Opioid pain medication prescription for chronic pain in primary care centers: the roles of pain acceptance, pain intensity, depressive symptoms, pain catastrophizing, sex, and age

Background: Psychological factors of patients may influence physicians’ decisions on prescribing opioid analgesics. However, few studies have sought to identify these factors. The present study had a double objective: (1) To identify the individual factors that differentiate patients who had been prescribed opioids for the management of chronic back pain from those who had not been prescribed opioids and (2) to determine which factors make significant and independent contributions to the prediction of opioid prescribing. Methods: A total of 675 patients from four primary care centers were included in the sample. Variables included sex, age, pain intensity, depressive symptoms, pain catastrophizing, and pain acceptance. Results: Although no differences were found between men and women, participants with chronic noncancer pain who were prescribed opioids were older, reported higher levels of pain intensity and depressive symptoms, and reported lower levels of pain-acceptance. An independent association was found between pain intensity and depressive symptoms and opioid prescribing. Conclusions: The findings suggest that patient factors influence physicians’ decisions on prescribing opioids. It may be useful for primary care physicians to be aware of the potential of these factors to bias their treatment decisions.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

An excess of niche differences maximizes ecosystem functioning

Ecologists have long argued that higher functioning in diverse communities arises from the niche differences stabilizing species coexistence and from the fitness differences driving competitive dominance. However, rigorous tests are lacking. We couple field-parameterized models of competition between 10 annual plant species with a biodiversity-functioning experiment under two contrasting environmental conditions, to study how coexistence determinants link to biodiversity effects (selection and complementarity). We find that complementarity effects positively correlate with niche differences and selection effects differences correlate with fitness differences. However, niche differences also contribute to selection effects and fitness differences to complementarity effects. Despite this complexity, communities with an excess of niche differences (where niche differences exceeded those needed for coexistence) produce more biomass and have faster decomposition rates under drought, but do not take up nutrients more rapidly. We provide empirical evidence that the mechanisms determining coexistence correlate with those maximizing ecosystem functioning. It is unclear how biodiversity-ecosystem functioning and species coexistence mechanisms are linked. Here, Godoy and colleagues combine field-parameterised competition models with a BEF experiment to show that mechanisms leading to more stable species coexistence lead to greater productivity, but not necessarily to enhanced functions other than primary production

Constraints on the χ_(c1) versus χ_(c2) polarizations in proton-proton collisions at √s = 8 TeV

The polarizations of promptly produced χ_(c1) and χ_(c2) mesons are studied using data collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC, in proton-proton collisions at √s=8  TeV. The χ_c states are reconstructed via their radiative decays χ_c → J/ψγ, with the photons being measured through conversions to e⁺e⁻, which allows the two states to be well resolved. The polarizations are measured in the helicity frame, through the analysis of the χ_(c2) to χ_(c1) yield ratio as a function of the polar or azimuthal angle of the positive muon emitted in the J/ψ → μ⁺μ⁻ decay, in three bins of J/ψ transverse momentum. While no differences are seen between the two states in terms of azimuthal decay angle distributions, they are observed to have significantly different polar anisotropies. The measurement favors a scenario where at least one of the two states is strongly polarized along the helicity quantization axis, in agreement with nonrelativistic quantum chromodynamics predictions. This is the first measurement of significantly polarized quarkonia produced at high transverse momentum