Composite measures of pain, anxiety, and depressive (PAD) symptoms: Construct and predictive validity.

Objective: Pain, anxiety, and depression (PAD) are common, co-occurring symptoms that adversely affect one another and may respond to common treatments. PAD composite measures would be useful for tracking treatment response in patients with PAD symptoms. The goal of this study is to compare 3 different PAD composite scales in terms of construct validity, responsiveness, and utility in predicting global improvement.

Comparison of nonlinear curves and surfaces.

Estimation of nonlinear curves and surfaces has long been the focus of semiparametric and nonparametric regression analysis. What has been less studied is the comparison of nonlinear functions. In lower-dimensional situations, inference typically involves comparisons of curves and surfaces.

Comparative Responsiveness and Minimally Important Difference of Common Anxiety Measures.

Background: Anxiety is one of the most prevalent mental disorders and accounts for substantial disability as well as increased health care costs. This study examines the minimally important difference (MID) and responsiveness of 6 commonly used anxiety scales.

Methods: The sample comprised 294 patients from 6 primary care clinics in a single VA medical center who were enrolled in a telecare trial for treatment of chronic musculoskeletal pain and comorbid depression and/or anxiety.

Assessing depression improvement with the remission evaluation and mood inventory tool (REMIT).

Objective: The Remission Evaluation and Mood Inventory Tool (REMIT) was developed as a brief complementary measure to provide a more robust assessment of depression improvement than tracking DSM-V symptom improvement alone. This study provides further validation of the REMIT tool and examines its utility in predicting depression improvement.

Methods: The sample comprised 294 primary care patients enrolled in a telecare trial of pain plus depression and/or anxiety.

Clinical Characteristics and Outcomes of Mild to Moderate Alcoholic Hepatitis.

Introduction & Aim: Much is known about alcoholic hepatitis (AH) that is severe enough to require hospitalization. The characteristics of individuals with alcoholic hepatitis presenting with mild to moderate severity are not well understood. In this study we investigated the risk factors, characteristics, and outcomes of mild to moderate AH.

Automated Self-management (ASM) vs. ASM-Enhanced Collaborative Care for Chronic Pain and Mood Symptoms: the CAMMPS Randomized Clinical Trial.

Background: Chronic musculoskeletal pain is often accompanied by depression or anxiety wherein co-occurring pain and mood symptoms can be more difficult to treat than either alone. However, few clinical trials have examined interventions that simultaneously target both pain and mood conditions.

Objective: To determine the comparative effectiveness of automated self-management (ASM) vs.

Telecare management of pain and mood symptoms: Adherence, utility, and patient satisfaction.

Introduction: Pain, depression, and anxiety are prominent symptoms that frequently co-occur, causing significant debilitation and frequent primary care visits. This paper examines the acceptability of telecare and self-management modules in managing these conditions in a randomized trial.

Methods: The Comprehensive Management of Mood and Physical Symptoms (CAMMPS) trial compared an automated symptom management (ASM) plus self-management intervention with a comprehensive symptom management (CSM) intervention that added telecare facilitation of enhanced services.

Sample enrichment for clinical trials to show delay of onset in huntington disease.

Background: Disease-modifying clinical trials in persons without symptoms are often limited in methods to assess the impact associated with experimental therapeutics. This study suggests sample enrichment approaches to facilitate preventive trials to delay disease onset in individuals with the dominant gene for Huntington disease.

Methods: Using published onset prediction indexes, we conducted the receiver operating curve analysis for diagnosis within a 3-year clinical trial time frame.

Comparative validity and responsiveness of PHQ-ADS and other composite anxiety-depression measures.

Background: Composite measures that assess the overall burden of anxiety and depressive symptoms have been infrequently evaluated in the same study. The objective of this study was to compare the validity and responsiveness of the Patient Health Questionnaire Anxiety-Depression Scale (PHQ-ADS) and other composite anxiety-depression measures.

Methods: The sample comprised 256 primary care patients enrolled in a telecare trial of chronic musculoskeletal pain and comorbid depression and/or anxiety.

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in Patients with Heavy Alcohol Consumption and Alcoholic Hepatitis.

Background: Lifetime prevalence of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in the general population is reported to be 6.8%. Individuals with alcohol dependence and substance abuse have high prevalence of PTSD.

What predicts medication therapy management completion rates? The role of community pharmacy staff characteristics and beliefs about medication therapy management.

Objectives: To model the association between pharmacy technicians' attitudes and planned behaviors toward participating in medication therapy management (MTM) and MTM completion rates. Secondary objectives included 1) to compare pharmacy technician and pharmacist attitudes and planned behaviors toward participating in MTM and 2) to identify respondent and pharmacy demographic factors associated with MTM completion rates.

Design: A 27-item survey, adapted from a previously published survey tool based on the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), was used to collect respondent perceptions of MTM.

Interaction between the patatin-like phospholipase domain-containing protein 3 genotype and coffee drinking and the risk for acute alcoholic hepatitis.

Only a subset of subjects with excessive alcohol consumption develops alcoholic liver disease (ALD). One of the major risk factors for ALD is the genetic variant of the patatin-like phospholipase domain-containing protein 3 () gene. Coffee is one of the most commonly consumed beverages, and coffee consumption has been associated with lower levels of serum alanine aminotransferase.

Comprehensive vs. Assisted Management of Mood and Pain Symptoms (CAMMPS) trial: Study design and sample characteristics.

Background: Pain is the most common presenting somatic symptom in medical outpatients, and depression and anxiety are the two most common mental disorders. They frequently co-occur, are under-treated, and result in substantial disability and reduced health-related quality of life.

Objectives: The Comprehensive vs.

Challenges in Patient Enrollment and Retention in Clinical Studies for Alcoholic Hepatitis: Experience of the TREAT Consortium.

The TREAT Consortium has carried out clinical studies on alcoholic hepatitis (AH) for over 4 years. We encountered problems with participant recruitment, retention, and eligibility for specific protocols. To improve our ability to carry out such trials, we reviewed recruitment screening logs, end of study logs, and surveyed study coordinators to learn the reasons for missing patients, why patients declined enrollment, and the number of patients eligible for treatment trials.

Comparing the Patient Health Questionnaire - 15 and the Somatic Symptom Scale - 8 as measures of somatic symptom burden.

Purpose: The Patient Health Questionnaire - 15 (PHQ-15) and the Somatic Symptom Scale - 8 (SSS-8) are self-report measures which assess somatic symptom burden. The present study investigates whether the two measures are comparable in terms of their psychometric properties and estimates of symptom burden.

Method: Item characteristics, reliability, symptom severity and construct validity with regard to other relevant psychological, health-related quality of life and disability measures were compared for the PHQ-15m and the SSS-8 in 294 primary care patients who participated in a randomized comparative effectiveness trial targeting pain and mood symptoms.

Acute Alcoholic Hepatitis: Natural History and Predictors of Mortality Using a Multicenter Prospective Study.

Objective: To examine the natural history of acute alcoholic hepatitis (AH) and identify predictors of mortality for AH using data from a prospective multicenter observational study.

Participants And Methods: We analyzed data from 164 patients with AH and 131 heavy-drinking controls with no liver disease. Participants underwent clinical/laboratory assessment at baseline and 6 and 12 months after enrollment.

Cognitive Control, Learning, and Clinical Motor Ratings Are Most Highly Associated with Basal Ganglia Brain Volumes in the Premanifest Huntington's Disease Phenotype.

Objectives: Huntington's disease (HD) is a debilitating genetic disorder characterized by motor, cognitive and psychiatric abnormalities associated with neuropathological decline. HD pathology is the result of an extended chain of CAG (cytosine, adenine, guanine) trinucleotide repetitions in the HTT gene. Clinical diagnosis of HD requires the presence of an otherwise unexplained extrapyramidal movement disorder in a participant at risk for HD.

Longitudinal diffusion changes in prodromal and early HD: Evidence of white-matter tract deterioration.

Introduction: Huntington's disease (HD) is a genetic neurodegenerative disorder that primarily affects striatal neurons. Striatal volume loss is present years before clinical diagnosis; however, white matter degradation may also occur prior to diagnosis. Diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) can measure microstructural changes associated with degeneration that precede macrostructural changes.

Phenotype Characterization of HD Intermediate Alleles in PREDICT-HD.

Background: Huntington disease (HD) is a neurodegenerative disease caused by a CAG repeat expansion on chromosome 4. Pathology is associated with CAG repeat length. Prior studies examining people in the intermediate allele (IA) range found subtle differences in motor, cognitive, and behavioral domains compared to controls.

Is There an Association of Physical Activity with Brain Volume, Behavior, and Day-to-day Functioning? A Cross Sectional Design in Prodromal and Early Huntington Disease.

Background: Huntington disease (HD) is a genetic neurodegenerative disease leading to progressive motor, cognitive, and behavioral decline. Subtle changes in these domains are detectable up to 15 years before a definitive motor diagnosis is made. This period, called prodromal HD, provides an opportunity to examine lifestyle behaviors that may impact disease progression.

Patterns of Co-Occurring Gray Matter Concentration Loss across the Huntington Disease Prodrome.

Huntington disease (HD) is caused by an abnormally expanded cytosine-adenine-guanine (CAG) trinucleotide repeat in the gene. Age and CAG-expansion number are related to age at diagnosis and can be used to index disease progression. However, observed onset-age variability suggests that other factors also modulate progression.

Preliminary analysis using multi-atlas labeling algorithms for tracing longitudinal change.

Multicenter longitudinal neuroimaging has great potential to provide efficient and consistent biomarkers for research of neurodegenerative diseases and aging. In rare disease studies it is of primary importance to have a reliable tool that performs consistently for data from many different collection sites to increase study power. A multi-atlas labeling algorithm is a powerful brain image segmentation approach that is becoming increasingly popular in image processing.

Analysis of longitudinal censored semicontinuous data with application to the study of executive dysfunction: The Towers Task.

Executive dysfunction is a deficiency in skills of planning and problem solving that characterizes many neuropsychiatric disorders. The Towers Task is a commonly used measure of planning and problem solving for assessing executive function. Towers Task data are usually zero-inflated and right-censored, and ignoring these features can result in biased inference for the disease characterization of executive dysfunction.

Movement sequencing in Huntington disease.

Objectives: To examine longitudinal changes in movement sequencing in prodromal Huntington's disease (HD) participants (795 prodromal HD; 225 controls) from the PREDICT-HD study.

Methods: Prodromal HD participants were tested over seven annual visits and were stratified into three groups (low, medium, high) based on their CAG-Age Product (CAP) score, which indicates likely increasing proximity to diagnosis. A cued movement sequence task assessed the impact of advance cueing on response initiation and execution via three levels of advance information.

Utility of death certificate data in predicting cancer incidence.

Background: Studies often rely on death certificates to identify cancer occurrence. This research assessed the death certificate's ability to reflect cancer incidence and factors that influence agreement with cancer registry data.

Methods: This study compared death certificates to cancer incidence data for an occupational cohort of 1,795 deceased workers who were registered by the Iowa Cancer Registry (ICR) between 1973 and 2005.