The Financial Cost of Medical Assistant Turnover in an Academic Family Medicine Center.

Introduction: Primary care clinics increasingly hire medical assistants (MAs) to perform a variety of clinical and administrative tasks. Anecdotal reports suggest that MA turnover is high, but no studies to date have calculated the rate or cost of MA turnover. The purpose of this study was to calculate the rate of MA turnover and associated costs in a single, large academic Family Medicine clinic.

Use of the 5 As for Teen Alcohol Use.

Clinical guidelines recommend addressing adolescent alcohol use in primary care; the 5 As (Ask, Advise, Assess, Assist, Arrange) may be a useful model for intervention. We audio-recorded 540 visits with 49 physicians and adolescents, compared alcohol disclosure rates in the encounter with those in a survey, and analyzed conversations for use of the 5 As and their relation to adolescent reports of drinking 3 months after the encounter. When physicians asked clear, nonleading questions, drinkers were more likely to disclose alcohol use ( P = .

Detection of substrate-dependent conformational changes in the P450 fold by nuclear magnetic resonance.

Cytochrome P450 monooxygenases typically catalyze the insertion of one atom of oxygen from O2 into unactivated carbon-hydrogen and carbon-carbon bonds, with concomitant reduction of the other oxygen atom to H2O by NAD(P)H. Comparison of the average structures of the camphor hydroxylase cytochrome P450(cam) (CYP101) obtained from residual dipolar coupling (RDC)-restrained molecular dynamics (MD) in the presence and absence of substrate camphor shows structural displacements resulting from the essential collapse of the active site upon substrate removal. This collapse has conformational consequences that extend across the protein structure, none of which were observed in analogous crystallographic structures.

The receptor for advanced glycation end products mediates lung endothelial activation by RBCs.

The receptor for advanced glycation end products (RAGE) is a multiligand pattern recognition receptor implicated in multiple disease states. Although RAGE is expressed on systemic vascular endothelium, the expression and function of RAGE on lung endothelium has not been studied. Utilizing in vitro (human) and in vivo (mouse) models, we established the presence of RAGE on lung endothelium.