An Adaptive Behavioral Intervention for Weight Loss Management: A Randomized Clinical Trial.

Importance: Lifestyle interventions for weight loss are difficult to implement in clinical practice. Self-managed mobile health implementations without or with added support after unsuccessful weight loss attempts could offer effective population-level obesity management.

Objective: To test whether a wireless feedback system (WFS) yields noninferior weight loss vs WFS plus telephone coaching and whether participants who do not respond to initial treatment achieve greater weight loss with more vs less vigorous step-up interventions.

Estimating causal and time-varying effects of maternal smoking on youth smoking.

Introduction: Maternal smoking is a well-known risk factor for youth smoking, yet whether this relationship is causal remains unresolved. This study utilizes propensity score methods for causal inference to robustly account for shared risk factors between maternal and offspring smoking.

Methods: An 8-year longitudinal cohort of 900 adolescents in the Chicago area were followed starting from approximately age 15.

Momentary negative moods and being with friends precede cigarette use among Korean American emerging adults.

Introduction: The objective of this study was to determine contextual antecedents to smoking among Korean American emerging adult (KAEA) smokers using ecological momentary assessment. Based on extant theory and data documenting the importance of negative affect (NA) and social context, we examined the extent to which being with friends and NA independently and concomitantly were associated with the likelihood of subsequent smoking, over and beyond other known situational correlates of smoking.

Methods: Twenty-two KAEA daily smokers recorded their smoking events in real time and participated in short surveys implemented on mobile phones for 7 days.

PDA+: A Personal Digital Assistant for Obesity Treatment - an RCT testing the use of technology to enhance weight loss treatment for veterans.

Background: Obese adults struggle to make the changes necessary to achieve even modest weight loss, though a decrease in weight by as little as 10% can have significant health benefits. Failure to meet weight loss goals may in part be associated with barriers to obesity treatment. Wide-spread dissemination of evidence-based obesity treatment faces multiple challenges including cost, access, and implementing the programmatic characteristics on a large scale.

Familiality of polarity at illness onset in bipolar affective disorder.

Objective: Bipolar affective disorder is clinically heterogeneous, and clinical features that run in families may help define more homogeneous phenotypes. The authors sought to establish whether polarity at illness onset, which is related to severity and course, is a familial feature of bipolar affective disorder.

Method: The authors studied 971 subjects from 507 families ascertained through sibling pairs with bipolar I or schizoaffective bipolar disorder.

Randomized controlled trial for behavioral smoking and weight control treatment: effect of concurrent versus sequential intervention.

The authors compared simultaneous versus sequential approaches to multiple health behavior change in diet, exercise, and cigarette smoking. Female regular smokers (N = 315) randomized to 3 conditions received 16 weeks of behavioral smoking treatment, quit smoking at Week 5, and were followed for 9 months after quit date. Weight management was omitted for control and was added to the 1st 8 weeks for early diet (ED) and the final 8 weeks for late diet (LD).

A twin study of erectile dysfunction.

Background: The extent of genetic influence on erectile dysfunction (ED) is unknown. This study determines the contribution of heredity to ED in a sample of middle-aged men.

Methods: A classical twin study was conducted in the Vietnam Era Twin Registry, a national sample of male-male pairs (mean birth year, 1949) who served on active duty during the Vietnam era (1965-1975).