We wish to create a video that bolsters an increased awareness of how the CanConnect assistive technology can improve the quality and accessibility of virtual social communications, and thereby contribute to the improvement of older adult’s (OAs) wellbeing and mental health. Our research showed that OAs became more interested, engaged, and curious about CanConnect when they saw their friends having positive experiences with loved ones using the technology. In choosing a video as a vehicle for KT, we seek to appeal to viewers and potential research users on a more emotional, intellectual, and communal level, showing the power of using CanConnect technology with family members and friends in everyday interactions. We also believe that showcasing these positive interpersonal interactions on video establishes further trust between researchers and the community. Video represents an opportunity to tell the stories of real people, in real places, living their real lives; and these stories can invite conversation between existing narratives and our own experiences. In consultation with local community partners, within this proposed project, we see an opportunity to re-visit, and potentially re-write stories, together.
Team members: Matilde Cervantes (UVic); Robin Syme (CanAssist); Karen Kobayashi (UVic).
Our sense of smell enriches our lives—from enhancing pleasures (e.g. aroma of coffee) to signalling danger (e.g. smoke). Loss of smell is related to a range of social and emotional impairments, including elevated rates of depression, social isolation, and relationship difficulties. The COVID-19 pandemic causes transient smell loss, providing a novel opportunity to study one of our least understood senses. My first aim is to examine pathways linking olfactory loss to social and emotional impairments. I will recruit a prospective cohort of adults with recent onset of olfactory dysfunction and no flu-like symptoms (N=300) as well as a control cohort (N=100). Participants will be assessed over eight weeks, covering the typical period for olfactory recovery in COVID-19 patients. This data will provide a first-ever look at how within-person changes in olfaction relate to changes in social and emotional wellbeing. My second aim is to develop a brief, behavioral intervention by conducting a randomized trial focused on the benefit to participants from an online intervention. After refinement, this intervention will be offered freely, and findings will inform efforts to improve mental health for people with olfactory dysfunctions.
Concussions are a major health issue in Canada. Adolescents are an at-risk population for concussions because they are in an age range that is often engaged in contact sports and high-risk activities. Microglia, the brain’s resident immune cells, respond to these injuries, causing an inflammatory response. Concussions can damage brain blood vessels, promoting the release of fibrinogen, a protein not present in the healthy brain. Fibrinogen interacts with microglia, promoting an inflammatory profile that can alter neuronal functioning, leading to behavioural deficits. This project will block fibrinogen’s interaction with microglia using an ecologically valid rodent model of concussion. We will assess short- and long-term memory with well-known behavioural tests. In addition, we will assess microglial activation and type using immunohistochemistry, and assessing neuronal connectivity using field electrophysiology. Adolescence is a period of significant development marked by rapid learning and substantial brain growth/maturation. As such, expanding and fully characterizing changes in brain circuitry mediated by fibrinogen/microglia interactions following concussion may provide avenues for preventative and therapeutic interventions.
Alterations in microorganisms present in the gut are associated with various mental health disorders. It is possible that this is due to changes in microglia, the immune cells that fight infections in the brain. Microglia can consume neurons, which are the cells that talk to one another in the brain. It is possible that changes in gut microorganisms make these immune cells to eat up brain cells excessively and uncontrollably, which causes mental illness. To understand this, we will infect laboratory mice with infectious agents during pregnancy and expose them to stress during adolescence. After testing the mice for behavioral alterations, we will use imaging techniques to assess how gut microorganisms can influence microglia. We will then determine if ketogenic treatments with a clinically approved high fat and low carbohydrate diet, showing benefits on the gut and brain, can reverse harmful effects on these immune cells in the brain. Together these investigations will provide novel insights into how the gut microorganisms can affect the brain immune cells and alter behavior, resulting in mental illnesses. This research may provide new targets for the therapeutic management of mental health conditions that include schizophrenia.
In Canada, over 2 million people suffer from COPD, costing over $1.5 billion per year in direct expenditures. However, no existing therapy can reverse COPD’s disease progress. Alveolar macrophages (AMs) are the lungs’ dominant immune cells and perform critical functions, including fighting infection and tissue repair. Single-cell genomics technology can characterize AM phenotypes and reveal their roles in COPD. However, validating the relation between AM phenotypes and COPD clinical outcomes requires many patients, making the unscalable single-cell technology impractical to study such large cohorts. This issue motivated me to develop a cost-efficient approach to discover cell-phenotype biomarkers, using both high-resolution single-cell and low-cost bulk genomic technologies. I will develop novel statistical methods and software tools for this novel approach. The key deliverables are: 1) an experiment protocol, novel statistical methods, and the first software pipeline for cost-efficient deep-phenotyping of large clinical cohorts, to discover biomarkers for ANY diseases; 2) novel AM phenotype biomarkers as drug targets of immunotherapy for COPD or a genomics diagnostic test (medical device) to guide personalized COPD treatment.
While Canada is currently one out of four countries globally to have no national restriction in law, the 2016 UN Human Rights Commissioner’s report indicated a lack of access to abortion due to cost, knowledge, and geography. For Indigenous Women, Two-Spirit, and LGBTQIA+ people in Canada, additional barriers exist including colonialism and racism. Yet there is an alarming gap in the literature surrounding Indigenous peoples and abortion services — despite knowing that one in three people in Canada will experience an abortion in their reproductive lifetime. The goal of this program of research is to build on existing community knowledge and strengths, advance knowledge around, and remove barriers to abortion services for Indigenous Women, Two-Spirit, and LGBTQIA+ people in Canada. Guided by an Indigenous feminist framework that acknowledges the intersectional experiences of Indigenous women, Two-Sprit, and LGBTQIA+ peoples and abortion access, this program of research will apply an Indigenous methodology to investigate experiences, gather knowledge, and co-develop resources to improve the abortion access gap among Indigenous peoples.
The virus causing COVID-19 can invade the brain, raising concern over long-term impacts on thinking abilities. We aim to identify long-term impacts on these cognitive abilities in those who have had COVID-19, and pinpoint factors that predict long-term outcomes. Adults positive for COVID-19 and those with no evidence of infection, are completing a series of cognitive and psychological tests in a current study. The proposed project will follow these individuals over time, with one and three-year follow-ups to examine changes in cognition across time. We will examine group differences in cognition, mental health, and other factors at each time point, determine if one or more cognitive profiles (clusters) characterize COVID-19 positive individuals, examine changes in these profiles across time, and test a screening measure to detect these cognitive difficulties. Findings will inform clinicians (e.g. neurologists, rehabilitation specialists) on trajectory of recovery of function and inform healthcare service provision in BC. Results will help ensure long-term impacts of infection are appropriately addressed, so those affected can efficiently resume complex activities requiring cognitive effort (e.g. employment, academic pursuits).
Does when we eat make a difference to our health? We know that food choices can impact cancer risk but what if the timing plays a role as well? Evidence shows that fasting may slow cancer growth through a process called autophagy. Through an interdisciplinary research team, I am currently running a small trial testing the effects of intermittent fasting (IF) in patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL)/small lymphocytic lymphoma (SLL) at BCC-Victoria who are not on anti-cancer treatment. Specifically, I am asking whether IF regimens, differing in fasting timing and duration, stimulates autophagy, improves quality of life, impacts gut microbiome, and/or results in clinical benefit (i.e. reduced lymphocyte count). I am also following participants’ safety, ability to follow the fast, and fasting preferences. While early results look promising, I propose growing this study into a larger trial with three phases to clarify the effects of IF on cancer and the microbiome. Understanding these effects may help discover simple diet recommendations for patients with cancer that cause a response in cancer cells or slow cancer progression, are safe and reduce treatment side effects when used alongside current, standard treatments.
Despite advancements in HIV treatment and care, HIV stigma remains a challenge today. “HIV In My Day” is a community-based research project that has collected and digitally archived 100+ interviews with long-term HIV survivors and caregivers across British Columbia. It is crucial to share these stories more widely with communities who are still disproportionately impacted by HIV/AIDS as well as healthcare providers who serve these communities in order to continue destigmatizing HIV.
In collaboration with “In My Day”, a verbatim theatre production adapted from these stories, our proposed knowledge translation activities will be part of a larger arts-based event in December 2022 at The Cultch in Vancouver, including post-show interactive audience engagement; multimedia presentations of the findings from “HIV In My Day”; intergenerational forums with “HIV In My Day” participants; storytelling workshops for people living with HIV; performances of the “Viral Monologues”.
Together these activities will benefit attendees, including community members and healthcare providers, by teaching HIV history, building storytelling skills, and fostering intergenerational dialogue around HIV within and between affected communities.
Team members: Ben Klassen (Community-Based Research Centre); Michael Montess (University of Victoria); Kelli Stajduhar (University of Victoria); John Paul Catungal (University of British Columbia); Leah Tidey (University of Victoria); Rick Waines
The brain is a metabolically demanding organ . Mismatch between blood flow and demand (from neurons) leads to a disruption and in extreme cases injury. Because the smallest blood vessels in the brain are narrow, they are prone to becoming obstructed by circulating cells and debris. This is exacerbated in Diabetics, with “sticky” blood vessels. The cells of blood vessels, endothelial cells, are more than just “pipes”, they form large physically connected networks between themselves. An important regulator of these networks, and a signal to communicate between them, is waves of calcium flowing into cells, which can propagate between these cells. How Diabetes affects these networks of blood vessels, and in turn impact the health of the brain is unknown. Thanks to new genetic tools with state of the art microscopes, we can directly observe these calcium fluxes into endothelial cells in the living, awake, mouse brain, and especially when these blood vessels become occluded. Combined with simultaneous monitoring of blood flow and neural activity I will be able to directly measure concurrent changes in brain activity, blood flow and calcium fluxes to investigate these dynamics in the living healthy or Diabetic mammalian brain.
