strength and respiratory function that can also affect other organ systems. The development of enzyme replacement therapy has made it one of the few inherited muscle disorders with treatment, but clinical response is difficult to assess due to the variable and often slow progression of illness. A better understanding of the disease\u27s systemic effects can be gleaned through autopsy findings. Purpose The purpose of this study was to: (1) describe the histological findings observed in LOPD, (2) provide correlations between reported histological and clinical findings, and (3) review the literature on autopsy findings in LOPD. Methods Histological evaluation of autopsy tissues from a 62-year-old woman with LOPD was conducted. A clinical history was obtained by review of the medical records. The literature was reviewed for previously reported histological and clinical findings in LOPD. Based on this case report and information from prior publications, histological and clinical findings for the disease were correlated. Results Histologic examination revealed mostly mild vacuolar myopathy typical of glycogen accumulation within skeletal and smooth muscle cells. The most prominent vacuolar myopathy was in quadriceps muscle, which also exhibited chronic myositis with degenerating and regenerating muscle fibers. Transmission electron microscopy disclosed lysosomal glycogen accumulation within skeletal, cardiac, and vascular smooth muscle cells, correlating with published case reports of basilar artery and ascending aortic aneurysms and carotid artery dissection. Organs containing smooth muscle cells (the bladder, intestine, and esophagus) were also affected, explaining reports of symptoms such as urinary incontinence and dysphagia. In addition to glycogen accumulation, there was obvious damage to the contraction apparatus of myofibrils within cardiac and skeletal muscle cells. These histological and ultrastructural findings correlate with the clinical manifestations of LOPD. Conclusions This study is the first to describe histological findings of LOPD utilizing both traditional paraffin-processed tissues and epoxy resin embedded tissues for high-resolution light microscopy. The findings are similar to those seen in previous studies, but with improved morphological detail and glycogen preservation. This patient exhibited histological involvement of multiple organs, correlating with the clinical features of LOPD. With the advent of definitive therapy for Pompe disease, it is important to be aware of these findings and use them to develop methods for tracking therapeutic response. Highlights ► Autopsy studies are important in understanding the systemic effects of LOPD. ► Multiple organ involvement is evident in LOPD, correlating with clinical findings. ► Histologic quantification of glycogen may be a useful biomarker of ERT response

Neuroimaging findings in infantile Pompe patients treated with enzyme replacement therapy

BackgroundRecombinant human acid α-glucosidase (rhGAA) enzyme replacement therapy (ERT) has prolonged survival in infantile Pompe disease (IPD), but has unmasked central nervous system (CNS) changes.MethodsBrain imaging, consisting of computed tomography (CT) and/or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), was performed on 23 patients with IPD (17 CRIM-positive, 6 CRIM-negative) aged 2-38months. Most patients had baseline neuroimaging performed prior to the initiation of ERT. Follow-up neuroimaging was performed in eight.ResultsSixteen patients (70%) had neuroimaging abnormalities consisting of ventricular enlargement (VE) and/or extra-axial cerebrospinal fluid accumulation (EACSF) at baseline, with delayed myelination in two. Follow-up neuroimaging (n=8) after 6-153months showed marked improvement, with normalization of VE and EACSF in seven patients. Two of three patients imaged after age 10years demonstrated white matter changes, with one noted to have a basilar artery aneurysm.ConclusionsMild abnormalities on brain imaging in untreated or newly treated patients with IPD tend to resolve with time, in conjunction with ERT. However, white matter changes are emerging as seen in Patients 1 and 3 which included abnormal periventricular white matter changes with subtle signal abnormalities in the basal ganglia and minimal, symmetric signal abnormalities involving the deep frontoparietal cerebral white matter, respectively. The role of neuroimaging as part of the clinical evaluation of IPD needs to be considered to assess for white matter changes and cerebral aneurysms