Chronic Bronchitis in COPD Patients Creates Worse Symptom Burden Regardless of the Presence of Bronchiectasis in the COPDGene Cohort.

Purpose: To assess whether the presence or absence of bronchiectasis has an impact on the patient-reported symptoms of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients.

Methods: The study included participants from the COPD Genetic Epidemiology Study (COPDGene®) cohort with available high-resolution chest tomography reporting the presence or absence of bronchiectasis (BE+/BE-) and survey data reporting the presence or absence of chronic bronchitis symptoms (CB+/CB-). Patient symptoms based on the St George's Respiratory Questionnaire (SGRQ) were then compared for the different groups.

Real-life experience with high-frequency chest wall oscillation vest therapy in adults with non-cystic fibrosis bronchiectasis.

Background: High frequency chest wall oscillation (HFCWO) has long been used for airway clearance for patients with cystic fibrosis. Only limited research has evaluated this therapy in adult patients with non-cystic fibrosis bronchiectasis (NCFB).

Methods: Data from 2596 patients from a registry of adult bronchiectasis patients using HFCWO therapy was used to evaluate hospitalization patterns before and after initiation of HFCWO therapy, as well as antibiotic use and self-reported metrics of quality of life.

Health-care utilization and expenditures among patients with comorbid bronchiectasis and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in US clinical practice.

Recent research suggests that bronchiectasis (BE) may be more common than previously believed and that comorbid chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is widespread in this patient population. Little is known about the economic burden among patients with BE, and less is known about the burden among those with comorbid BE + COPD. A retrospective matched-cohort design and data from a US health-care claims repository were employed.

Prevalence and incidence of noncystic fibrosis bronchiectasis among US adults in 2013.

Bronchiectasis is an incurable pulmonary disorder that is characterized pathologically by permanent bronchial dilatation and severe bronchial inflammation and clinically by chronic productive cough and recurrent infectious exacerbations; bronchiectasis often occurs in the presence of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. It is widely believed that increasing use of high-resolution computed tomography has led to a marked rise in the number of persons with diagnosed bronchiectasis in current US clinical practice; up-to-date evidence, however, is lacking. Using a retrospective cohort design and health-care claims data (2009-2013), we estimated the prevalence of bronchiectasis (noncystic fibrosis)-based on narrow case-finding criteria-to be 139 cases per 100,000 persons, to be higher among women versus men (180 vs.

The effects of a computer-based pregnancy, STD, and HIV prevention intervention: a nine-school trial.

A computer-based intervention was designed to change perceived threat, perceived efficacy, attitudes, and knowledge regarding pregnancy, STD, and HIV prevention in rural adolescents. The intervention, which was guided largely by the extended parallel process model (Witte, 1992), was implemented and evaluated in nine rural high schools using an institutional cycle pretest-posttest control-group design (Campbell & Stanley, 1963; Cook & Campbell, 1979). Eight-hundred eighty-seven ninth-graders completed the survey at both points in time.

Compositional maps of Saturn's moon Phoebe from imaging spectroscopy.

The origin of Phoebe, which is the outermost large satellite of Saturn, is of particular interest because its inclined, retrograde orbit suggests that it was gravitationally captured by Saturn, having accreted outside the region of the solar nebula in which Saturn formed. By contrast, Saturn's regular satellites (with prograde, low-inclination, circular orbits) probably accreted within the sub-nebula in which Saturn itself formed. Here we report imaging spectroscopy of Phoebe resulting from the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft encounter on 11 June 2004.