University of Washington Abstract Importance, Challenges, and Opportunities of Gene-Environment Interactions (GxE) Research: A Study of Parkinson's Disease Nirupama Nini Shridhar Chair of the Supervisory Committee Dr. Karen Edwards Department of Epidemiology Objective. This interdisciplinary dissertation comprised a normative ...

Background Motor vehicle crashes occur daily and may be fatal for the driver, passengers or bystanders. Crashes have been shown to be associated with certain medical conditions and exposure to prescription medications that impair the ability to drive. We sought to create a linked, population-based longitudinal crash and medical ...

Background: Peripheral monocyte activation has been associated with poor neurocognitive outcomes in HIV-infected adults. We hypothesized that HIV infected infants with persistent systemic monocyte activation following antiretroviral treatment (ART) would have later attainment of developmental milestones. Materials and Methods: ...

Objective: To evaluate the effect of a two-way SMS intervention on postpartum contraceptive use among individual women and couple dyads. Methods: Mobile WACh XY was an unblinded randomized controlled trial conducted in two public county hospitals in western Kenya. Pregnant, HIV-negative women at least 14 years of age with ...

Antiretroviral pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) with tenofovir disoproxil fumarate (TDF) alone or when co-formulated with emtricitabine (FTC), the same medication used for treatment of HIV infection, is a recommended and highly effective strategy to reduce the risk of sexual acquisition of HIV. The central objective of the ...

Introduction: Many older adults have multiple brain pathologies (aka mixed neuropathologies) at autopsy; however, the clinical importance of mixed neuropathologies is not well established. The objectives of this dissertation were 1.) to examine the prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease neuropathologic change (ADNC), Lewy body ...

Context: Supporting people affected by HIV-1 in achieving their reproductive goals while minimizing the risk of HIV-1 transmission is a public health imperative. Background: For HIV-1 serodiscordant couples, HIV-1 exposure and risk of transmission to the uninfected partner and unborn children is heightened during pregnancy ...

International agendas have increasingly focused on education as a powerful social determinant of child and maternal health outcomes. However, comparable indicators of educational attainment only exist at the national level, which may obscure subnational inequality in both levels and progress. The advent of increasingly granular ...

Environmental exposures have complex multivariate relationships with one another and with geographic, anthropogenic, social, and physiological factors. This dissertation comprises methods for addressing the confounding and high-dimensional challenges of environmental exposures in cohort studies. We consider three dierent ...

Infectious hematopoietic necrosis virus (IHNV) is an aquatic rhabdovirus of Pacific salmonids that causes frequent epidemics. We analyzed data on U genogroup IHNV detections from 1971 to 2013 in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. Using Bayesian coalescent analysis we discovered two previously unrecognized subgroups: UC and UP. ...