Date of Award

1-1-2011

Document Type

Campus Access Thesis

Department

Epidemiology and Biostatistics

Sub-Department

Epidemiology

First Advisor

Myriam E Torres

Abstract

Cardiovascular diseases (CVD) is worldwide problem, which has many risk factors including age, gender, race, family history of CVD, hypertension, obesity, dyslipidemia, diet and physical activity. WISEWOMAN is a new program in SC, which provides screening and lifestyle interventions to 40-64 years old, low-income, uninsured, or under-insured women. In this thesis, we describe the program and characteristics of participants in SC. Comparisons of women aged between 40-46 and 47-64 years old, registered in Region 4 and Region 6, and received lifestyle intervention and did not received lifestyle intervention are implemented in the analysis. We illustrated the risk factors of CVD in the WISEWOMAN program, proved the appropriateness of only including women aged 47-64 years old and analyzed the difference of risk factors existed between women received lifestyle intervention and did not received intervention.

At the nano scale, thermally responsive Pluronic F127 based nanocapsules using chitosan as the crosslinker were synthesized. The Pluronic F127-chitosan nanocapsules were found to have excellent biocompatibility, presumably due to the biocompatible nature of the two constituent polymers. In particular, Pluronic F127 has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for use as food additives and pharmaceutical ingredients. Moreover, the nanocapsules were found to be capable of not only encapsulating small hydrophilic molecules for intracellular delivery but achieving temperature controlled release of the small molecules. By breaking up the endosomal membrane through temperature-dependent volume change of the nanocapsule, this novel nanomaterial may be used to achieve cytosol-specific delivery of small anticancer drugs and therapeutic agents for improved cancer treatment.

Rights

© 2011, Lujing Zhan

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