Author Interviews, Education / 15.09.2016

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Mr. Alexander Burgoyne Department of Psychology Michigan State University East Lansing, MI MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Within the field of psychology, the question of whether intelligence has a role in chess expertise has been debated since at least 1927 with the publication of "Psychologie des schachspiels" by Djakow, Petrowski, and Rudik. More recently, the titles of popular press books such as Talent is Overrated speak to the belief that individual differences in abilities, such as intelligence, do not matter, or can be circumvented by training. We analyzed a half-century worth of research on intelligence and chess skill and found that cognitive ability contributes meaningfully to individual differences in chess skill, particularly in younger and/or less skill players. (more…)
Author Interviews, Education, Pediatrics, Technology / 14.09.2016

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Jesus Pujol, MD Director of the MRI Research Unit. Department of Radiology. Hospital del Mar Barcelona MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: The pros and cons of video gaming in children have been extensively debated. There are relevant amounts of data indicating both the positive and negative effects of video games. Nevertheless, a key question for many parents remains unanswered: How long should children play? To provide some clarity, we have investigated the relationship between weekly video game use and certain cognitive abilities and conduct-related problems. (more…)
Author Interviews, BMJ, Education, Surgical Research / 03.09.2016

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Miss Hui-Ling Kerr SpR Trauma and Orthopaedics Department of Trauma and Orthopaedic Bristol Royal Infirmary, Bristol, UK MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Gender inequality at consultant level in surgery has not improved despite greater opportunities for women and only a small proportion of women apply to become surgical trainees. We wanted to find out if the lack of female surgical role models acted as a deterrent to first year female junior doctors and final year medical students towards a career in surgery. (more…)
Author Interviews, Education, JAMA / 30.08.2016

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Daniel J. Morgan M.D., M.S Associate Professor Epidemiology & Public Health University of Maryland School of Medicine MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Physicians are generally taught if a treatment is indicated, not how well the treatment works. Although this has been part of evidence based medical training, doctors still perform poorly with ability to understand risk and how treatment limits risk (Bayesian reasoning). Many publications focus on relative risk reduction which inflates the perception of an effect over the more accurate absolute risk reduction. (more…)
Alzheimer's - Dementia, Author Interviews, Brigham & Women's - Harvard, Education / 30.08.2016

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Deborah Blacker MD, ScD Director of the Gerontology Research Unit Department of Psychiatry Massachusetts General Hospital MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings Response: Many observational studies have found that those who are cognitively active have a lower risk of developing Alzheimer's disease or any type of dementia. However, we and others have been concerned that these findings might be spurious due to two potential biases:
  • 1) “confounding,” meaning that those who are cognitively active have lower rates of Alzheimer’s disease for another reason, in particular the effect of greater education, which is associated with both lower risk of Alzheimer’s and higher levels of cognitive activity; and
  • 2) “reverse causation,” meaning that theassociation could be due to a reduction in cognitive activity among those already in the long preclinical phase of cognitive decline before Alzheimer’s dementia (rather than the lack of cognitive activity causing the Alzheimer’s). Our study performed a systematic review of the literature on the association, and then a set of bias analyses to assess whether confounding or reverse causation could account for the observed associations.
(more…)
Accidents & Violence, Author Interviews, CDC, Education, Sexual Health / 27.08.2016

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Laura Kann, Ph.D. Chief of the School-Based Surveillance Branch Division of Adolescent and School Health CDC MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: CDC has been using the Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) to collect data on the sexual identity of high school students at the state and local levels and on the prevalence of health risk behaviors among gay, lesbian, and bisexual students for many years. Starting with the 2015 YRBS cycle, we had enough support to add questions to the national YRBS to provide the first ever nationally representative look at health risk behaviors among these students. (more…)
Author Interviews, Brigham & Women's - Harvard, Cost of Health Care, Education, Heart Disease, JAMA / 16.08.2016

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Rory Brett Weiner, MD Assistant Professor of Medicine Harvard Medical School MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: The increased use of noninvasive cardiac imaging and Medicare spending in the late 1990s and early 2000s has led to several measures to help optimize the use of cardiac imaging. One such effort has been the Appropriate Use Criteria (AUC) put forth by the American College of Cardiology Foundation. The AUC for echocardiography have been useful to characterize practice patterns and more recently been used as a tool to try to improve ordering of echocardiograms. Our research group previously conducted a randomized study of physicians-in-training (cardiovascular medicine fellows) and showed that an AUC based educational and feedback intervention reduced the rate of rarely appropriate transthoracic echocardiograms (TTEs). The current study represents the first randomized controlled trial of an AUC education and feedback intervention attending level cardiologists. In this study, the intervention group (which in addition to education received monthly feedback emails regarding their individual TTE ordering) ordered fewer rarely appropriate TTEs than the control group. The most common reasons for rarely appropriate TTEs in this study were ‘surveillance’ echocardiograms, referring to those in patients with known cardiac disease but no change in their clinical status. (more…)
Author Interviews, Diabetes, Education, OBGYNE / 09.08.2016

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr Valerie Holmes Senior Lecturer Centre for Public Health School of Medicine, Dentistry and Biomedical Science Queen's University Belfast Belfast MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Women with diabetes, type 1 diabetes and type 2 diabetes, are advised to plan for pregnancy as there are higher risks of complications for both the mother and baby when compared to the general maternity population. Careful planning in partnership with diabetes care teams, especially in relation to achieving optimum blood glucose control and taking folic acid can significantly reduce the risks. However, while most women know that they should plan for pregnancy, they are unaware as to why this is important or how to engage with the process, and thus the majority of women (up to two thirds of women) enter pregnancy unprepared. This study describes the implementation of a regional preconception counsellng resource, in the format of a DVD, into routine care in Northern Ireland to raise awareness of pregnancy planning. The authors assessed if the introduction of this resource improved pregnancy planning among women with diabetes in the region. (more…)
Author Interviews, Education, Pediatrics / 06.08.2016

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: David C. Geary, Ph.D. Curators’ Distinguished Professor Thomas Jefferson Fellow Department of Psychological Sciences Interdisciplinary Neuroscience Program University of Missouri Columbia, MO MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: In an earlier study, we found that children’s understanding of numbers and the relations among them (e.g., that 6 = 5 + 1 & 4 + 2 & 3 + 3…) at the beginning of 1st grade predicted their performance on math measures in adolescence, controlling IQ, working memory, family background and other factors. These are measures that predict employability and wages in young adults and thus is practically important. We were interested in understanding the very early quantitative knowledge that predicts children’s later number knowledge. We tested children on a variety of quantitative measures 2 years before they entered kindergarten and in kindergarten gave them the same type of number test that we used in the first study. We found that 3 year olds' cardinal knowledge was critical to their later understanding of number relations, controlling IQ and many other factors. Cardinal knowledge is their understanding of the quantities associated with number words. So, if you ask a child to give you 3 toys, and they give you a handful, they do not understand what ‘three’ means. Young children with poor knowledge of number words, we at risk for poor math outcomes in kindergarten, controlling other factors. (more…)
Author Interviews, Education, Pediatrics, Technology / 18.07.2016

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Lauren J. Myers, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Psychology Department Lafayette College Easton, Pennsylvania MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Many families with young children use video chat to connect with family and friends--but what do children understand about the on-screen people and content of these interactions? The American Academy of Pediatrics discourages screen time for kids under 2 years because children who watch a lot of media often have poor language skills, and they miss out on other activities that would be more developmentally appropriate. However, in this study we wondered whether there is a difference between putting a baby in front of a television and having an interactive exchange via video chat. (more…)
Author Interviews, Education, Health Care Systems, Outcomes & Safety / 15.07.2016

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr. Susan Moffatt-Bruce, MD PhD Cardiothoracic surgeon Associate professor of surgery and assistant professor of molecular virology, immunology and medical genetics The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center Columbus, OH MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Crew Resource Management (CRM), a training for all health care providers, including doctors, nurses, staff and students, focusing on team communication, leadership, and decision-making practices, was implemented throughout a large academic health system - across eight departments spanning three hospitals and two campuses. All those in the health system, inclusive of those that took the training, took a survey measuring perceptions of workplace patient safety culture both before CRM implementation and about 2 years after. Safety culture was significantly improved after Crew Resource Management training, with the strongest effects in participant perception of teamwork and communication. This study was the first health-system wide CRM implementation reported in the literature. (more…)
Author Interviews, Education, Memory, Neurological Disorders / 15.07.2016

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Kalipada Pahan, Ph.D Floyd A. Davis, M.D., Endowed Chair of Neurology Professor, Departments of Neurological Sciences, Biochemistry and Pharmacology Rush University Medical Center VA Scientist, Jesse Brown VA Medical Center Chicago, IL 60612 MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Individual difference in learning and educational performance is a global issue. In many cases between two students of the same background studying in the same class, one turns out to be a poor learner and does worse than the other academically. Little is known on what changes occur in the brain of poor learners and how to improve performance in poor learners. Here, we have demonstrated that cinnamon, a common food spice and flavoring material, converts poor learning mice to good learners. Results of the study were recently published in the Journal of Neuroimmune Pharmacology. (more…)
Accidents & Violence, Author Interviews, Education, Geriatrics, Nursing / 10.07.2016

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: The impetus for this article was our experience from working at FAU’s Christine E. Lynn College of Nursing’s Louis and Anne Green Memory and Wellness Center with families as we conducted assessments of older adults referred to our program by family members or law enforcement. We realized that there is a need to educate nurses that a) they can help to identify persons who may be at risk for unsafe driving before accidents occur, and b) there are resources to help families and nurses navigate this challenging topic. This awareness is especially important for persons and friend/family members who find themselves trying to cope with a known or potential diagnosis of dementia. (more…)
Author Interviews, Education, NEJM / 09.07.2016

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Marsha Regenstein, Ph.D, Professor From the Department of Health Policy and Management Milken Institute School of Public Health George Washington University Washington, DC MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Despite the billions of dollars in public spending on graduate medical education (GME) in the United States, little is known about the true cost of training a resident, with the few studies that exist showing wide variation in their methods and results. At the same time, the U.S. appears to be producing too few primary care physicians to meet the health care needs of the population, and especially those who live in underserved areas with high health care needs and shortages of health professionals. The Teaching Health Center (THC) Graduate Medical Education funding program was established under the Affordable Care Act to increase the number of medical and dental residents training in six primary care specialties in underserved areas. The Teaching Health Center funding supports community-based residency training in settings such as Federally-qualified health centers, rural clinics, mental health clinics and other non-profit community-based organizations. Hospitals commonly serve as training partners, but THC funding goes directly to the community-based partner, bringing funding and training closer to the communities where underserved patients live. The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), which manages and funds the program, set an interim payment of $150,000 per resident; currently, 59 THCs are training 690 residents in 27 states and the District of Columbia. The interim payment rate was based on the best available information at the time and was meant to cover the full cost of training a resident. (more…)
Author Interviews, Education, Medical Imaging, Radiology / 03.07.2016

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: David Leswick MD FRCPC Radiologist Saskatoon Health Region and the University of Saskatchewan MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: The background for this study is that the use of computed tomography (CT) is increasing, and there is a significant radiation dose imparted to the population through imaging. There have been multiple prior studies showing limited knowledge of both dose levels and its associated risk from medical imaging procedures, and we wanted to evaluate local knowledge in our Health Region. We surveyed a total of 308 health care providers, including 217 referring physicians, 32 radiologists and 59 technologists. Overall, most respondents were aware of the risk of malignancy from CT, with only 23% of physicians, 3% of radiologists, and 25% of technologists believing there was no increased risk of malignancy from a single CT scan. Underestimating radiation dose levels from a procedure is more concerning than overestimating as it may lead to minimization of the perceived risk. Although relatively few respondents (20%) selected the most appropriate dose estimate for an abdominal CT scan in chest x-ray equivalents, the majority (54%) correctly or overestimated dose, with better knowledge amongst radiologists and imaging technologists than referring physicians. In general, respondents were appropriately more concerned regarding radiation dose when imaging pregnant and pediatric patients as risks from radiation are higher in those groups of patients. (more…)
Author Interviews, Education, Exercise - Fitness / 28.06.2016

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Peter Krustrup PhD Professor of Team Sport and Health Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports Copenhagen Centre for Team Sport and Health University of Copenhagen, Denmark Dr. Krustrup discusses ideas formulated in the Copenhagen Consensus Conference 2016: children, youth, and physical activity in schools and during leisure time. MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: A desire to improve children’s and youth’s health, well-being and social inclusion motivated researchers at University of Copenhagen, Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports to gather 24 international top level researchers from a variety of academic disciplines at a consensus conference in Denmark on 4-7 April 2016. The aim of the Copenhagen Consensus Conference in 2016 was to reach an evidence-based consensus within the four themes: 1) Physical activity in children and youth: Fitness and health. 2) Physical activity in children and youth: Cognitive functioning 3) Physical activity in children and youth: Engagement, motivation and psychological well-being 4) Physical activity in children and youth: Social inclusion and physical activity implementation strategies. (more…)
Author Interviews, Education, PNAS, Surgical Research / 23.06.2016

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Sunita Sah MD PhD Management & Organizations Johnson Graduate School of Management Cornell University MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?  Dr. Sah: Physicians often recommend the treatment they specialize in, e.g., surgeons are more likely to recommend surgery than non-surgeons. Results from an observational study and a randomized controlled laboratory experiment found that when physicians revealed their bias toward their own specialty, patients were more likely to report increased trust in the physician’s expertise and take the treatment in accordance with the physician’s specialty.    (more…)
Author Interviews, Education, JAMA, Pharmacology, UCSF / 21.06.2016

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Colette DeJong Medical student at UCSF and Research Fellow at the UCSF Center for Healthcare Value. MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Data released under the U.S. Sunshine Act reveals that in the last five months of 2013, over half of American physicians received free meals, gifts, or payments from the pharmaceutical industry. Recent studies have shown that doctors who receive large payments from drug companies—such as speaking fees and royalties—are more likely to prescribe expensive brand-name drugs, even when generics are available. Our findings, however, suggest that physicians’ prescribing decisions may be associated with much smaller industry payments than previously thought. We found that doctors who receive a single industry-sponsored meal—with an average value under $20—are up to twice as likely to prescribe the brand-name drug being promoted. (more…)
Author Interviews, Education, Gender Differences / 07.06.2016

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Sara E. Brownell PhD School of Life Sciences Arizona State University Tempe, AZ MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Dr. Brownell: Our group has been broadly interested in gender biases in introductory biology since we published a study that showed that women underperform on course exams and under participate in whole class discussions compared to men (http://www.lifescied.org/content/13/3/478.full). We were curious why women might be under performing on these course exams so in this new study, we examined characteristics of the exams to see if that had an impact. What we found was that women and men perform equally on questions that test basic memorization. However, when questions tested more higher-level critical thinking skills, women were not scoring as high as men. This happened even when we took into account the academic ability of the students - women and men who had the same ability coming into the class. We also found that students from lower socioeconomic statuses also underperformed on these higher-level critical thinking questions compared to students from higher socioeconomic statuses, again even when we took into account academic ability. (more…)
Author Interviews, Education, JAMA, Sexual Health, University of Michigan / 17.05.2016

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Reshma Jagsi, MD, DPhil Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Michigan Ann Arbor, MI 48109 MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Dr. Jagsi: There has recently been considerable media attention to certain egregious individual cases of sexual harassment, but it has been less clear whether these cases were isolated and uncommon incidents or whether they are indicative of situations more commonly experienced by academic medical faculty.  An excellent survey study had previously documented that 52% of female faculty in 1995 had experienced harassment, but many of those women had attended medical school when women were only a small minority of the medical students (let alone faculty).  More recent estimates of faculty experiences are necessary to guide ongoing policies to promote gender equity in an era when nearly half of all medical students are women. We found that in a modern sample of academic medical faculty, 30% of women and 4% of men had experienced harassment in their careers. (more…)
Author Interviews, Education, PLoS / 15.05.2016

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Mallory Kidwell, B.A. Project Coordinator at the Center for Open Science MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Open and transparent sharing of research data and materials is a core value of science that facilitates critique, replication, and extension within the scientific community. However, current norms provide few incentives for researchers to share such evidence, resulting in only a small portion of articles with accessible research data and materials. Efforts to improve rates of data sharing are occurring across research disciplines. In January 2014, the journal Psychological Science adopted an intervention to encourage data and materials sharing -- badges to acknowledge open practices, developed and freely distributed by the Center for Open Science. The badges, visual icons placed on publications, certify when the authors of a research publication have followed open practices to make their data or research materials publicly accessible. In the two years prior to adopting badges, we found that only about 3% of publications at Psychological Science reported that the underlying data was publicly accessible. After 2014, the rate of publications reporting data sharing increased dramatically, reaching 39% in the first half of 2015 -- the last time period included in the study. Materials sharing also increased, but to a weaker degree and with greater variability. We also found that, with badges, authors were more likely to follow through in making the data accessible and sharing data that was correct, usable, and complete for other researchers to reuse or reanalyze. A comparison group of journals in psychology showed no change in data sharing rates over the same time period, and among the authors that did report sharing data in the other journals, the data was less likely to actually be available, correct, usable, or complete. (more…)
Author Interviews, Education, Genetic Research, Nature / 13.05.2016

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr. Daniel J. Benjamin PhD Associate Professor (Research), USC, 2015-present Associate Professor (with tenure), Cornell, 2013-2015 Assistant Professor, Cornell University, 2007-2013 Research Associate, NBER, 2013-present Faculty Research Fellow, NBER, 2009-2013  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Dr. Benjamin: Educational attainment is primarily determined by environmental factors, but decades of twin and family studies have found that genetic factors also play a role, accounting for at least 20% of variation in educational attainment across individuals. This finding implies that there are genetic variants associated statistically with more educational attainment (people who carry these variants will tend on average to complete more formal education) and genetic variants associated statistically with less educational attainment (people who carry these variants will tend on average to complete less formal education). But none of these genetic variants had been identified until our 2013 paper on educational attainment. That paper, which studied a sample of roughly 100,000 individuals, identified 3 genetic variants associated with educational attainment, each of which has a very small effect. In the current paper, we expanded our sample to roughly 300,000 individuals, with the goal of learning much more about the genetic factors correlated with educational attainment. (more…)
Author Interviews, Cost of Health Care, Education, JAMA / 11.05.2016

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr. James Song-Jeng Yeh, MD Brigham and Women's Hospital Boston MA MedicalResearch.com: What is the purpose for this study? Dr. Yeh: A number of factors influence physicians’ prescribing behavior, including physician’s knowledge and understanding of the drugs.  Pharmaceutical detailing and financial incentives may affect such behavior.  My interest in evidence-based medicine and how medical knowledge is translated into practice lead me to think about how physicians’ financial relationships with the pharmaceutical industry may affect prescribing patterns. In our study, we linked the Massachusetts physicians open payment database with the Medicare drug prescription claims database to determine if financial relationships with the industry are associated with increased brand-name statin drug prescribing.  The open payment database reports payments that physicians receive from pharmaceutical and medical device industries.  The open payment database when linked to the drug prescription claims database allowed us to answer this question. We looked at year 2011, when two of the most commonly prescribed brand-name statin drugs (Lipitor and Crestor) were not yet available in generic formulation. The outcome measured was what percentage of all statin prescription claims (both generic and brand-name) were brand-names. (more…)
Author Interviews, Education, Gender Differences, Surgical Research / 04.05.2016

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Alison M. Fecher, MD Assistant Professor of Surgery Indiana University Health MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Dr. Fecher: It has long been known that female faculty are underrepresented in departments of surgery at U.S. medical schools. Our study wanted to identify obstacles women face in entering certain surgical subspecialties and in career advancement. We found that women are poorly represented in some of the most competitive subspecialties, including cardiothoracic and transplant surgery. We also found that women tend to advance more slowly up the career ladder, with many of them spending more years at the assistant professor level than their male counterparts. One reason for this may be that they tend to publish less peer-reviewed articles than male faculty; however, our results show that the publications of female faculty often has a greater impact on the field, as measured by citations and recentness of articles. (more…)
Author Interviews, Education, Pediatrics, Pediatrics / 29.04.2016

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Jorijn Hornman, BSc (MD PhD student) Departments of Health Sciences University Medical Center Groningen University of Groningen, Netherlands MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Preterm children are at increased risk of emotional and behavioral problems compared to full-term children. Prevalences vary with degree of prematurity and assessment age. Unknown was whether stability of these problems upon school entry differs between preterm and full-term children. MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings? Response: We found that preterm children had higher rates than full-term children of persistent (7.2% versus 3.6%), emerging (4.3% versus 2.3%), and resolving (7.5% versus 3.6%) emotional and behavioral problems. Early preterm children –born at <32 weeks gestation- had the highest rates of persistent (8.2%) and emerging (5.2%) problems, and moderately preterm children –born at 32-35 weeks gestation- the highest rates of resolving problems (8.7%). (more…)
Author Interviews, Education, Pediatrics, PNAS, Social Issues / 26.04.2016

MedicalResearch.com Interview with:

Joan L. Luby, MD Samuel and Mae S. Ludwig Professor of Child Psychiatry Director, Early Emotional Development Program Washington University School of Medicine St. Louis, Missouri

MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?  Dr. Luby: The study was designed to investigate brain development in early onset mental disorders. The main findings validate depression in preschoolers with brain change evident this young similar to that known in adults. We also found effects of maternal support on brain development in this process which is what the current paper focuses on . (more…)
Author Interviews, BMJ, Cancer Research, Education / 08.04.2016

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr Alex Ghanouni Research Associate UCL Research Department of Epidemiology and Public Health Health Behaviour Research Centre London MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Dr. Ghanouni: This study comes out of growing concern among academics, doctors, and policymakers about the unintended harms of healthcare interventions. One prominent issue in the ongoing debate is ‘overdiagnosis’, that is detection of disease that would not have caused symptoms or death if it had remained undetected. There are many contexts in which overdiagnosis can occur but one of the most prominent is cancer screening, in which asymptomatic individuals undergoing testing may have slow-growing cancers detected that would never have otherwise come to light. However, because it is impossible to be sure which cancers are slow-growing and which are aggressive, most are treated. This means that overdiagnosis can lead to harm through the anxiety caused by a disease label and the negative effects of treatment (e.g. surgery) that is actually unnecessary. Despite professional concern about overdiagnosis, previous research has found that the public is mostly unaware that it exists. One study that was particularly relevant to our research was an Australian survey in which members of the public were asked whether they had encountered the term before and what they thought it meant. Although around half the sample stated that they had heard or seen the term before, only 41% were able to provide a definition that was approximately correct. We tested the extent to which this was true as part of an online survey of adults aged 50-70 years in the UK. We found that recognition of the term was very low (only 30%) and almost no-one (3%) gave an answer that was strictly accurate. Responses often indicated misconceptions (e.g. “misdiagnosis”, “false positive diagnosis”, or being “overly health conscious”). (more…)
Author Interviews, Education, JAMA, Pain Research / 27.03.2016

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dr. Daniel C. Cherkin PhD Senior Investigator Group Health Research Institute Seattle, WA MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Dr. Cherkin: Chronic low back pain is a widespread, costly, and potentially disabling problem. It’s the most common cause of pain of any kind. It affects eight in 10 Americans at some point in their lives. In recent years, the United States has been spending more on back pain treatments—but unfortunately with worse results in how much pain bothers people and interferes with their lives. Group Health is addressing the problem in several ways, including this innovative research. MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings? Dr. Cherkin: In a randomized controlled trial involving more than 300 patients at Group Health, we found that training in a kind of mindfulness meditation—mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR)—led to meaningful improvements in functioning and chronic low back pain at six months and one year. MBSR, which is becoming increasingly popular and available in the United States, involves training in observing, acknowledging, and accepting thoughts and feelings including pain. The training also includes some easy yoga poses to help participants become more aware of their bodies. Results with  mindfulness-based stress reduction were significantly better than with usual care (whatever patients would be doing for their back pain if they weren’t in the study, including medications and physical therapy—but not mindfulness meditation or cognitive behavioral therapy). And results with  mindfulness-based stress reduction were very similar to those with cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). CBT includes education about chronic pain, relationships between thoughts and emotional and physical reactions, instruction and practice in changing dysfunctional thoughts, setting and working towards behavioral goals, relaxation skills, activity pacing, and pain coping strategies. Prior studies had already proven that CBT helped adults of various ages with back pain. (more…)
Author Interviews, Education, NYU, Pediatrics, PNAS, Weight Research / 15.03.2016

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Michele Leardo Assistant Director Institute for Education & Social Policy New York University New York, NY 10012 MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: US school districts increasingly distribute annual fitness and body mass index (BMI) “report cards” to students and parents. Such personalized informational interventions have appeal in economics because they can inform parents about their children's obesity status at relatively low costs. Awareness of the weight status can lead to behavioral responses that can improve health. New York City public schools adopted Fitnessgram in 2007-2008, reporting each student’s BMI alongside categorical BMI designations. We examined how being classified as “overweight” for the previous academic year affected the students’ subsequent BMI and weight. Specifically, we compared female students whose BMI was close to their age-specific cutoff for being considered overweight with those whose BMI narrowly put them in the “healthy” category. We find that being labeled overweight had no beneficial effects on students’ subsequent BMI and weight. (more…)