1,577 research outputs found
Cognitive behavioral therapy, singly and combined with medication, for persistent insomnia : a randomized controlled trial
Context: Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and hypnotic medications are efficacious
for short-term treatment of insomnia, but few patients achieve complete remission
with any single treatment. It is unclear whether combined or maintenance therapies
would enhance outcome.
Objectives: To evaluate the added value of medication over CBT alone for acute treatment
of insomnia and the effects of maintenance therapies on long-term outcome.
Design, Setting, and Patients: Prospective, randomized controlled trial involving
2-stage therapy for 160 adults with persistent insomnia treated at a university hospital
sleep center in Canada between January 2002 and April 2005.
Interventions: Participants received CBT alone or CBT plus 10 mg/d (taken at bedtime)
ofzolpidemforaninitial6-weektherapy,followedbyextended6-monththerapy.Patients
initially treated with CBT attended monthly maintenance CBT for 6 months or received no
additional treatment and those initially treated with combined therapy (CBT plus 10 mg/d
of zolpidem) continued with CBT plus intermittent use of zolpidem or CBT only.
Main Outcome Measures: Sleep onset latency, time awake after sleep onset, total
sleep time, and sleep efficiency derived from daily diaries (primary outcomes); treatment
response and remission rates derived from the Insomnia Severity Index (secondary
outcomes).
Results: Cognitive behavioral therapy used singly or in combination with zolpidem
produced significant improvements in sleep latency, time awake after sleep onset, and
sleep efficiency during initial therapy (all P .001); a larger increase of sleep time was
obtained with the combined approach (P=.04). Both CBT alone and CBT plus zolpidem
produced similar rates of treatment responders (60% [45/75] vs 61% [45/74],
respectively; P=.84) and treatment remissions (39% [29/75] vs 44% [33/74], respectively;
P=.52) with the 6-week acute treatment, but combined therapy produced a
higher remission rate compared with CBT alone during the 6-month extended therapy
phase and the 6-month follow-up period (56% [43/74 and 32/59] vs 43% [34/75
and 28/68]; P=.05). The best long-term outcome was obtained with patients treated
with combined therapy initially, followed by CBT alone, as evidenced by higher remission
rates at the 6-month follow-up compared with patients who continued to take
zolpidem during extended therapy (68% [20/30] vs 42% [12/29]; P=.04).
Conclusion: In patients with persistent insomnia, the addition of medication to CBT
produced added benefits during acute therapy, but long-term outcome was optimized
when medication is discontinued during maintenance CBT
Conjugation-Length Dependence of Spin-Dependent Exciton Formation Rates in Pi-Conjugated Oligomers and Polymers
We have measured the ratio, r = of the formation cross
section, of singlet () and triplet () excitons
from oppositely charged polarons in a large variety of -conjugated
oligomer and polymer films, using the photoinduced absorption and optically
detected magnetic resonance spectroscopies. The ratio r is directly related to
the singlet exciton yield, which in turn determines the maximum
electroluminescence quantum efficiency in organic light emitting diodes (OLED).
We discovered that r increases with the conjugation length, CL; in fact a
universal dependence exists in which depends linearly on ,
irrespective of the chain backbone structure. These results indicate that
-conjugated polymers have a clear advantage over small molecules in OLED
applications.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure
Founder mutation in the PMM2 promotor causes hyperinsulinemic hypoglycaemia/polycystic kidney disease (HIPKD)
BACKGROUND: Polycystic kidney disease with hyperinsulinaemic hypoglycaemia (HIPKD) is a recently described disease caused by a single nucleotide variant, c.-167G>T, in the promoter region of PMM2 (encoding phosphomannomutase 2), either in homozygosity or compound heterozygosity with a pathogenic coding variant in trans. All patients identified so far are of European descent, suggesting a possible founder effect. METHODS: We generated high density genotyping data from 11 patients from seven unrelated families, and used this information to identify a common haplotype that included the promoter variant. We estimated the age of the promoter mutation with DMLE+ software, using demographic parameters corresponding to the European population. RESULTS: All patients shared a 0.312Â Mb haplotype which was absent in 503 European controls available in the 1000 Genomes Project. The age of this mutation was estimated as 105-110 generations, indicating its occurrence around 600 BC, a time of intense migration, which might explain the presence of the same mutations in Europeans around the globe. CONCLUSION: The shared unique haplotype among seemingly unrelated patients is consistent with a founder effect in Europeans
An insulating grid spacer for large-area MICROMEGAS chambers
We present an original design for large area gaseous detectors based on the MICROMEGAS technology. This technology incorporates an insulating grid, sandwiched between the micro-mesh and the anode-pad plane, which provides an uniform 200 m amplification gap. The uniformity of the amplification gap thickness has been verified under several experimental conditions. The gain performances of the detector are presented and compared to the values obtained with detectors using cylindrical micro spacers. The new design presents several technical and financial advantages
Magnetic resonance microscopy of renal and biliary abnormalities in excised tissues from a mouse model of autosomal recessive polycystic kidney disease.
Polycystic kidney disease (PKD) is transmitted as either an autosomal dominant or recessive trait and is a major cause of renal failure and liver fibrosis. The cpk mouse model of autosomal recessive PKD (ARPKD) has been extensively characterized using standard histopathological techniques after euthanasia. In the current study, we sought to validate magnetic resonance microscopy (MRM) as a robust tool for assessing the ARPKD phenotype. We used MRM to evaluate the liver and kidney of wild-type and cpk animals at resolutions \u3c100 \u3eÎŒm and generated three-dimensional (3D) renderings for pathological evaluation. Our study demonstrates that MRM is an excellent method for evaluating the complex, 3D structural defects in this ARPKD mouse model. We found that MRM was equivalent to water displacement in assessing kidney volume. Additionally, using MRM we demonstrated for the first time that the cpk liver exhibits less extensive ductal arborization, that it was reduced in volume, and that the ductal volume was disproportionately smaller. Histopathology indicates that this is a consequence of bile duct malformation. With its reduced processing time, volumetric information, and 3D capabilities, MRM will be a useful tool for future in vivo and longitudinal studies of disease progression in ARPKD. In addition, MRM will provide a unique tool to determine whether the human disease shares the newly appreciated features of the murine biliary phenotype
Experimental tests of hidden variable theories from dBB to Stochastic Electrodynamics
In this paper we present some of our experimental results on testing hidden
variable theories, which range from Bell inequalities measurements to a
conclusive test of stochastic electrodynamics
Multiplicative slices, relativistic Toda and shifted quantum affine algebras
We introduce the shifted quantum affine algebras. They map homomorphically
into the quantized -theoretic Coulomb branches of SUSY
quiver gauge theories. In type , they are endowed with a coproduct, and they
act on the equivariant -theory of parabolic Laumon spaces. In type ,
they are closely related to the open relativistic quantum Toda lattice of type
.Comment: 125 pages. v2: references updated; in section 11 the third local Lax
matrix is introduced. v3: references updated. v4=v5: 131 pages, minor
corrections, table of contents added, Conjecture 10.25 is now replaced by
Theorem 10.25 (whose proof is based on the shuffle approach and is presented
in a new Appendix). v6: Final version as published, references updated,
footnote 4 adde
Oral Health Quality Improvement in the Era of Accountability
The purpose of this report is to review the current status and trends in quality measurement and improvement and describe efforts underway to expand and enhance those efforts. The report will also describe opportunities to use emerging oral health measurement and quality improvement systems to improve and maintain the oral health of the U.S. population
A method for the reconstruction of unknown non-monotonic growth functions in the chemostat
We propose an adaptive control law that allows one to identify unstable
steady states of the open-loop system in the single-species chemostat model
without the knowledge of the growth function. We then show how one can use this
control law to trace out (reconstruct) the whole graph of the growth function.
The process of tracing out the graph can be performed either continuously or
step-wise. We present and compare both approaches. Even in the case of two
species in competition, which is not directly accessible with our approach due
to lack of controllability, feedback control improves identifiability of the
non-dominant growth rate.Comment: expansion of ideas from proceedings paper (17 pages, 8 figures),
proceedings paper is version v
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