Gastrointestinal symptoms and association with medication use patterns, adherence, treatment satisfaction, quality of life, and resource use in osteoporosis: baseline results of the MUSIC-OS study

Summary: The Medication Use Patterns, Treatment Satisfaction, and Inadequate Control of Osteoporosis Study (MUSIC-OS) is a prospective, observational study of women with osteoporosis in Europe and Canada. At baseline, patients with gastrointestinal symptoms reported lower adherence to osteoporosis treatment, treatment satisfaction, and health-related quality of life, than those without gastrointestinal symptoms. Introduction: The aim of the study was to examine gastrointestinal (GI) symptoms and the association between GI symptoms and treatment adherence, treatment satisfaction, and health-related quality of life (HRQoL) among osteoporotic women in Europe and Canada. Methods: Baseline results are reported here for a prospective study which enrolled postmenopausal, osteoporotic women who were initiating (new users) or continuing (experienced users) osteoporosis treatment at study entry (baseline). A patient survey was administered at baseline and included the occurrence of GI symptoms during 6-month pre-enrolment, treatment adherence (adherence evaluation of osteoporosis (ADEOS), score 0–22), treatment satisfaction (Osteoporosis Treatment Satisfaction Questionnaire for Medications (OPSAT-Q), score 0–100) and HRQoL (EuroQol-5 dimension (EQ-5D) utility, score 0–1; OPAQ-SV, score 0–100). The association between GI symptoms and ADEOS (experienced users), OPSAT-Q (experienced users), and HRQoL (new and experienced users) was assessed by general linear models adjusted for patient characteristics. Results: A total of 2959 patients (2275 experienced and 684 new users) were included. Overall, 68.1 % of patients experienced GI symptoms in the past 6 months. Compared with patients without GI symptoms, patients with GI symptoms had lower mean baseline scores on most measures. The mean adjusted differences were ADEOS, −0.43; OPSAT-Q, −5.68; EQ-5D, −0.04 (new users) and −0.06 (experienced users), all P < 0.01. GI symptoms were also associated with lower OPAQ-SV domain scores: physical function, −4.17 (experienced users); emotional status, −4.28 (new users) and −5.68 (experienced users); back pain, −5.82 (new users) and −11.33 (experienced users), all P < 0.01. Conclusions: Patients with GI symptoms have lower treatment adherence and treatment satisfaction and worse HRQoL than patients without GI symptoms

A tracing waves method for the construction of seismic propagators

This work is concerned with a micro-local method for solving the direct problem of acoustic waves scattering in a complex medium. Pseudo-differential theory is used to decompose the scattering problem into a one-way model which accounts for the reflections and transmissions due to the variations of the medium velocity. Then, the multiple reflections can be taken into account and they can be computed separately. This is very interesting in case of imaging processes because the multiple reflections play the role of scrambling the results and a separate computation of multiples is not possible when using finite difference or finite element methods. The numerical solution involves FFTs and the resulting computational burden is lower than the one required by finite difference or finite element techniques

Outgoing modal solutions for Galbrun's equation in helioseismology

We construct modal outgoing Green's kernels for the simplified Galbrun's equation under spherical symmetry, in the context of helioseismology. The coefficients of the equation are C2 functions representing the solar interior model S, complemented with an isothermal atmospheric model. We solve the equation in vectorial spherical harmonics basis to obtain modal equations for the different components of the unknown wave motions. These equations are then decoupled and written in Schrödinger form, whose coefficients are shown to be C2 apart from at most two regular singular points, and to decay like a Coulomb potential at infinity. These properties allow us to construct an outgoing Green's kernel for each spherical mode. We also compute asymptotic expansions of coefficients up to order r-3 as r tends to infinity, and show numerically that their accuracy is improved by including the contribution from the gravity although this term is of order r-3

Efficient and accurate algorithm for the full modal green's kernel of the scalar wave equation in helioseismology

In this work, we provide an algorithm to compute efficiently and accurately the full outgoing modal Green's kernel for the scalar wave equation in local helioseismology under spherical symmetry. Due to the high computational cost of a full Green's function, current helioseismic studies rely on single-source computations. However, a more realistic modelization of the helioseismic products (cross-covariance and power spectrum) requires the full Green's kernel. In the classical approach, the Dirac source is discretized and one simulation gives the Green's function on a line. Here, we propose a two-step algorithm which, with two simulations, provides the full kernel on the domain. Moreover, our method is more accurate, as the singularity of the solution due to the Dirac source is described exactly. In addition, it is coupled with the exact Dirichlet-to-Neumann boundary condition, providing optimal accuracy in approximating the outgoing Green's kernel, which we demonstrate in our experiments. In addition, we show that high-frequency approximations of the nonlocal radiation boundary conditions can represent accurately the helioseismic products

Direct assessment of SDO/HMI helioseismology of active regions on the Sun’s far side using SO/PHI magnetograms

Context. Earth-side observations of solar p modes can be used to image and monitor magnetic activity on the Sun’s far side. In this work, we use magnetograms of the far side obtained by the Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager (PHI) on board Solar Orbiter (SO) to directly assess the validity of far-side helioseismic holography for the first time. Aims. We wish to co-locate the positions of active regions in helioseismic images and magnetograms and to calibrate the helioseismic measurements in terms of the magnetic field strength. Methods. We identified three magnetograms displaying a total of six active regions on the far side from 18 November 2020, 3 October 2021, and 3 February 2022. The first two dates are from the SO cruise phase and the third is from the beginning of the nominal operation phase. We computed contemporaneous seismic phase maps for these three dates using helioseismic holography applied to the time series of Dopplergrams from the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) at the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). Results. Among the six active regions seen in SO/PHI magnetograms, five of them are identified on the seismic maps at almost the same positions as on the magnetograms. One region is too weak to be detected above the seismic noise. To calibrate the seismic maps, we fit a linear relationship between the seismic phase shifts and the unsigned line-of-sight magnetic field averaged over the active region areas extracted from the SO/PHI magnetograms. Conclusions. SO/PHI provides the strongest evidence so far that helioseismic imaging is able to provide reliable information on active regions on the far side, including their positions, areas, and the mean unsigned magnetic field