Perceptions of Smoking Stigma Among African Americans: A Qualitative Study.

Introduction: African Americans/Blacks (AAB) are at increased risk for morbidity and mortality from smoking-related diseases including lung cancer (LC). Smoking stigma is believed to be a primary barrier to health care-seeking for people who smoke. Previous studies illustrate that perceptions of smoking vary across populations.

DiGA in Primary Care and the Influence of Patient-Related Factors - Results of a Survey of Family Doctors.

Background: In 2019, the Digital Healthcare Act created the legal basis for prescribable mobile health applications, referred to as DiGA (in German: Digitale Gesundheitsanwendungen), as a novel healthcare delivery option in Germany [1, 2].

Objectives: The aim of this study is to analyze the use of DiGA in primary care, focusing on the influence of socio-demographic characteristics of family doctors (FDs) and patient-related factors.

Methods: Pen-and-paper survey among 97 FDs in the district of Giessen, Hesse, Germany.

"Cancer's a demon": a qualitative study of fear and multilevel factors contributing to cancer treatment delays.

Purpose: Delays initiating cancer therapy are increasingly common, impact outcomes, and have implications for health equity. However, it remains unclear (1) whether patients' beliefs regarding acceptable diagnostic to treatment intervals align with current guidelines, and (2) to what degree psychological factors contribute to longer intervals. We conducted a qualitative study with patients and cancer care team members ("providers").

"I'm Going to Be Good to Me": Exploring the Role of Shame and Guilt in Patients With Type 2 Diabetes.

Objective: People with type 2 diabetes are likely to experience shame or guilt as they navigate through their disease. Previous research has shown that feelings of shame and guilt often exist within the clinician-patient relationship, often as a result of the complex care regimen required to achieve treatment goals. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore patients' experiences of shame and guilt in type 2 diabetes management and the impact their clinicians have on these experiences.

Learning from errors: Exploration of the monitoring learning effect.

The present study examined spontaneous detection and repair of naming errors in people with aphasia to advance a theoretical understanding of how monitoring impacts learning in lexical access. Prior work in aphasia has found that spontaneous repair, but not mere detection without repair, of semantic naming errors leads to improved naming on those same items in the future when other factors are accounted for. The present study sought to replicate this finding in a new, larger sample of participants and to examine the critical role of self-generated repair in this monitoring learning effect.

Medicare Beneficiary Factors Associated with Skilled Nursing Facility Lengths of Stay.

The objectives of this study are (1) to identify beneficiary-level characteristics associated with skilled nursing facility (SNF) length of stay (LOS), and (2) to determine if significant differences in LOS exist for vulnerable populations at the individual level or among nursing homes that serve a disproportionate share of vulnerable populations. This study employed 2014-2015 Medicare Long-Term Care Minimum Data Set (MDS v3.0) assessment, fee-for-service claims and enrollment, and 2014 Nursing Home Compare data to examine SNF LOS in Medicare beneficiaries.

Mapping articulatory and grammatical subcomponents of fluency deficits in post-stroke aphasia.

Fluent speech production is a critical aspect of language processing and is central to aphasia diagnosis and treatment. Multiple cognitive processes and neural subsystems must be coordinated to produce fluent narrative speech. To refine the understanding of these systems, measures that minimize the influence of other cognitive processes were defined for articulatory deficits and grammatical deficits.

Does naming accuracy improve through self-monitoring of errors?

This study examined spontaneous self-monitoring of picture naming in people with aphasia. Of primary interest was whether spontaneous detection or repair of an error constitutes an error signal or other feedback that tunes the production system to the desired outcome. In other words, do acts of monitoring cause adaptive change in the language system? A second possibility, not incompatible with the first, is that monitoring is indicative of an item's representational strength, and strength is a causal factor in language change.

Aromatic Amines Exert Contrasting Effects on the Anticoagulant Effect of Acetaldehyde upon APTT.

The pharmacological effects of amphetamine, procaine, procainamide, DOPA, isoproterenol, and atenolol upon activated partial thromboplastin time in the absence and presence of acetaldehyde have been investigated. In the absence of acetaldehyde, amphetamine and isoproterenol exhibit a procoagulant effect upon activated partial thromboplastin time, whereas atenolol and procaine display anticoagulant effects upon activated partial thromboplastin time. DOPA and procainamide do not alter activated partial thromboplastin time.

The influence of B-complex vitamins upon the prolongation of prothrombin time by acetaldehyde.

Alcoholism plays a major role in the insufficient utilization or deficiency of the vitamin B-complex molecules, and the pathologies resulting therefrom. Thiamine, pyridoxamine, and folic acid, each contain primary amine functional groups, whereas nicotinamide and vitamin B12 contain amide groups, each of which are potential reactants with acetaldehyde (AcH), the primary intermediate in the metabolism of ethanol. In this current study, it is reported that prothrombin time (PT), which is prolonged in a fraction of the alcoholic population, can be modified (in the laboratory) when several B-complex vitamins and AcH are added successively to human plasma or are premixed prior to the addition to plasma.

Polyamines detoxify the anticoagulant effect of acetaldehyde on prothrombin time.

Naturally occurring bioamines, such as putrescine, cadaverine, agmatine, spermidine, and spermine, were tested at pharmacological levels for their capacity to affect prothrombin time (PT). Each of the bioamines tested prolonged PT with decreasing orders of sensitivity being agmatine > spermidine > spermine > putrescine > cadaverine. The respective millimolar concentrations, which exhibited prolongation in statistically significant concentrations were 1, 3, 3, 6, and 10 mM, respectively.

A large, searchable, web-based database of aphasic performance on picture naming and other tests of cognitive function.

Many research questions in aphasia can only be answered through access to substantial numbers of patients and to their responses on individual test items. Since such data are often unavailable to individual researchers and institutions, we have developed and made available the Moss Aphasia Psycholinguistics Project Database: a large, searchable, web-based database of patient performance on psycholinguistic and neuropsychological tests. The database contains data from over 240 patients covering a wide range of aphasia subtypes and severity, some of whom were tested multiple times.

Neuroanatomical dissociation for taxonomic and thematic knowledge in the human brain.

It is thought that semantic memory represents taxonomic information differently from thematic information. This study investigated the neural basis for the taxonomic-thematic distinction in a unique way. We gathered picture-naming errors from 86 individuals with poststroke language impairment (aphasia).

Protamine sulfate stimulates degradation of factor Xa and the factor Xa-antithrombin complex.

The effect of protamine sulfate on factor Xa (FXa) and the factor Xa-antithrombin complex was studied via SDS-PAGE and Western blot analysis. Human factor Xa [(FXaα) ∼52 kDa, FXaβ ∼47 kDa] and human antithrombin (AT ∼55 kDa) form a primary (1°) complex at 109 and 104 kDa, a secondary (2°) complex at 99 and 95 kDa, and a tertiary (3°) complex at 66 and 62 kDa, as detected with polyclonal anti-FXa and anti-AT antibodies. Addition of protamine sulfate stimulates a transformation from free FXaα to FXaβ and degradation thence to inactive FXaγ (∼30 kDa), as well as transformation of FXaα-AT complexes to FXaβ-AT complexes.

Support for anterior temporal involvement in semantic error production in aphasia: new evidence from VLSM.

Semantic errors in aphasia (e.g., naming a horse as "dog") frequently arise from faulty mapping of concepts onto lexical items.

Anterior temporal involvement in semantic word retrieval: voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping evidence from aphasia.

Analysis of error types provides useful information about the stages and processes involved in normal and aphasic word production. In picture naming, semantic errors (horse for goat) generally result from something having gone awry in lexical access such that the right concept was mapped to the wrong word. This study used the new lesion analysis technique known as voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping to investigate the locus of lesions that give rise to semantic naming errors.

Interaction of biogenic amine hormones with acetaldehyde.

Dopamine (DA), epinephrine (EP), serotonin (5-HT), norepinephrine (NE), and histamine (H) are each hormones derived from aromatic or basic amino acids. Each contains primary or secondary amines, and all, except H, contain hydroxyl groups. These functional groups are capable of reacting with acetaldehyde (AcH), the primary product of ethanol metabolism.

Comparative effects of atrial polypeptide and neurohormone C on the interaction of factor Xa with antithrombin III.

The effects of atrial polypeptide and neurohormone C upon the interaction of human factor Xa (FXa) and human antithrombin III (ATIII) were followed by sodium dodecyl sulfate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. A pattern of bands consisting of a 1 degree duplex complex (FXaalpha-ATIII band of 109 kDa, FXabeta-ATIII band of 104 kDa), a 2 degree duplex complex (alpha band of 99 kDa, beta band of 95 kDa), a 3 degree duplex complex (alpha band of 66 kDa, beta band of 62 kDa), modified ATIII (ATIIIM, 58 kDa), native ATIII (55 kDa), FXaalpha (52 kDa), FXabeta (47 kDa), and a FXa degradation product (FXagamma, 35 kDa) was detected and quantitated. Preincubation of FXa, ATIII, or mixtures thereof with atrial polypeptide produced a shift from FXaalpha-ATIII to FXabeta-ATIII complexes and increases in both ATIIIM and FXagamma, reflecting degradation of the 1 degree and 2 degree complex to form the 3 degree complex.

Performance of an autonomous telemonitoring system in children and young adults with congenital heart diseases.

Background: Integrated telemonitoring systems controlling circulatory and electrical parameters in adults with an implanted pacemaker have shown to be advantageous during follow-up of this patient group. In children and young adults with a congenital heart disease (CHD), these systems have to cope with a diversity of varying arrhythmias and a broad range of intrinsic cardiac parameters. Additional problems arise from the patients' growth and anatomic anomalies.

Protamine inhibits formation of the covalent factor IXa-anti-thrombin complex.

The effect of protamine sulfate upon the covalent interaction of human factor IXa with anti-thrombin has been investigated by a quantitative SDS-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis procedure. Protamine sulfate inhibits the interaction of factor IXa with anti-thrombin upon preincubation with factor IXa, anti-thrombin, or a mixture of the two components. As a consequence of the presence of protamine sulfate, autolysis of factor IXa is promoted to generate a degradation product of a molecular weight (apparent) of 35 kDa.

Survival after surgery with cardiopulmonary bypass in low weight patients.

To evaluate risk factors for hospital death in patients weighing < 2.5 kg undergoing open-heart surgery, records of 34 consecutive low-weight patients operated on between December 1997 and November 2004 were reviewed. Mean weight was 2.

Anticoagulant activity of captopril.

The antihypertensive drug, captopril, exerted an anticoagulant effect upon clotting time as followed by prothrombin time (PT) and activated partial thromboplastin time (APTT), with prolongation of clotting observed at 4.25 x 10(-3) M and 4 x 10(-3) M captopril for PT and APTT, respectively, using commercial level I plasma. Utilizing level III plasmas, PT and APTT values were both prolonged by 4.

Effect of acetaldehyde upon cathepsin G and chymase. NRAS implications.

Hypertension is commonly observed in alcoholics. Both the renin-angiotensin system (RAS) and the non-renin-angiotensin system (NRAS) have been implicated in the dynamics of blood pressure maintenance. In bilaterally nephrectomized rats, acetaldehyde has been reported to enhance the generation of the rate-limiting angiotensin I (ANG I) in the plasma, and in humans it inhibits the activity of several angiotensinases (A, B, and M) in the serum, thereby promoting a hypertensive set of reactions.