The Knowledge, Attitudes and Usage of Complementary and Alternative Medicine of Medical Students

The increasing use of CAM by patients has led to an increase in teaching about CAM in medical school in the US. In preparation for initiation of a new curriculum in Integrative Medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA a cross sectional survey was used to assess medical students': (i) familiarity, (ii) opinions, (iii) personal use and (iv) willingness to recommend specific CAM modalities, using a five point Likert scale of an established measure. A total of 263 first, second and third year medical students at UCLA completed surveys. Third year students reported less personal use of CAM and less favorable attitudes towards CAM than first year students. Since this was a cross-sectional rather than longitudinal study this may be a cohort effect. However, it may reflect the increased curricular emphasis on evidenced-based medicine, and subsequent student dependence on randomized clinical trials to influence and guide practice. This will need to be addressed in curricular efforts to incorporate Integrative Medicine

Laughter, Humor and Pain Perception in Children: A Pilot Study

Although there are many clinical programs designed to bring humor into pediatric hospitals, there has been very little research with children or adolescents concerning the specific utility of humor for children undergoing stressful or painful procedures. Rx Laughter™, a non-profit organization interested in the use of humor for healing, collaborated with UCLA to collect preliminary data on a sample of 18 children aged 7–16 years. Participants watched humorous video-tapes before, during and after a standardized pain task that involved placing a hand in cold water. Pain appraisal (ratings of pain severity) and pain tolerance (submersion time) were recorded and examined in relation to humor indicators (number of laughs/smiles during each video and child ratings of how funny the video was). Whereas humor indicators were not significantly associated with pain appraisal or tolerance, the group demonstrated significantly greater pain tolerance while viewing funny videos than when viewing the videos immediately before or after the cold-water task. The results suggest that humorous distraction is useful to help children and adolescents tolerate painful procedures. Further study is indicated to explore the specific mechanism of this benefit

Shared genetic risk between eating disorder- and substance-use-related phenotypes:Evidence from genome-wide association studies

First published: 16 February 202