Association of Physician Management Companies and Private Equity Investment With Commercial Health Care Prices Paid to Anesthesia Practitioners.

Importance: Physician management companies (PMCs), often backed by private equity (PE), are increasingly providing staffing and management services to health care facilities, yet little is known of their influence on prices.

Objective: To study changes in prices paid to practitioners (anesthesiologists and certified registered nurse anesthetists) before and after an outpatient facility contracted with a PMC.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This retrospective cohort study used difference-in-differences methods to compare price changes before and after a facility contracted with a PMC with facilities that did not and to compare differences between PMCs with and without PE investment.

Chronic memantine decreases nicotine self-administration in rats.

Neurobehavioral bases of tobacco addiction and nicotine reinforcement are complex, involving more than only nicotinic cholinergic or dopaminergic systems. Memantine is an NMDA glutamate antagonist used to improve cognitive function in people with Alzheimer's disease. Glutamate may be an important component of the reinforcing effects of nicotine, so memantine was evaluated as a potential smoking cessation aid.

Gestational exposure to nicotine and/or benzo[a]pyrene causes long-lasting neurobehavioral consequences.

Tobacco smoke is a complex mixture that includes thousands of compounds. Previously, we have found that gestational exposure to the complex mixture of tobacco smoke extract caused long-term neurobehavioral impairments. In this study, we examined the interaction of two of the most biologically active, nicotine and benzo[a]pyrene (BaP).