The Effect of Alcohol Cue Exposure on Tobacco-Related Cue Reactivity: A Systematic Review.

AIMS: To examine the effect of alcohol cue exposure on tobacco-related cravings, self-administration and other measures of tobacco-related cue reactivity. METHODS: We searched Medline, PsycINFO, Embase, CINAHL and Scopus from inception to May 2020 for articles reporting on a combination of cue reactivity (and/or cross-cue reactivity), alcohol use and tobacco consumption. A semi-quantitative analysis and study quality assessment were performed for the included articles. RESULTS: A total of 37 articles met our inclusion criteria and were included in the systematic review. Most studies (60%) reported that alcohol cue exposure increased tobacco cravings, but only 18% of studies reported that alcohol cue exposure resulted in an increase in ad libitum smoking. There was also substantial heterogeneity between studies due to differences in methodology related to alcohol cue exposure, measures of tobacco cravings, as well as variable participant and study characteristics. CONCLUSIONS: Alcohol cue exposure can increase cravings for tobacco. This has important implications for individuals who use both substances but are trying to quit one or both.

Promoting adherence to physical activity among individuals with cardiovascular disease using behavioral counseling: A theory and research-based primer for health care professionals.

Physical activity (PA) promotion remains a cornerstone of primary and secondary prevention efforts to reduce morbidity and mortality from cardiovascular disease (CVD). While frontline health care providers (HCPs; e.g., family physicians, cardiologists, registered nurses, nurse practitioners, etc.) are in an optimal position to administer PA-promoting interventions to their patients, many HCPs may feel ill-equipped to address common obstacles to implementing and maintaining complex health behavior change. Behavioral counseling refers to a collection of theory- and empirically-supported strategies and approaches to health behavior promotion that can be learned and applied by HCPs for CVD prevention and treatment. In this selective review, we discuss prominent theories of health behavior change and the empirical intervention literature regarding PA promotion in community and CVD-samples and provide practical recommendations for integrating effective behavioral counseling strategies to clinical practice for frontline HCPs. We argue that behavioral counseling interventions for PA can be effectively executed within the contextual constraints of health settings through subtle shifts in communication strategies and brief counseling approaches. The administration of behavioral counseling for PA by HCPs has enormous potential to reduce CVD incidence and progression at a population level.

Subject-investigator reproducibility of the Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the subject-investigator agreement on the Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS) subsections I and II. METHODS: Subject-investigator agreement was estimated at baseline and endpoint by Kappa statistics for individual items and concordance correlations for subscale totals using data from two NIH Exploratory Trials in Parkinson's Disease studies. RESULTS: All but two questions had moderate subject-investigator agreement at baseline and endpoint. Participants consistently rated their disease activity worse that investigators. CONCLUSION: UPDRS self-administration produces similar results to investigator-administration. Although slightly elevated, UPDRS self-administration can be accommodated in a clinical trial setting.