Project description:ObjectiveThis study examines the degree to which a married individual's health habits and use of preventive medical care are influenced by his or her spouse's behaviors.Study designUsing longitudinal data on individuals and their spouses, we examine changes over time in the health habits of each person as a function of changes in his or her spouse's health habits. Specifically, we analyze changes in smoking, drinking, exercising, cholesterol screening, and obtaining a flu shot.Data sourceThis study uses data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), a nationally representative sample of individuals born between 1931 and 1941 and their spouses. Beginning in 1992, 12,652 persons (age-eligible individuals as well as their spouses) from 7,702 households were surveyed about many aspects of their life, including health behaviors, use of preventive services, and disease diagnosis.SampleThe analytic sample includes 6,072 individuals who are married at the time of the initial HRS survey and who remain married and in the sample at the time of the 1996 and 2000 waves.Principal findingsWe consistently find that when one spouse improves his or her behavior, the other spouse is likely to do so as well. This is found across all the behaviors analyzed, and persists despite controlling for many other factors.ConclusionsSimultaneous changes occur in a number of health behaviors. This conclusion has prescriptive implications for developing interventions, treatments, and policies to improve health habits and for evaluating the impact of such measures.
Project description:Nutrigenomics is an emerging science which investigates a certain area of nutrition that uses molecular tools to search access and understand the several responses obtained through a certain diet applied between individual and population groups. The increased need for the use of personalised nutrition in patients is increasing and research is being made on its possible effects. However, research on nutrigenomics and in particular, obesity is still ongoing. Following a current metanalysis on thirty-eight nutrigenomics genes, it seems that a definite association between the genes usually examined in nutrigenomics testing and several diet-related diseases is lacking, even though there is a limited number of studies associating them. In 2014, literature search results in a great number of studies on several polymorphisms. This heterogeneity could only show the way towards new research aims. Nutrigenomics was born due to the need to move from Epidemiology and Physiology to Molecular Biology and Genetics. Currently, there are steps that need to be considered in order for nutrigenomics to be applied: the genes, the gene/protein network, and the strategy towards the determination of the nutrients' influence on gene/protein expression. It is certainly an interesting evolving science with many areas to be investigated further and from different perspectives, as it involves ethics, medicine, genetics and nutrition.
Project description:Systematic reviews answer specific questions based on primary literature. However, systematic reviews on the same topic frequently disagree, yet there are no approaches for understanding why at a glance. Our goal is to provide a visual summary that could be useful to researchers, policy makers, and health care professionals in understanding why health controversies persist in the expert literature over time. We present a case study of a single controversy in public health, around the question: "Is reducing dietary salt beneficial at a population level?" We define and visualize three new constructs: the overall evidence base, which consists of the evidence summarized by systematic reviews (the inclusion network) and the unused evidence (isolated nodes). Our network visualization shows at a glance what evidence has been synthesized by each systematic review. Visualizing the temporal evolution of the network captures two key moments when new scientific opinions emerged, both associated with a turn to new sets of evidence that had little to no overlap with previously reviewed evidence. Limited overlap between the evidence reviewed was also found for systematic reviews published in the same year. Future work will focus on understanding the reasons for limited overlap and automating this methodology for medical literature databases.
Project description:ImportancePatient-reported health data can facilitate clinical event capture in pragmatic clinical trials. However, few data are available on the fitness for use of patient-reported data in large-scale health research.ObjectiveTo evaluate the concordance of a set of variables reported by patients and available in the electronic health record as part of a pragmatic clinical trial.Design, setting, and participantsData from ADAPTABLE (Aspirin Dosing: A Patient-Centric Trial Assessing Benefits and Long-term Effectiveness), a pragmatic clinical trial, were used in a concordance substudy of a comparative effectiveness research trial. The trial randomized 15 076 patients with existing atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease in a 1:1 ratio to low- or high-dose aspirin from April 2016 through June 30, 2019.Main outcomes and measuresConcordance of data was evaluated from 4 domains (demographic characteristics, encounters, diagnoses, and procedures) present in 2 data sources: patient-reported data captured through an online portal and data from electronic sources (electronic health record data). Overall agreement, sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, negative predictive value, and κ statistics with 95% CIs were calculated using patient report as the criterion standard for demographic characteristics and the electronic health record as the criterion standard for clinical outcomes.ResultsOf 15 076 patients with complete information, the median age was 67.6 years (range, 21-99 years), and 68.7% were male. With the use of patient-reported data as the criterion standard, agreement (κ) was high for Black and White race and ethnicity but only moderate for current smoking status. Electronic health record data were highly specific (99.6%) but less sensitive (82.5%) for Hispanic ethnicity. Compared with electronic health record data, patient report of clinical end points had low sensitivity for myocardial infarction (33.0%), stroke (34.2%), and major bleeding (36.6%). Positive predictive value was similarly low for myocardial infarction (40.7%), stroke (38.8%), and major bleeding (21.9%). Coronary revascularization was the most concordant event by data source, with only moderate agreement (κ = 0.54) and positive predictive value. Agreement metrics varied by site for all demographic characteristics and several clinical events.Conclusions and relevanceIn a concordance substudy of a large, pragmatic comparative effectiveness research trial, sensitivity and chance-corrected agreement of patient-reported data captured through an online portal for cardiovascular events were low to moderate. Findings suggest that additional work is needed to optimize integration of patient-reported health data into pragmatic research studies.Trial registrationClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT02697916.
Project description:It remains controversial whether it is safe for recovering health care professionals to return to clinical practice after treatment for drug addiction. One specific component of reentry that remains particularly contentious is the use of pharmacotherapeutics, specifically buprenorphine, as opioid substitution therapy for health care professionals who wish to return to clinical work. Because health care professionals are typically engaged in safety-sensitive work with considerable consequences when errors occur, abstinence-based recovery should be recommended until studies demonstrate that it is safe to allow this population to practice while undergoing opioid substitution therapy.
Project description:In this article, we focus on the potential influence of a scientist's advocacy position on the public's perceived credibility of scientists as a whole. Further, we examine how the scientist's solution position (information only, non-controversial, and controversial) affects the public's perception of the scientist's motivation for sharing information about specific issues (flu, marijuana, climate change, severe weather). Finally, we assess how perceived motivations mediate the relationship between solution position and credibility. Using data from a quota sample of American adults obtained by Qualtrics (n = 2,453), we found that in some conditions advocating for a solution positively predicted credibility, while in one condition, it negatively predicted scientist credibility. We also found that the influence of solution position on perceived credibility was mediated by several motivation perceptions; most notably through perception that the scientist was motivated to: (a) serve the public and (b) persuade the public. Further results and implications are discussed.
Project description:The present investigation reports an attempt to synthesize naturally occurring α-cyclic tripeptide cyclo(Gly-l-Pro-l-Glu) 1, [cyclo(GPE)], previously isolated from the Ruegeria strain of bacteria with marine sponge Suberites domuncula. Three linear precursors, Boc-GPE(OBn)2, Boc-PE(OBn)G and Boc-E(OBn)GP, were synthesized using a solution phase peptide coupling protocol. Although cyclo(GPE) 1 was our original target, all precursors were dimerized and cyclized at 0 °C with high dilution to form corresponding α-cyclic hexapeptide, cyclo(GPE(OBn))27, which was then converted to cyclic hexapeptide cyclo(GPE)22. Cyclization at higher temperature induced racemization and gave cyclic tripeptide cyclo(GPDE(OBn)) 9. Structure characteristics of the newly synthesized cyclopeptides were determined using 1H-NMR, 13C-NMR and high-resolution mass spectrometry. The chemical shift values of carbonyls of 2 and 7 are larger than 170 ppm, indicating the formation of a cyclic hexapeptide.
Project description:India is revising its mental health legislation with the Indian Mental Healthcare Act 2017 (IMHA). When implemented, this legislation will apply to over 1.25 billion people. In 2005, the World Health Organization (WHO) published a Resource Book (WHO-RB) on mental health, human rights and legislation, including a checklist of 175 specific items to be addressed in mental health legislation or policy in individual countries. Even following the publication of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) (2006), the WHO-RB remains the most comprehensive checklist for mental health legislation available, rooted in UN and WHO documents and providing the most systematic, detailed framework for human rights analysis of mental health legislation. We sought to determine the extent to which the IMHA will bring Indian legislation in line with the WHO-RB.The IMHA and other relevant pieces of Indian legislation are compared to each of the items in the WHO-RB. We classify each item in a binary manner, as either concordant or not, and provide more nuanced detail in the text.The IMHA addresses 96/175 (55.4%) of the WHO-RB standards examined. When other relevant Indian legislation is taken into account, 118/175 (68.0%) of the standards are addressed in Indian law. Important areas of low concordance include the rights of families and carers, competence and guardianship, non-protesting patients and involuntary community treatment. The important legal constructs of advance directives, supported decision-making and nominated representatives are articulated in the Indian legislation and explored in this paper.In theory, the IMHA is a highly progressive piece of legislation, especially when compared to legislation in other jurisdictions subject to similar analysis. Along with the Indian Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act 2016, it will bring Indian law closely in line with the WHO-RB. Vague, opaque language is however, used in certain contentious areas; this may represent arrangement-focused rather than realisation-focused legislation, and lead to inadvertent limitation of certain rights. Finally, the WHO-RB checklist is an extremely useful tool for this kind of analysis; we recommend it is updated to reflect the CRPD and other relevant developments.