Improving Drug Safety: The Importance of Postmarking Drug Surveillance

Improved postmarketing surveillance system may reduce the number of adverse reactions to prescription drugs that under the current system continue to rise as the number of prescriptions written in the U.S. rises

Old and Poor in America

Education, ethnicity, gender, living arrangements and age group all contribute to an older individual's risk of being poor or near poor

Preparing for an Aging Nation: The Need for Academic Geriatricians

According to the author of this issue brief, a strong commitment by the government to a regular stream of financial support for geriatrics would encourage medical centers to establish or expand programs, enhance their ability to attract funds from private sources, and ultimately produce a sufficient number of academic geriatricians. Given the impending retirement of the baby boom generation, this process should begin as soon as possible. This issue brief highlights the critical need for academic geriatricians and presents a realistic proposal to help address the problem

Walk to a Healthy Future

Proposes a new national commitment to walking and formation of walking partnerships and clubs to fight the epidemic of overweight Americans

The Role of Sleep in Healthy Aging

Sleep is a fundamental, but often ignored, component of healthy aging. Fortunately, there are some effective interventions. Discusses sleep-related problems and treatments

Bodily crises in skilled performance: Considering the need for artistic habits

Empirical evidence demonstrates that performing artists are confronted by a variety of ‘bodily crises’ (e.g., injury, attrition of habits induced by ageing) over the course of their careers (Wainwright, Williams, & Turner, 2005). Such crises may present a serious threat to the embodied subject. Unfortunately, many prominent theories of skill acquisition (e.g., Fitts & Posner, 1967) appear to evacuate the body from performance by suggesting that any form of conscious processing (i.e., paying conscious attention to one's action during motor skill execution) will disrupt habitual behaviour. As a result, few researchers have considered how performers might tackle bodily anomalies. In the current paper, we seek to address this issue by discussing a variety of the ‘crises’ that confront the performing body. We start by discussing a number of disciplinary practices that may contribute to these crises. Next, we argue that habitual movements must be open to ‘acts of creativity’ in order to maintain a productive relationship between the performing body and the environment. Then we consider what this ‘creative action’ might involve and discuss a number of approaches (e.g., mindfulness, somaesthetic awareness) that could maintain and improve one's movement proficiency. Here, our argument draws on Dewey's (1922) pragmatist philosophy and his belief that ‘intelligent habit’ was required to help people to improve their movement functioning. Finally, we consider the implications of our argument for current conceptualisations of ‘habitual’ movement and recommend that researchers explore the adaptive and flexible capacity of the performing body

Telaprevir twice daily is noninferior to telaprevir every 8 hours for patients with chronic hepatitis C.

Background & Aims We performed an open-label, multicenter, phase 3 study of the safety and efficacy of twice-daily telaprevir in treatment-naive patients with chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) genotype 1 infection, including those with cirrhosis. Methods Patients were randomly assigned to groups treated with telaprevir 1125 mg twice daily or 750 mg every 8 hours plus peginterferon alfa-2a and ribavirin for 12 weeks; patients were then treated with peginterferon alfa-2a and ribavirin alone for 12 weeks if their level of HCV RNA at week 4 was <25 IU/mL or for 36 weeks if their level was higher. The primary objective was to demonstrate noninferiority of telaprevir twice daily versus every 8 hours in producing a sustained virological response 12 weeks after the end of therapy (SVR12) (based on a -11% lower limit of the 95% lower confidence interval for the difference between groups). Results At baseline, of 740 patients, 85% had levels of HCV RNA ≥800,000 IU/mL, 28% had fibrosis (F3-F4), 14% had cirrhosis (F4), 57% were infected with HCV genotype 1a, and 71% had the non-CC IL28B genotype. Of patients who were treated with telaprevir twice daily, 74.3% achieved SVR12 compared with 72.8% of patients who were treated with telaprevir every 8 hours (difference in response, 1.5%; 95% confidence interval, -4.9% to 12.0%), so telaprevir twice daily is noninferior to telaprevir every 8 hours. All subgroups of patients who were treated with telaprevir twice daily versus those who were treated every 8 hours had similar rates of SVR12. The most frequent adverse events (AEs) in the telaprevir phase were fatigue (47%), pruritus (43%), anemia (42%), nausea (37%), rash (35%), and headache (26%); serious AEs were reported in 9% of patients. Rates of AEs and serious AEs were similar or slightly higher among patients treated with telaprevir every 8 hours. Conclusions Based on a phase 3 trial, telaprevir twice daily is noninferior to every 8 hours in producing SVR12, with similar levels of safety and tolerability. These results support use of telaprevir twice daily in patients with chronic HCV genotype 1 infection, including those with cirrhosis. ClinicalTrials.gov, Number: NCT0124176

Self-assembly of mechanoplasmonic bacterial cellulose-metal nanoparticle composites

Nanocomposites of metal nanoparticles (NPs) and bacterial nanocellulose (BC) enable fabrication of soft and biocompatible materials for optical, catalytic, electronic, and biomedical applications. Current BC-NP nanocomposites are typically prepared by in situ synthesis of the NPs or electrostatic adsorption of surface functionalized NPs, which limits possibilities to control and tune NP size, shape, concentration, and surface chemistry and influences the properties and performance of the materials. Here a self-assembly strategy is described for fabrication of complex and well-defined BC-NP composites using colloidal gold and silver NPs of different sizes, shapes, and concentrations. The self-assembly process results in nanocomposites with distinct biophysical and optical properties. In addition to antibacterial materials and materials with excellent senor performance, materials with unique mechanoplasmonic properties are developed. The homogenous incorporation of plasmonic gold NPs in the BC enables extensive modulation of the optical properties by mechanical stimuli. Compression gives rise to near-field coupling between adsorbed NPs, resulting in tunable spectral variations and enhanced broadband absorption that amplify both nonlinear optical and thermoplasmonic effects and enables novel biosensing strategies

The efficacy of single-trial multisensory memories.

This review article summarizes evidence that multisensory experiences at one point in time have long-lasting effects on subsequent unisensory visual and auditory object recognition. The efficacy of single-trial exposure to task-irrelevant multisensory events is its ability to modulate memory performance and brain activity to unisensory components of these events presented later in time. Object recognition (either visual or auditory) is enhanced if the initial multisensory experience had been semantically congruent and can be impaired if this multisensory pairing was either semantically incongruent or entailed meaningless information in the task-irrelevant modality, when compared to objects encountered exclusively in a unisensory context. Processes active during encoding cannot straightforwardly explain these effects; performance on all initial presentations was indistinguishable despite leading to opposing effects with stimulus repetitions. Brain responses to unisensory stimulus repetitions differ during early processing stages (-100 ms post-stimulus onset) according to whether or not they had been initially paired in a multisensory context. Plus, the network exhibiting differential responses varies according to whether or not memory performance is enhanced or impaired. The collective findings we review indicate that multisensory associations formed via single-trial learning exert influences on later unisensory processing to promote distinct object representations that manifest as differentiable brain networks whose activity is correlated with memory performance. These influences occur incidentally, despite many intervening stimuli, and are distinguishable from the encoding/learning processes during the formation of the multisensory associations. The consequences of multisensory interactions that persist over time to impact memory retrieval and object discrimination