Sophie Rand

• Data Operations Engineer at New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene

Background Intraoperative hemorrhage in cardiac surgery increases risk of morbidity and mortality. Low pre-operative and perioperative levels of fibrinogen, a key clotting factor, are associated with severity of hemorrhage and increased transfusion of blood components. The ability to supplement fibrinogen during hemorrhagic resuscitation is delayed...

Guidelines recommend high-sensitivity cardiac troponin (hs-cTn) for diagnosis of myocardial infarction. Use of hs-cTn is increasing across the U.S., but questions remain regarding clinical and operational impact. Prior studies have had methodologic limitations and yielded conflicting results. To evaluate the impact of transitioning from conventiona...

Gastrointestinal fungal dysbiosis is a hallmark of several diseases marked by systemic immune activation. Whether persistent pathobiont colonization during immune alterations and impaired gut barrier function has a durable impact on host immunity is unknown. We found that elevated levels of Candida albicans immunoglobulin G (IgG) antibodies marked...

Objective: Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and influenza viruses are contagious respiratory pathogens with similar symptoms but require different treatment and management strategies. This study investigated the differences in laboratory test result profiles between SARS-CoV-2 and influenza infected patients upon presen...

Pregnant patients have increased morbidity and mortality in the setting of SARS-CoV-2 infection. The exposure of pregnant patients in New York City to SARS-CoV-2 is not well understood due to early lack of access to testing and the presence of asymptomatic COVID-19 infections. Before the availability of vaccinations, preventative (shielding) measur...

Pregnant patients have increased morbidity and mortality in the setting of SARS-CoV-2 infection. The exposure of pregnant patients in New York City to SARS-CoV-2 is not well understood due to early lack of access to testing and the presence of asymptomatic COVID-19 infections. Before the availability of vaccinations, preventative (shielding) measur...

Background: Most research on severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection during pregnancy has been on acute infections with limited data on the effect of distant infection. Aim: We examined placental pathology and neonatal outcomes in distant SARS-CoV-2 infection earlier in pregnancy compared to acute infections late i...

We evaluated the performance of SARS-CoV-2 TaqMan real-time reverse-transcription PCR (RT-qPCR) assays (ThermoFisher) for detecting two nonsynonymous spike protein mutations, E484K and N501Y. Assay accuracy was evaluated by whole genome sequencing (WGS). Residual nasopharyngeal SARS-CoV-2 positive samples (N=510) from a diverse patient population i...

Objective To study how severity and progression of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) affect cytokine profiles in pregnant women. Materials and Methods 69 third-trimester, pregnant women were tested for COVID-19 infection and SARS-CoV-2 specific IgM and IgG antibodies. Patients were stratified according to SARS-CoV-2 Reverse Transcriptase-PCR (RT-PCR)...

Longitudinal studies are needed to evaluate the SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccine antibody response under "real-world" conditions. This longitudinal study investigated the quantity and quality of SARS-CoV-2 antibody response in 846 specimens from 350 subjects: comparing BNT162b2-vaccinated individuals (19 previously diagnosed with COVID-19 [RecoVax]; 49 neve...

Objectives We evaluated rotational thromboelastometry (ROTEM) tracings in 44 critically ill coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) patients, to determine whether there is a viscoelastic fingerprint and to test the hypothesis that the diagnosis and prediction of venous thromboembolism (VTE) would be enhanced by the addition of ROTEM testing. Measureme...

Introduction: Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and influenza virus are contagious respiratory pathogens with similar symptoms but require different treatment and management strategies. This study investigated whether laboratory blood tests can discriminate between SARS-CoV-2 and influenza infections at emergency departme...

Longitudinal studies are needed to evaluate the SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccine antibody response under real-world conditions. This longitudinal study investigated the quantity and quality of SARS-CoV-2 antibody response in 846 specimens from 350 subjects: comparing BNT162b2-vaccinated individuals (19 previously diagnosed with COVID-19 [RecoVax]; 49 never...

The response of the immune system to COVID-19 in end stage kidney disease patients who undergo kidney transplantation has yet to be described. We report data on 72 patients who underwent SARS-CoV-2 antibody testing both before and after kidney transplantation and were followed for a median of 186 days (range 83, 277). Of the 25 patients with a posi...

Background Low initial SARS-CoV-2 antibody titers dropping to undetectable levels within months after infection have raised concerns over long term immunity. Both the antibody levels and avidity of the antibody-antigen interaction should be examined to understand the quality of the antibody response. Methods A testing-on-a-probe “plus” panel (TOP-...

Importance Accumulating evidence suggests that children infected with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) are more likely to manifest mild symptoms and are at a lower risk of developing severe respiratory disease compared with adults. It remains unknown how the immune response in children differs from that of adolescents an...

Background Patients colonized with multidrug-resistant C. auris and discharged to a community setting can subsequently seek care in a different health care facility and might be a source of nosocomial transmission of C. auris. Methods We designed a case management pilot program for a cohort of New York City (NYC) residents who had a history of pos...

Objective To share progress on a custom spell-checker for emergency department chief complaint free-text data and demonstrate a spell-checker validation Shiny application.IntroductionEmergency department (ED) syndromic surveillance relies on a chief complaint, which is often a free-text field, and may contain misspelled words, syntactic errors, and...

Seasons provide variation in the beautiful colors that we see in nature and in food. This broad range of natural colors can be used in a dish to intensify the feeling of seasonality that the dish evokes. Guests can appreciate a dish more fully when it is completely matched by the season and nature seen in the surrounding environment. Natural colors...