Barriers and Facilitators to Harm Reduction for Opioid Use Disorder: A Qualitative Study of People With Lived Experience.

Study Objective: Although an increasing number of emergency departments (ED) offer opioid agonist treatment, naloxone, and other harm reduction measures, little is known about patient perspectives on harm reduction practices delivered in the ED. The objective of this study was to identify patient-focused barriers and facilitators to harm reduction strategies in the ED.

Methods: We conducted semistructured interviews with a convenience sample of individuals in Massachusetts diagnosed with opioid use disorder.

"Just give them a choice": Patients' perspectives on starting medications for opioid use disorder in the ED.

Objectives: Medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD) prescribed in the emergency department (ED) have the potential to save lives and help people start and maintain recovery. We sought to explore patient perspectives regarding the initiation of buprenorphine and methadone in the ED with the goal of improving interactions and fostering shared decision making (SDM) around these important treatment options.

Methods: We conducted semistructured interviews with a purposeful sample of people with opioid use disorder (OUD) regarding ED visits and their experiences with MOUD.

Cell cycle defects in polyhomeotic mutants are caused by abrogation of the DNA damage checkpoint.

Polycomb group (PcG) genes are required for heritable silencing of target genes. Many PcG mutants have chromatin bridges and other mitotic defects in early embryos. These phenotypes can arise from defects in S phase or mitosis, so the phenotype does not show when PcG proteins act in cell cycle regulation.

The Drosophila cohesin subunit Rad21 is a trithorax group (trxG) protein.

The cohesin complex is a key player in regulating cell division. Cohesin proteins SMC1, SMC3, Rad21, and stromalin (SA), along with associated proteins Nipped-B, Pds5, and EcoI, maintain sister chromatid cohesion before segregation to daughter cells during anaphase. Recent chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) data reveal extensive overlap of Nipped-B and cohesin components with RNA polymerase II binding at active genes in Drosophila.

Polycomb group mutants exhibit mitotic defects in syncytial cell cycles of Drosophila embryos.

The Polycomb Group (PcG) of epigenetic regulators maintains the repressed state of Hox genes during development of Drosophila, thereby maintaining the correct patterning of the anteroposterior axis. PcG-mediated inheritance of gene expression patterns must be stable to mitosis to ensure faithful transmission of repressed Hox states during cell division. Previously, two PcG mutants, polyhomeotic and Enhancer of zeste, were shown to exhibit mitotic segregation defects in embryos, and condensation defects in imaginal discs, respectively.