Publications by authors named "Humphreys K"

Mammographic density (MD) is a well-established risk factor for breast cancer. Whether MD influences the tumor phenotype remains to be clarified. Previous studies are highly inconsistent and most lack important covariate information.

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Examining personality and psychopathological symptoms among unaccompanied refugee minors (URMs), we measured intra-individual dimensions (repression and correlates thereof) usually associated with resilience. Forty-one URMs completed the Weinberger Adjustment Inventory (WAI), assessing personality, and the Youth Self-Report (YSR), describing current symptoms. URMs endorsed high levels of Repressive Defensiveness, Denial of Distress, and Restraint; unexpectedly, URMs reported high Distress and reduced Happiness (WAI, p's < 0.

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Objective: This study assessed changes since 2007 at Veterans Health Administration (VHA) facilities (N=129) in use of the medications approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for treatment of alcohol use disorders.

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In altricial species, like the human, the caregiver, very often the mother, is one of the most potent stimuli during development. The distinction between mothers and other adults is learned early in life and results in numerous behaviors in the child, most notably mother-approach and stranger wariness. The current study examined the influence of the maternal stimulus on amygdala activity and related circuitry in 25 developing children (n = 13) and adolescents (n = 12), and how this circuitry was associated with attachment-related behaviors.

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The goal of this study is to examine levels of oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) and conduct disorder (CD) in four groups of children: attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) only, anxiety only, ADHD and anxiety, and controls (i.e., non-ADHD youth).

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Introduction: Over the last decade several breast cancer risk alleles have been identified which has led to an increased interest in individualised risk prediction for clinical purposes.

Methods: We investigate the performance of an up-to-date 18 breast cancer risk single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), together with mammographic percentage density (PD), body mass index (BMI) and clinical risk factors in predicting absolute risk of breast cancer, empirically, in a well characterised Swedish case-control study of postmenopausal women. We examined the efficiency of various prediction models at a population level for individualised screening by extending a recently proposed analytical approach for estimating number of cases captured.

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Diet-derived butyrate, a histone deacetylase inhibitor (HDI), decreases proliferation and increases apoptosis in colorectal cancer (CRC) cells via epigenetic changes in gene expression. Other HDIs such as suberoylanilide hydroxamic acid (SAHA) and trichostatin A (TSA) have similar effects. This study examined the role of microRNAs (miRNAs) in mediating the chemo-protective effects of HDIs, and explored functions of the oncogenic miR-17-92 cluster.

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The Obama Administration is striving to promote both public health and public safety by improving the public policy response to criminal offenders who have substance use disorders. This includes supporting drug courts, evidence-based probation and parole programs, addiction treatment and re-entry programs. Scientists and clinicians in the addiction field have a critical role to play in this much-needed effort to break the cycle of addiction, crime and incarceration.

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Debates about which policy initiatives can prevent or reduce the damage that illicit drugs cause to the public good are rarely informed by scientific evidence. Fortunately, evidence-based interventions are increasingly being identified that are capable of making drugs less available, reducing violence in drug markets, lessening misuse of legal pharmaceuticals, preventing drug use initiation in young people, and reducing drug use and its consequences in established drug users. We review relevant evidence and outline the likely effects of fuller implementation of existing interventions.

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Cognitive deficits and particularly deficits in working memory (WM) capacity are common features in neuropsychiatric disorders. Understanding the underlying mechanisms through which WM capacity can be improved is therefore of great importance. Several lines of research indicate that dopamine plays an important role not only in WM function but also for improving WM capacity.

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Aims: Heavy drinkers tend to overestimate how much others drink (normative fallacy), at least in college samples. Little research has been conducted to evaluate whether normative misperceptions about drinking extend beyond the college population. The present study explored normative misperceptions in an adult general population sample of drinkers.

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Although attentional control and memory change considerably across the life span, no research has examined how the ability to strategically remember important information (i.e., value-directed remembering) changes from childhood to old age.

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Patterns of genetic diversity have previously been shown to mirror geography on a global scale and within continents and individual countries. Using genome-wide SNP data on 5174 Swedes with extensive geographical coverage, we analyzed the genetic structure of the Swedish population. We observed strong differences between the far northern counties and the remaining counties.

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Relationships between health care process performance measures (PPMs) and outcomes can differ in magnitude and even direction for patients versus higher level units (e.g., health care facilities).

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This study examined whether the level of victim-offender relationship (VOR) moderated the relationship between peritraumatic fear and active resistance as well as the relationship between peritraumatic fear and posttraumatic stress symptom severity in a community sample of female rape survivors. One hundred thirty-five participants were interviewed about their emotional and behavioral responses during the rape and assessed for posttraumatic stress symptomatology within one month of the assault. Results indicated that peritraumatic fear was positively associated with active resistance, but only among survivors of acquaintance rape.

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Given that many studies have reported that the costs of substance use disorder (SUD) treatment are more than offset by other savings (e.g., in health care, in criminal justice, in foster care), why haven't health care system managers rushed to expand treatment? This article attempts to explain this puzzling discrepancy by analyzing 1998-2006 data from the national Veterans Affairs (VA) health care system.

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The goal of this research was to understand why some people use online interventions for drinking problems, whereas others with comparable access to the interventions do not. As part of a randomized controlled trial, 92 participants in the experimental condition were provided access to a password-protected version of a Web-based personalized feedback intervention (the Check Your Drinking [CYD] screener, www.CheckYourDrinking.

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Aims: To inform policy makers on available options for improving the effectiveness of treatments for substance use disorders and to stimulate debate about treatment improvement strategies among public officials, clinical providers, care managers, service users, families and researchers.

Methods:   We draw on the scientific literature and our public policy experiences in two countries (the United Kingdom and the United States) to give an overview of policies which may improve care for individuals with substance use disorders. We divide such policies into 'process-focused quality improvement strategies' that attempt to change some aspect of treatment (e.

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Breast cancers demonstrate substantial biological, clinical and etiological heterogeneity. We investigated breast cancer risk associations of eight susceptibility loci identified in GWAS and two putative susceptibility loci in candidate genes in relation to specific breast tumor subtypes. Subtypes were defined by five markers (ER, PR, HER2, CK5/6, EGFR) and other pathological and clinical features.

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Introduction: Breast cancer is a complex disease and may be sub-divided into hormone-responsive (estrogen receptor (ER) positive) and non-hormone-responsive subtypes (ER-negative). Some evidence suggests that heterogeneity exists in the associations between coffee consumption and breast cancer risk, according to different estrogen receptor subtypes. We assessed the association between coffee consumption and postmenopausal breast cancer risk in a large population-based study (2,818 cases and 3,111 controls), overall, and stratified by ER tumour subtypes.

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Non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) represents a diverse group of hematological malignancies, of which follicular lymphoma (FL) is a prevalent subtype. A previous genome-wide association study has established a marker, rs10484561 in the human leukocyte antigen (HLA) class II region on 6p21.32 associated with increased FL risk.

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