Preventing rheumatoid arthritis: Preferences for and predicted uptake of preventive treatments among high risk individuals.

Objective: To understand preferences for and estimate the likely uptake of preventive treatments currently being evaluated in randomized controlled trials with individuals at increased risk of developing rheumatoid arthritis (RA).

Methods: Focus groups were used to identify key attributes of potential preventive treatment for RA (reduction in risk of RA, how treatment is taken, chance of side effects, certainty in estimates, health care providers opinion). A web-based discrete choice experiment (DCE) was administered to people at-risk of developing RA, asking them to first choose their preferred of two hypothetical preventive RA treatments, and then between their preferred treatment and 'no treatment for now.

Perspectives of patients, first-degree relatives and rheumatologists on preventive treatments for rheumatoid arthritis: a qualitative analysis.

Background: There is growing evidence that it may be possible to identify people at high risk of developing rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Assuming that effective interventions were available, this could mean that treatments introduced in the pre-symptomatic phase could prevent or delay the onset of the disease. Our study aimed to identify the potential attributes involved in decision-making around whether or not to take preventive treatment for RA, in order to inform the development of a discrete choice experiment (DCE) to ascertain consumer preferences for a preventive treatment program for RA.

Communicating uncertainty in cancer prognosis: A review of web-based prognostic tools.

Objective To review how web-based prognosis tools for cancer patients and clinicians describe aleatory (risk estimates) and epistemic (imprecision in risk estimates) uncertainties. Methods We reviewed prognostic tools available online and extracted all uncertainty descriptions. We adapted an existing classification and classified each extracted statement by presentation of uncertainty.

High-Dose Opioid Prescribing and Opioid-Related Hospitalization: A Population-Based Study.

Aims: To examine the impact of national clinical practice guidelines and provincial drug policy interventions on prevalence of high-dose opioid prescribing and rates of hospitalization for opioid toxicity.

Design: Interventional time-series analysis.

Setting: Ontario, Canada, from 2003 to 2014.

Communicating Uncertainty in Benefits and Harms: A Review of Patient Decision Support Interventions.

Background: Interventions designed to help people deliberate and participate in their healthcare choices frequently describe uncertainty in potential benefits and harms. This uncertainty can be generalized to aleatory, or first-order uncertainty, represented by risk estimates, and epistemic, or second-order uncertainty, represented by imprecision in the risk estimates.

Objectives: The aim of this short communication was to review how patient decision support interventions (PDSIs) describe aleatory and epistemic uncertainty.

Gene expression analysis of overwintering mountain pine beetle larvae suggests multiple systems involved in overwintering stress, cold hardiness, and preparation for spring development.

Cold-induced mortality has historically been a key aspect of mountain pine beetle, Dendroctonus ponderosae Hopkins (Coleoptera: Curculionidae), population control, but little is known about the molecular basis for cold tolerance in this insect. We used RNA-seq analysis to monitor gene expression patterns of mountain pine beetle larvae at four time points during their overwintering period-early-autumn, late-autumn, early-spring, and late-spring. Changing transcript profiles over the winter indicates a multipronged physiological response from larvae that is broadly characterized by gene transcripts involved in insect immune responses and detoxification during the autumn.