Perioperative opioid use and misuse.

Prescribed opioid misuse in North America is a public health crisis, with huge social, medical and economic repercussions. Surgery is an identified driver for persistent opioid use and misuse. The UK has also seen a surge in opioid consumption per capita and it is now necessary for primary and secondary care to work together to mitigate the problem of perioperative prescribed opioid misuse.

Perioperative diabetes care.

People with diabetes occupy approximately 18% of all acute inpatient hospital beds in the UK, compared with 6.5% of the general population. For those undergoing surgery, having diabetes is known to be associated with increased harms, however harm is defined.

Association Between Recreational Marijuana Legalization in the United States and Changes in Marijuana Use and Cannabis Use Disorder From 2008 to 2016.

Importance: Little is known about changes in marijuana use and cannabis use disorder (CUD) after recreational marijuana legalization (RML).

Objectives: To examine the associations between RML enactment and changes in marijuana use, frequent use, and CUD in the United States from 2008 to 2016.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This survey study used repeated cross-sectional survey data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (2008-2016) conducted in the United States among participants in the age groups of 12 to 17, 18 to 25, and 26 years or older.

Cannabis use disorder among people using cannabis daily/almost daily in the United States, 2002-2016.

Background: Cannabis use disorder (CUD) prevalence among people reporting past-year cannabis use declined from 2002-2016. We examined whether similar reductions in CUD were observed among people reporting daily/almost daily cannabis use. We expected that CUD prevalence among people reporting daily/almost daily use would not decrease.

The longitudinal effect of early-life sensation seeking on gambling and gambling problems among Puerto Rican young adults.

Sensation seeking has been proposed as a risk factor for gambling and gambling problems; however, existing evidence for a relationship between sensation seeking and gambling behaviors is inconclusive and data are lacking for emerging adults and racial and ethnic minorities. In this longitudinal study, we explored the association between developmental trajectories of sensation seeking in childhood and adolescence and gambling and gambling problems in early adulthood in individuals of Puerto Rican origin. Gambling data were collected during 2014-2018 from a subsample of participants in the Boricua Youth Study who were recruited in the South Bronx of New York City and in San Juan and Caguas, Puerto Rico.

Nudge, nudge, wink, wink: Nudging is giving reasons.

Nudges are, roughly, ways of tweaking the context in which agents choose in order to bring them to make choices that are in their own interests. Nudges are controversial: opponents argue that because they bypass our reasoning processes, they threaten our autonomy. Proponents respond that nudging, and therefore this bypassing, is inevitable and pervasive: if we do not nudge ourselves in our own interests, the same bypassing processes will tend to work to our detriment.

A Phase 1 study of BAL101553, a novel tumor checkpoint controller targeting microtubules, administered as 48-h infusion in adult patients with advanced solid tumors.

Purpose BAL101553, the prodrug of the microtubule-destabilizer BAL27862, previously showed signs of antitumor activity when administered as a 2-h infusion, but its use was limited by vascular toxicity. We investigated an alternative dosing strategy aimed at improving the safety profile of BAL101553. Methods This multicenter, open-label, Phase 1 dose-escalation study used a 3 + 3 design to determine the maximum tolerated dose (MTD), dose-limiting toxicities (DLTs), pharmacokinetics, and antitumor activity of BAL101553 administered as a 48-h IV infusion on Days 1, 8, and 15 of a 28-day cycle.

Taking Responsibility for Responsibility.

Governments, physicians, media and academics have all called for individuals to bear responsibility for their own health. In this article, I argue that requiring those with adverse health outcomes to bear responsibility for these outcomes is a bad basis for policy. The available evidence strongly suggests that the capacities for responsible choice, and the circumstances in which these capacities are exercised, are distributed alongside the kinds of goods we usually talk about in discussing distributive justice, and this distribution significantly explains why people make bad health choices.

Barriers and Facilitators to the Implementation of a Mobile Insulin Titration Intervention for Patients With Uncontrolled Diabetes: A Qualitative Analysis.

Background: In 2016, a short message service text messaging intervention to titrate insulin in patients with uncontrolled type 2 diabetes was implemented at two health care facilities in New York City.

Objective: This study aimed to conduct a qualitative evaluation assessing barriers to and the facilitators of the implementation of the Mobile Insulin Titration Intervention (MITI) program into usual care.

Methods: We conducted in-depth interviews with 36 patients enrolled in the MITI program and the staff involved in MITI (n=19) in the two health care systems.

Association of US Medical Marijuana Laws With Nonmedical Prescription Opioid Use and Prescription Opioid Use Disorder.

Importance: Between 1997 and 2017, the United States saw increases in nonmedical prescription opioid use and its consequences, as well as changes in marijuana policies. Ecological-level research hypothesized that medical marijuana legalization may reduce prescription opioid use by allowing medical marijuana as an alternative.

Objectives: To investigate the association of state-level medical marijuana law enactment with individual-level nonmedical prescription opioid use and prescription opioid use disorder among prescription opioid users and to determine whether these outcomes varied by age and racial/ethnic groups.

Are Free Will Believers Nicer People? (Four Studies Suggest Not).

Free will is widely considered a foundational component of Western moral and legal codes, and yet current conceptions of free will are widely thought to fit uncomfortably with much research in psychology and neuroscience. Recent research investigating the consequences of laypeople's free will beliefs (FWBs) for everyday moral behavior suggests that stronger FWBs are associated with various desirable moral characteristics (e.g.

Aminomethylene-Phosphonate Analogue as a Cu(II) Chelator: Characterization and Application as an Inhibitor of Oxidation Induced by the Cu(II)-Prion Peptide Complex.

Recently, we reported on a series of aminomethylene-phosphonate (AMP) analogues, bearing one or two heterocyclic groups on the aminomethylene moiety, as promising Zn(II) chelators. Given the strong Zn(II) binding properties of these compounds, they may find useful applications in metal chelation therapy. With a goal of inhibiting the devastating oxidative damage caused by prion protein in prion diseases, we explored the most promising ligand, {bis[(1-imidazol-4-yl)methyl]amino}methylphosphonic acid, AMP-(Im), , as an inhibitor of the oxidative reactivity associated with the Cu(II) complex of prion peptide fragment 84-114.

IQSEC2-Associated Intellectual Disability and Autism.

Mutations in cause intellectual disability (ID), which is often accompanied by seizures and autism. A number of studies have shown that IQSEC2 is an abundant protein in excitatory synapses and plays an important role in neuronal development as well as synaptic plasticity. Here, we review neuronal IQSEC2 signaling with emphasis on those aspects likely to be involved in autism.

Development and Validation of a New Risk Prediction Score for Life-Threatening Ventricular Tachyarrhythmias in Laminopathies.

Background: An accurate estimation of the risk of life-threatening (LT) ventricular tachyarrhythmia (VTA) in patients with LMNA mutations is crucial to select candidates for implantable cardioverter-defibrillator implantation.

Methods: We included 839 adult patients with LMNA mutations, including 660 from a French nationwide registry in the development sample, and 179 from other countries, referred to 5 tertiary centers for cardiomyopathies, in the validation sample. LTVTA was defined as (1) sudden cardiac death or (2) implantable cardioverter defibrillator-treated or hemodynamically unstable VTA.

A retrospective analysis of characteristic features of responder patients to autologous serum eye drops in routine care.

Purpose: Autologous serum eye drops (ASEDs) are used worldwide to treat dry eye disease (DED). However, the biological composition of ASEDs has not been well investigated, and effectiveness predictive factors remain to be identified. The main objective of this study was to compare the response of patients treated with ASEDs biologically characterized and used for DED routine care.

Loss of Cajal bodies in motor neurons from patients with novel mutations in VRK1.

Distal hereditary motor neuropathies (dHMNs) are a heterogeneous group of diseases, resembling Charcot-Marie-Tooth syndromes, but characterized by an exclusive involvement of the motor part of the peripheral nervous system. Here, we describe two new compound heterozygous mutations in VRK1, the vaccinia-related kinase 1 gene, in two siblings from a Lebanese family, affected with dHMN associated with upper motor neurons (MNs) signs. The mutations lead to severely reduced levels of VRK1 by impairing its stability, and to a shift of nuclear VRK1 to cytoplasm.