What Does It Take for a Family to Afford to Pay for Health Care?

Addresses how much Californians can afford to pay for health care based on their current insurance premiums and out-of-pocket expenses as well as other basic necessities, such as housing, child care, transportation, food, and taxes

Association of the 2011 ACGME Resident Duty Hour Reforms with Mortality and Readmissions among Hospitalized Medicare Patients

Importance Patient outcomes associated with the 2011 Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) duty hour reforms have not been evaluated at a national level. Objective To evaluate the association of the 2011 ACGME duty hour reforms with mortality and readmissions. Design, Setting, and Participants Observational study of Medicare patient admissions (6 384 273 admissions from 2 790 356 patients) to short-term, acute care, nonfederal hospitals (n = 3104) with principal medical diagnoses of acute myocardial infarction, stroke, gastrointestinal bleeding, or congestive heart failure or a Diagnosis Related Group classification of general, orthopedic, or vascular surgery. Of the hospitals, 96 (3.1%) were very major teaching, 138 (4.4%) major teaching, 442 (14.2%) minor teaching, 443 (14.3%) very minor teaching, and 1985 (64.0%) nonteaching. Exposure Resident-to-bed ratio as a continuous measure of hospital teaching intensity. Main Outcomes and Measures Change in 30-day all-location mortality and 30-day all-cause readmission, comparing patients in more intensive relative to less intensive teaching hospitals before (July 1, 2009–June 30, 2011) and after (July 1, 2011–June 30, 2012) duty hour reforms, adjusting for patient comorbidities, time trends, and hospital site. Results In the 2 years before duty hour reforms, there were 4 325 854 admissions with 288 422 deaths and 602 380 readmissions. In the first year after the reforms, accounting for teaching hospital intensity, there were 2 058 419 admissions with 133 547 deaths and 272 938 readmissions. There were no significant postreform differences in mortality accounting for teaching hospital intensity for combined medical conditions (odds ratio [OR], 1.00; 95% CI, 0.96-1.03), combined surgical categories (OR, 0.99; 95% CI, 0.94-1.04), or any of the individual medical conditions or surgical categories. There were no significant postreform differences in readmissions for combined medical conditions (OR, 1.00; 95% CI, 0.97-1.02) or combined surgical categories (OR, 1.00; 95% CI, 0.98-1.03). For the medical condition of stroke, there were higher odds of readmissions in the postreform period (OR, 1.06; 95% CI, 1.001-1.13). However, this finding was not supported by sensitivity analyses and there were no significant postreform differences for readmissions for any other individual medical condition or surgical category. Conclusions and Relevance Among Medicare beneficiaries, there were no significant differences in the change in 30-day mortality rates or 30-day all-cause readmission rates for those hospitalized in more intensive relative to less intensive teaching hospitals in the year after implementation of the 2011 ACGME duty hour reforms compared with those hospitalized in the 2 years before implementation

Pre-cooling for endurance exercise performance in the heat: a systematic review.

PMCID: PMC3568721The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7015/10/166. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Endurance exercise capacity diminishes under hot environmental conditions. Time to exhaustion can be increased by lowering body temperature prior to exercise (pre-cooling). This systematic literature review synthesizes the current findings of the effects of pre-cooling on endurance exercise performance, providing guidance for clinical practice and further research

Perspective:Dietary Biomarkers of Intake and Exposure - Exploration with Omics Approaches

While conventional nutrition research has yielded biomarkers such as doubly labeled water for energy metabolism and 24-h urinary nitrogen for protein intake, a critical need exists for additional, equally robust biomarkers that allow for objective assessment of specific food intake and dietary exposure. Recent advances in high-throughput MS combined with improved metabolomics techniques and bioinformatic tools provide new opportunities for dietary biomarker development. In September 2018, the NIH organized a 2-d workshop to engage nutrition and omics researchers and explore the potential of multiomics approaches in nutritional biomarker research. The current Perspective summarizes key gaps and challenges identified, as well as the recommendations from the workshop that could serve as a guide for scientists interested in dietary biomarkers research. Topics addressed included study designs for biomarker development, analytical and bioinformatic considerations, and integration of dietary biomarkers with other omics techniques. Several clear needs were identified, including larger controlled feeding studies, testing a variety of foods and dietary patterns across diverse populations, improved reporting standards to support study replication, more chemical standards covering a broader range of food constituents and human metabolites, standardized approaches for biomarker validation, comprehensive and accessible food composition databases, a common ontology for dietary biomarker literature, and methodologic work on statistical procedures for intake biomarker discovery. Multidisciplinary research teams with appropriate expertise are critical to moving forward the field of dietary biomarkers and producing robust, reproducible biomarkers that can be used in public health and clinical research

Dark sectors 2016 Workshop: community report

This report, based on the Dark Sectors workshop at SLAC in April 2016, summarizes the scientific importance of searches for dark sector dark matter and forces at masses beneath the weak-scale, the status of this broad international field, the important milestones motivating future exploration, and promising experimental opportunities to reach these milestones over the next 5-10 years

A many-analysts approach to the relation between religiosity and well-being

The relation between religiosity and well-being is one of the most researched topics in the psychology of religion, yet the directionality and robustness of the effect remains debated. Here, we adopted a many-analysts approach to assess the robustness of this relation based on a new cross-cultural dataset (N=10,535 participants from 24 countries). We recruited 120 analysis teams to investigate (1) whether religious people self-report higher well-being, and (2) whether the relation between religiosity and self-reported well-being depends on perceived cultural norms of religion (i.e., whether it is considered normal and desirable to be religious in a given country). In a two-stage procedure, the teams first created an analysis plan and then executed their planned analysis on the data. For the first research question, all but 3 teams reported positive effect sizes with credible/confidence intervals excluding zero (median reported β=0.120). For the second research question, this was the case for 65% of the teams (median reported β=0.039). While most teams applied (multilevel) linear regression models, there was considerable variability in the choice of items used to construct the independent variables, the dependent variable, and the included covariates

A Many-analysts Approach to the Relation Between Religiosity and Well-being

The relation between religiosity and well-being is one of the most researched topics in the psychology of religion, yet the directionality and robustness of the effect remains debated. Here, we adopted a many-analysts approach to assess the robustness of this relation based on a new cross-cultural dataset (N = 10, 535 participants from 24 countries). We recruited 120 analysis teams to investigate (1) whether religious people self-report higher well-being, and (2) whether the relation between religiosity and self-reported well-being depends on perceived cultural norms of religion (i.e., whether it is considered normal and desirable to be religious in a given country). In a two-stage procedure, the teams first created an analysis plan and then executed their planned analysis on the data. For the first research question, all but 3 teams reported positive effect sizes with credible/confidence intervals excluding zero (median reported β = 0.120). For the second research question, this was the case for 65% of the teams (median reported β = 0.039). While most teams applied (multilevel) linear regression models, there was considerable variability in the choice of items used to construct the independent variables, the dependent variable, and the included covariates

Histone H3.3 beyond cancer: Germline mutations in Histone 3 Family 3A and 3B cause a previously unidentified neurodegenerative disorder in 46 patients

Although somatic mutations in Histone 3.3 (H3.3) are well-studied drivers of oncogenesis, the role of germline mutations remains unreported. We analyze 46 patients bearing de novo germline mutations in histone 3 family 3A (H3F3A) or H3F3B with progressive neurologic dysfunction and congenital anomalies without malignancies. Molecular modeling of all 37 variants demonstrated clear disruptions in interactions with DNA, other histones, and histone chaperone proteins. Patient histone posttranslational modifications (PTMs) analysis revealed notably aberrant local PTM patterns distinct from the somatic lysine mutations that cause global PTM dysregulation. RNA sequencing on patient cells demonstrated up-regulated gene expression related to mitosis and cell division, and cellular assays confirmed an increased proliferative capacity. A zebrafish model showed craniofacial anomalies and a defect in Foxd3-derived glia. These data suggest that the mechanism of germline mutations are distinct from cancer-associated somatic histone mutations but may converge on control of cell proliferation

Factors Associated with Revision Surgery after Internal Fixation of Hip Fractures

Background: Femoral neck fractures are associated with high rates of revision surgery after management with internal fixation. Using data from the Fixation using Alternative Implants for the Treatment of Hip fractures (FAITH) trial evaluating methods of internal fixation in patients with femoral neck fractures, we investigated associations between baseline and surgical factors and the need for revision surgery to promote healing, relieve pain, treat infection or improve function over 24 months postsurgery. Additionally, we investigated factors associated with (1) hardware removal and (2) implant exchange from cancellous screws (CS) or sliding hip screw (SHS) to total hip arthroplasty, hemiarthroplasty, or another internal fixation device. Methods: We identified 15 potential factors a priori that may be associated with revision surgery, 7 with hardware removal, and 14 with implant exchange. We used multivariable Cox proportional hazards analyses in our investigation. Results: Factors associated with increased risk of revision surgery included: female sex, [hazard ratio (HR) 1.79, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.25-2.50; P = 0.001], higher body mass index (fo