Pain as bad as you can imagine or extremely severe pain? A randomized controlled trial comparing two pain scale anchors.

Background: A common method of pain assessment is the numerical rating scale, where patients are asked to rate their pain on a scale from 0 to 10, where 0 is "no pain" and 10 is "pain as bad as you can imagine". We hypothesize such language is suboptimal as it involves a test of a cognitive skill, imagination, in the assessment of symptom severity.

Methods: We used a large-scale online research registry, ResearchMatch, to conduct a randomized controlled trial to compare the distributions of pain scores of two different pain scale anchors.

Incidental Findings from 16,400 Brain MRI Examinations of Research Volunteers.

Background And Purpose: Incidental findings are discovered in neuroimaging research, ranging from trivial to life-threatening. We describe the prevalence and characteristics of incidental findings from 16,400 research brain MRIs, comparing spontaneous detection by nonradiology scanning staff versus formal neuroradiologist interpretation.

Materials And Methods: We prospectively collected 16,400 brain MRIs (7782 males, 8618 females; younger than 1 to 94 years of age; median age, 38 years) under an institutional review board directive intended to identify clinically relevant incidental findings.

Adiponectin Associates with Rheumatoid Arthritis Risk in Overweight and Obesity Independently of Other Adipokines.

We recently reported that increased serum adiponectin was associated with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) risk in subjects with obesity. We hereby aim to determine if other adipokines associate with RA risk and if the association between adiponectin and RA is independent of other adipokines. Two nested-case control studies were performed in two different cohorts: 82 participants of the Swedish Obese Subjects (SOS) study who developed RA during follow-up matched with 410 controls, and 88 matched pairs from the Medical Biobank of Northern Sweden.

Life Expectancy after Bariatric Surgery in the Swedish Obese Subjects Study.

Background: Obesity shortens life expectancy. Bariatric surgery is known to reduce the long-term relative risk of death, but its effect on life expectancy is unclear.

Methods: We used the Gompertz proportional hazards regression model to compare mortality and life expectancy among patients treated with either bariatric surgery (surgery group) or usual obesity care (control group) in the prospective, controlled Swedish Obese Subjects (SOS) study and participants in the SOS reference study (reference cohort), a random sample from the general population.

9p21.3 Coronary Artery Disease Locus Identifies Patients With Treatment Benefit From Bariatric Surgery in the Nonrandomized Prospective Controlled Swedish Obese Subjects Study.

Background: Sequence variation at chromosome 9p21.3 accounts for 20% of myocardial infarctions (MIs) in several populations. Whereas the risk conferred by the 9p21.

Noninvasive Quantification of Pressure-Volume Loops From Brachial Pressure and Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance.

Background: Pressure-volume (PV) loops provide a wealth of information on cardiac function but are not readily available in clinical routine or in clinical trials. This study aimed to develop and validate a noninvasive method to compute individualized left ventricular PV loops.

Methods: The proposed method is based on time-varying elastance, with experimentally optimized model parameters from a training set (n=5 pigs), yielding individualized PV loops.

Thermogenic activity of UCP1 in human white fat-derived beige adipocytes.

Heat-producing beige/brite (brown-in-white) adipocytes in white adipose tissue have the potential to suppress metabolic disease in mice and hold great promise for the treatment of obesity and type 2 diabetes in humans. Here, we demonstrate that human adipose-derived stromal/progenitor cells (hASCs) from subcutaneous white adipose tissue can be efficiently converted into beige adipocytes. Upon pharmacological activation of peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-γ, hASC-derived adipocytes activated beige fat-selective genes and a brown/beige fat-selective electron transport chain gene program.

Outcomes 1 year after thrombus aspiration for myocardial infarction.

Background: Routine intracoronary thrombus aspiration before primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) in patients with ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) has not been proved to reduce short-term mortality. We evaluated clinical outcomes at 1 year after thrombus aspiration.

Methods: We randomly assigned 7244 patients with STEMI to undergo manual thrombus aspiration followed by PCI or to undergo PCI alone, in a registry-based, randomized clinical trial.

The effect of intracerebroventricularly administered GABA on brain monoamine metabolism.

Intracerebroventricular injection of gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) was performed in male rats and the brain monoamines, 5-hydroxyindoleacetic acid (5-HIAA), tyrosine and tryptophan levels were measured. GABA induced within 30 min a marked dose-dependent increase in the brain contents of dopamine (DA), serotonin (5-HT), tyrosine and tryptophan, while noradrenaline (NA) was lowered. Large doses of GABA, i.