The Autonomic Progress Bar Motivates Treatment Completion for Patients of Stimulant Use Disorder and Cannabis Use Disorder.

Background: The intrinsic motivation behind the "need to complete" is more influential than external incentives. We introduced a novel progress-bar tool to motivate the completion of programs designed to treat stimulant and cannabis use disorders. We further examined the effectiveness of the progress bar's scoring approach in forecasting consistently negative urine tests. Methods: This study's participants included 568 patients with stimulant, amphetamine-type, and cannabis use disorders who were undergoing 12-month mandatory treatment programs at Taichung Veterans General Hospital in Taiwan. Patients were given scores of 1, -1, or 0 depending on whether they received negative, positive, or missing urinalysis reports, respectively. The autonomic progress bar generated weekly score totals. At the group level, scorei donated scores from all patients for a given week (i denoted the week). Scorei was standardized to adjusted scorei. We then conducted Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) Model of time-series analyses for the adjusted scorei. Results: A total of 312 patients maintained treatment progress over the 12-month program. The autonomic score calculator totaled the shared achievements of these patients. The coefficients of the lag variables for mean (p), lag variables for residual error term (q), and number of orders for ensuring stationary (d) were estimated at p = 3, d = 4, and q = 7 for the first half of the treatment program, and were estimated at p = 2, d = 2, and q = 3 for the second half. Both models were stationary and tested as fit for prediction (p < 0.05). Sharply raised adjusted scores were predicted during the high-demand treatment phase. Discussion: This study's novel progress-bar tool effectively motivated treatment completion. It was also effective in forecasting continually negative urine tests. The tool's free open-source code makes it easy to implement among many substance-treatment services.

Effect of Arctium lappa L. in the dextran sulfate sodium colitis mouse model.

AIM: To analyze the possible protective role of Arctium lappa L. (AL) in a murine model of ulcerative colitis (UC). METHODS: BALB/c mice were administered 100 mg/kg AL powder orally each day. After 7 d, colitis was induced by administration of dextran sulfate sodium (DSS) (5% W/V) in drinking water for a further 8 consecutive days. Diarrhea and bloody stools as well as colonic histology were observed. The level of interleukin-6 (IL-6) and tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha) in colonic sections were detected by immunohistochemistry. RESULTS: There were significant differences in mean body weight values and disease activity indices between controls and AL-treated animals. Moreover, the histological findings showed that AL treatment can prevent mucosal edema, submucosal erosions, ulceration, inflammatory cell infiltration and colon damage. In addition, immunohistochemistry analysis showed that the levels of the inflammatory cytokines, IL-6 and TNF-alpha were also decreased in AL-treated groups. CONCLUSION: We suggest that AL can prevent intestinal damage and decrease inflammatory cytokines in mice with DSS-induced colitis. Thus, AL could prove to be a useful food for UC.

A novel gene homologous to teashirt is differentially expressed in neonatal mouse skin during development of hair follicles.

Neonatal mouse skin is useful for studying changes in gene expression during development of hair follicles, as the mitotic activity of skin cells changes shortly after birth. Using ribonucleic acid (RNA) differential display, a 261-nt message has been identified in the skin, specifically on d 3-5 but not on d 2 after birth. Confirmation of its expression by ribonuclease protection assay showed that stronger expression is seen on d 3-5 compared with d 1-2. Using RNA ligase-mediated rapid amplification of 5' complementary deoxyribonucleic acid ends, we have successfully isolated a 3046-bp gene, which has 93% sequence homology to a mouse teashirt1 gene. Amino acid analysis showed that it has 74% identity to the mouse teashirt1 protein and possesses zinc-finger motifs 1, 2, and 3. In situ hybridization data revealed that it is mainly expressed in the follicle bulb, including dermal papilla and matrix cells. As the proliferation of bulb cells is important to follicle development during this period, the finding of its strong expression on d 3-5 suggests that the identified gene is a potential candidate for follicle growth.