Aga Khan University team discover which patients keep on taking their medicine
...he Morisky Medication Adherence Scale (MMAS), with scores ranging from 0 (non-adherent) to 4 (adherent). In addition to MMAS, patient self-reports about the number of pills taken over a prescribed period, were used to obtain adherence as a percentage. The AKU Anxiety and Depression Scale (AKU-ADS) was incor...New study: Pine bark significantly reduces endometriosis
...ere to moderate. Treatment with Gn-RHa reduced the scores more efficiently but after 24 weeks post-treatment a relapse of symptoms occurred. "As expected, Gn-RHa suppressed menstruation during treatment, whereas no influence on menstrual cycles was observed in the Pycnogenol group. Gn-RHa lowered estr...Outcomes for patients with hepatitis B who need liver transplants
...how that UNOS policy helps patients with high MELD scores get a liver transplant, and that their prioritization does not affect outcomes for non-HCC patients with HBV. "The refinement of the UNOS algorithm to optimally balance the risks for HCC and non-HCC liver transplant candidates remains a work in progr...Does age affect a pilot's ability to fly?
...showed less of a decline in overall flight summary scores than younger pilots, and over time their traffic avoidance performances improved more than that of younger pilots. The study also found pilots with advanced FAA pilot ratings and certifications showed less performance decline over time, regardless of...Alcohol interventions that teach practical skills work best with high-risk university students
... Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) scores from baseline assessment to the two-year follow-up... high-risk alcohol consumption defined as AUDIT scores of eight or above for men and four or above for women the BSTP appeared to be more effective. "T...Surgeons with video game skill appear to perform better in simulated surgery skills course
...Suturing Program, a one-and-a-half day course that scores surgeons on time and errors during simulated surgery drills. During the study, conducted from May through August, 2002, the surgeons also played three video games for 25 minutes while the researchers assessed their gaming skills. Of the surgeons w...Slow-release morphine reduces level of intractable cough
...significant reduction by 40 percent in daily cough scores was noted by patients on slow-release morphine sulfate." Patients responded quickly to treatment starting at five milligrams twice daily. The researchers found patients benefited the most by day five of treatment, and that this response was sustai...Prematurity more accurately predicted by advances in proteomic technology
...ce. The research team analyzed and generated MR scores for amniotic fluid taken from 123 women admitted to the Labor and Birth Unit or the prenatal units at Yale-New Haven Hospital. They found a direct relationship between the degree of amniotic fluid inflammation as indicated by the MR score, and the se...Predicting the risk of rheumatoid arthritis for early arthritis patients
...rience progression to RA. Among the patients with scores between 4 and 10 who experienced progression to RA...es of the prediction score. For example, when the scores 5.0 and 9.0 were chosen as cutoff values, 97 percent of patients with UA who had a score equal to or...Bioterrorism alerts induce anxiety and may pose health risk, Einstein study finds
...roup. Anxiety was evaluated at the state and trait scores of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI), while...messages. While "state anxiety" pre-intervention scores and pre-scores for "trait anxiety" were similar for both groups, "change-in-state" scores were sharp...Treatment for homeless youth pays off in long run, study finds
...17 percent reduction for the others. Depression scores dropped 40 percent for those in CRA and 23 percent for those who received treatment as usual. Finally, the youth in CRA showed a 58 percent increase in social stability, compared to only 13 percent for those in the other group. Social stability wa...Canadian study shows bilingualism has protective effect in delaying onset of dementia by four years
...data included Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) scores (a measure of general cognitive functioning), years of education and occupation. The MMSE scores were equivalent for the monolingual and bilingual groups at their initial visit to the clinic, indic...Racial differences seen in steatosis in patients with hepatitis C
...cerides, aminotransferase levels, and histological scores for inflammation and fibrosis. After adjusting for those features, they found that African-Americans had a dramatically lower risk of steatosis. For a given degree of overweight and obesity or insulin resistance, African-Americans were approximately ...High-normal uric acid linked with mild cognitive impairment in the elderly
...at the high end of the normal range had the lowest scores on tests of mental processing speed, verbal memory and working memory. The findings appear in the January issue of Neuropsychology, which is published by the American Psychological Association (APA). High-normal uric acid levels, defined in this s...Methamphetamine use increases risks of artery tears and stroke
...otid artery, received a score of 17. Stroke Scale scores over 16 predict a high probability of death or severe disability. "While methamphetamine use has been associated with aortic dissection, a tear in the wall of the aorta, the largest artery of the body, this is the first time there's been a possibl...Newer biomarkers add small improvement in cardiovascular risk prediction to established risk factors
...isk. They found that persons with high multimarker scores had a risk of death four times as great and a risk of major cardiovascular events almost two times as great as persons with low multimarker scores. However, the use of multiple biomarkers added only moderately to the overall prediction of risk based...Ability of biomarkers to predict risk of heart disease, stroke appears limited
... However, even though those with high multimarker scores had twice the risk of a cardiovascular event as those with low scores, the information provided by the biomarkers only slightly improved predictions based on such conventional risk factors as hypertension, cholesterol levels and smoking. "There ha...Newsbriefs from the journal Chest, December 2006
... the observation period, 58.6 percent had abnormal scores on complex drawing tests compared with 35.2 percen...ession (CES-D) scale and provided subjective cough scores reflecting severity of their cough. Overall, 53 percent of patients scored "16 on the CES-D, indicat...Contact lenses a good choice for children 12 and younger
...and again one month after wearing the lenses. PREP scores range from 100 (excellent quality of life) to 0 (p...how easy the contact lenses were to handle. PREP scores suggested that the children and teens were more satisfied with wearing contact lenses than with wear......ever smoked. Current smokers also had higher pain scores than men who were not current smokers, at the beginning of the study (60.5 vs. 45.0, with 100 as the highest possible pain score) and at follow up (59.4 vs. 44.3). The association between smoking and cartilage loss in knee osteoarthritis could be...