Personality Feedback With Tailored Self-Care Recommendations Improves Self-Efficacy for Cancer Management: A Randomized Controlled Trial.

Objective: To test whether a personality feedback intervention improves three domains of cancer self-management: self-awareness, self-efficacy, and positive affect.

Methods: From 11/2020-02/2021, 372 adults diagnosed with cancer participated in a randomized controlled trial (RCT) of an intervention that entailed reading a brief personality-related excerpt during an online survey. Eligibility included self-reported age ≥ 18 years, current or past cancer diagnosis, and ability to read English.

Barriers, blocks, and barricades: Disparities to access of palliative care in cancer care.

Palliative care (PC) is specialized medical care for people living with a serious illness. PC models have stressed pain and symptom management, communication that is patient- and family-centric and longitudinal support for families living with serious illness that is contiguous across multiple settings. Despite the benefits that PC provides from a patient, family and quality of care standpoint, several barriers and disparities exist.

Personality and Self-efficacy for Illness Management in Cancer.

Objectives: Self-efficacy for illness management is increasingly recognized as important for outcomes in cancer. We examined whether The Big Five personality dimensions were associated with self-efficacy for illness management and hypothesized that patients who were less neurotic and more conscientious would have better self-efficacy.

Methods: Adults with cancer completed a cross-sectional survey that included the Mini-International Personality Item Pool (IPIP) and three subscales of the Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) Self-Efficacy for Chronic Conditions: managing emotions, managing symptoms, and managing treatment and medication.

Patient-Caregiver Dyads & End-of-Life Care: Caregiver Personality Disrupts Gender-Based Norms.

Context: Gender and personality may individually impact end-of-life care. Men often receive more aggressive treatments than women near death, and personality - particularly openness - may be associated with increased care utilization when it diverges from traditional treatment norms. However, research has not examined the interaction of these variables in a dyadic context.

Cultivating community-based participatory research (CBPR) to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic: an illustrative example of partnership and topic prioritization in the food services industry.

Background: As an illustrative example of COVID-19 pandemic community-based participatory research (CBPR), we describe a community-academic partnership to prioritize future research most important to people experiencing high occupational exposure to COVID-19 - food service workers. Food service workers face key challenges surrounding (1) health and safety precautions, (2) stress and mental health, and (3) the long-term pandemic impact.

Method: Using CBPR methodologies, academic scientists partnered with community stakeholders to develop the research aims, methods, and measures, and interpret and disseminate results.

Mechanisms and shapes of causal exposure-response functions for asbestos in mesotheliomas and lung cancers.

This paper summarizes recent insights into causal biological mechanisms underlying the carcinogenicity of asbestos. It addresses their implications for the shapes of exposure-response curves and considers recent epidemiologic trends in malignant mesotheliomas (MMs) and lung fiber burden studies. Since the commercial amphiboles crocidolite and amosite pose the highest risk of MMs and contain high levels of iron, endogenous and exogenous pathways of iron injury and repair are discussed.

Emotional distress predicts palliative cancer care attitudes: The unique role of anger.

Objective: Although palliative care can mitigate emotional distress, distressed patients may be less likely to engage in timely palliative care. This study aims to investigate the role of emotional distress in palliative care avoidance by examining the associations of anger, anxiety, and depression with palliative care attitudes.

Methods: Patients (N = 454) with heterogeneous cancer diagnoses completed an online survey on emotional distress and palliative care attitudes.

Palliative Care TikTok: Describing the Landscape and Explaining Social Media Engagement.

Although palliative care programs are beneficial to patients and families, most of the public is unfamiliar with and underutilizes palliative services. TikTok, a fast-growing social media platform worldwide, allows users to share short live-recorded videos and could be used to educate the public about palliative care. This study characterized palliative care TikTok videos and determined characteristics associated with higher user engagement metrics (views, likes, comments, and shares).

Application of Terror Management Theory to End-Of-Life Care Decision-Making: A Narrative Literature Review.

Patients with serious illnesses often do not engage in discussions about end-of-life care decision-making, or do so reluctantly. These discussions can be useful in facilitating advance care planning and connecting patients to services such as palliative care that improve quality of life. Terror Management Theory, a social psychology theory stating that humans are motivated to resolve the discomfort surrounding their inevitable death, has been discussed in the psychology literature as an underlying basis of human decision-making and behavior.

Patient, caregiver, and oncologist predictions of quality of life in advanced cancer: Accuracy and associations with end-of-life care and caregiver bereavement.

Background: Informed treatment decision-making necessitates accurate prognostication, including predictions about quality of life.

Aims: We examined whether oncologists, patients with advanced cancer, and caregivers accurately predict patients' future quality of life and whether these predictions are prospectively associated with end-of-life care and bereavement.

Materials & Methods: We conducted secondary analyses of clinical trial data.

Scenario planning: a framework for mitigating uncertainty in implementing strategic behavioral medicine initiatives during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Scenario planned provides a useful framework for scientists proposing and implementing new projects during the COVID-19 pandemic and other uncertain events.”

Fear of Palliative Care: Roles of Age and Depression Severity.

Palliative care is underutilized due in part to fear and misunderstanding, and depression might explain variation in fear of palliative care. Informed by the socioemotional selectivity theory, we hypothesized that older adults with cancer would be less depressed than younger adults, and subsequently less fearful of utilizing palliative care. Patients predominately located in the United States with heterogeneous cancer diagnoses ( = 1095) completed the Patient-Reported Outcomes Information System (PROMIS) Depression scale and rated their fear of palliative care using the Palliative Care Attitudes Scale (PCAS).

Increasing Readiness for Early Integrated Palliative Oncology Care: Development and Initial Evaluation of the EMPOWER 2 Intervention.

Context: Early integrated palliative care improves quality of life, but palliative care programs are underutilized. Psychoeducational interventions explaining palliative care may increase patients' readiness for palliative care.

Objectives: To 1) collaborate with stakeholders to develop the EMPOWER 2 intervention explaining palliative care, 2) examine acceptability, 3) evaluate feasibility and preliminary efficacy.

Gentamicin vestibulotoxicity with modern systemic dosing regimens: a prospective study using video-oculography.

To determine the incidence of gentamicin vestibulotoxicity with current dosing regimens, and to evaluate the feasibility of routine video-oculography on all patients given gentamicin. In this prospective incidence study serial horizontal vestibulo-ocular reflex (HVOR) gain measurements were recorded using video-oculography on adult inpatients receiving intravenous gentamicin. The primary outcome was the proportion of patients developing impairment of their HVOR gain.

Mechanistic in vitro studies: What they have told us about carcinogenic properties of elongated mineral particles (EMPs).

In vitro studies using target and effecter cells of mineral-induced cancers have been critical in determining the mechanisms of pathogenesis as well as the properties of elongated mineral particles (EMPs) important in eliciting these responses. Historically, in vitro models of 'mutagenesis' and immortalized cell lines were first used to test the theory that EMPs were mutagenic to cells, and 'genotoxicity', as defined as damage to DNA often culminating in cell death, was observed in a dose-dependent fashion as responses of many cell types to a number of EMPs. As two-stage and multi-step models of cancer development emerged in the 1970s and 1980s, differentiated 3D organ cultures and monolayers of lung epithelial and mesothelial cells were used to probe the mechanisms of cancer development.

Crystalline silica alters Sulfatase-1 expression in rat lungs which influences hyper-proliferative and fibrogenic effects in human lung epithelial cells.

Lung epithelial cells are the first cell-type to come in contact with hazardous dust materials. Upon deposition, they invoke complex reactions in attempt to eradicate particles from the airways, and repair damage. The cell surface is composed of a heterogeneous network of matrix proteins and proteoglycans, which act as scaffold and control cell-signaling networks.

Comparison of the video head impulse test with the caloric test in patients with sub-acute and chronic vestibular disorders.

The aim of this prospective register-based study was to compare video Head Impulse Tests (vHIT) with caloric tests on 173 patients assessed by a tertiary Neurology referral centre who had been referred for investigation of dizziness or vertigo and whose symptom duration was one month or longer. Abnormal vHIT was defined as angular velocity gain (peak eye velocity/peak head velocity) less than 0.79 at 80 ms and 0.

The NLRP3 inflammasome in pathogenic particle and fibre-associated lung inflammation and diseases.

The concept of the inflammasome, a macromolecular complex sensing cell stress or danger signals and initiating inflammation, was first introduced approximately a decade ago. Priming and activation of these intracellular protein platforms trigger the maturation of pro-inflammatory chemokines and cytokines, most notably, interleukin-1β (IL-1β) and IL-18, to promulgate innate immune defenses. Although classically studied in models of gout, Type II diabetes, Alzheimer's disease, and multiple sclerosis, the importance and mechanisms of action of inflammasome priming and activation have recently been elucidated in cells of the respiratory tract where they modulate the responses to a number of inhaled pathogenic particles and fibres.

Effectiveness of a pressure-redistributing cushion for low- to medium-risk patients in care homes.

A small, non-controlled evaluation set out to assess the effectiveness of the Airospring AS200 cushion in preventing the development of pressure ulcers in patients in nursing/care home and hospice settings. Ten patients, assessed as being at low-to-medium risk of pressure ulceration, were recruited into the evaluation; the mean age was 82.7 years.