Opposing views: associations of political polarization, political party affiliation, and social trust with COVID-19 vaccination intent and receipt.

INTRODUCTION: Political polarization has increased in the USA within recent years. Studies have shown Republicans are less likely to accept COVID-19 vaccinations than Democrats; however, little is known regarding the association between COVID-19 vaccination acceptance and political polarization. METHODS: We used data from a nationally-representative survey of 1427 participants conducted between 9 February 2021 and 17 February 2021. We estimated multivariate-adjusted odds ratios for COVID-19 vaccination intent and receipt according to perceived political polarization (measured as the perceived size of the ideological gap between Democrats and Republicans), political party affiliation, and social trust, controlling for demographic and socioeconomic factors. RESULTS: Among participants perceiving high levels of polarization, Republicans (versus Democrats) reported a 90% lower odds of vaccination intent (OR = 0.10 [0.05, 0.19], P < 0.001). Participants with high (versus low) social trust and low perceived polarization had a 2-folder higher vaccination intent (OR = 2.39 [1.34, 4.21], P = 0.003); this association was substantially weaker in the high perceived polarization group. CONCLUSIONS: High perceived levels of political polarization appear to magnify the decrease in the odds of receiving the COVID-19 vaccine and the intent to get vaccinated among Republicans versus Democrats. Political polarization may further attenuate the protective associations of high social capital with vaccination.

Mutant myocilin impacts sarcomere ultrastructure in mouse gastrocnemius muscle.

Myocilin (MYOC) is the gene with mutations most common in glaucoma. In the eye, MYOC is in trabecular meshwork, ciliary body, and retina. Other tissues with high MYOC transcript levels are skeletal muscle and heart. To date, the function of wild-type MYOC remains unknown and how mutant MYOC causes high intraocular pressure and glaucoma is ambiguous. By investigating mutant MYOC in a non-ocular tissue we hoped to obtain novel insight into mutant MYOC pathology. For this study, we utilized a transgenic mouse expressing human mutant MYOC Y437H protein and we examined its skeletal (gastrocnemius) muscle phenotype. Electron micrographs showed that sarcomeres in the skeletal muscle of mutant CMV-MYOC-Y437H mice had multiple M-bands. Western blots of soluble muscle lysates from transgenics indicated a decrease in two M-band proteins, myomesin 1 (MYOM1) and muscle creatine kinase (CKM). Immunoprecipitation identified CKM as a MYOC binding partner. Our results suggest that binding of mutant MYOC to CKM is changing sarcomere ultrastructure and this may adversely impact muscle function. We speculate that a person carrying the mutant MYOC mutation will likely have a glaucoma phenotype and may also have undiagnosed muscle ailments or vice versa, both of which will have to be monitored and treated.

Variability in conditioned pain modulation predicts response to NSAID treatment in patients with knee osteoarthritis.

BACKGROUND: Patients with painful knee osteoarthritis (OA) demonstrate hyperalgesia and altered pain-modulatory responses. While some prior work has demonstrated cross-sectional associations between laboratory and clinical pain measures, it is unknown whether individual variability in quantitative sensory testing (QST) responses at baseline can prospectively predict analgesic treatment responses. METHOD: Patients with knee OA (n = 35) were compared on QST responses to a demographically-matched pain-free control group (n = 39), after which patients completed a month-long treatment study of diclofenac sodium topical gel (1 %), applied up to 4 times daily. RESULTS: OA patients demonstrated reduced pain thresholds at multiple anatomic sites, as well as reduced conditioned pain modulation (CPM) and enhanced temporal summation of pain. The most pain-sensitive patients tended to report the most intense and neuropathic OA pain. Following diclofenac treatment, the knee OA cohort showed a roughly 30 % improvement in pain, regardless of the presence or absence of neuropathic symptoms. Baseline CPM scores, an index of endogenous pain-inhibitory capacity, were prospectively associated with treatment-related changes in clinical pain. Specifically, participants with higher CPM at baseline (i.e., better functioning endogenous pain-inhibitory systems) showed more reduction in pain at the end of treatment (p < .05). CONCLUSIONS: These results support prior findings of amplified pain sensitivity and reduced pain-inhibition in OA patients. Moreover, the moderate to strong associations between laboratory-based measures of pain sensitivity and indices of clinical pain highlight the clinical relevance of QST in this sample. Finally, the prospective association between CPM and diclofenac response suggests that QST-based phenotyping may have utility in explaining inter-patient variability in long-term analgesic treatment outcomes. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.Gov Identifier: NCT01383954 . Registered June 22, 2011.

Psychiatric Comorbidity Is Associated Prospectively with Diminished Opioid Analgesia and Increased Opioid Misuse in Patients with Chronic Low Back Pain.

BACKGROUND: Opioids are frequently prescribed for chronic low back pain (CLBP), but there are little prospective data on which patient subgroups may benefit. Psychiatric comorbidity, such as high levels of depression and anxiety symptoms (termed comorbid negative affect [NA]), is a common presentation and may predict diminished opioid analgesia and/or increased opioid misuse. METHODS: The authors conducted a 6½-month prospective cohort study of oral opioid therapy, with an active drug/placebo run-in period, in 81 CLBP patients with low, moderate, and high levels of NA. Treatment included an opioid titration phase with a prescribing physician blinded to NA group assignment and a 4-month continuation phase, during which subjects recorded daily pain levels using an electronic diary. The primary outcome was the percent improvement in average daily pain, summarized weekly. RESULTS: There was an overall 25% dropout rate. Despite the high NA group being prescribed a higher average daily dose of morphine equivalents, linear mixed model analysis revealed that the 24 study completers in each of the high NA and low NA groups had an average 21 versus 39% improvement in pain, respectively (P < 0.01). The high NA group also had a significantly greater rate of opioid misuse (39 vs. 8%, P < 0.05) and significantly more and intense opioid side effects (P < 0.01). CONCLUSIONS: These results indicate that the benefit and risk considerations in CLBP patients with high NA versus low NA are distinctly different. Thus, NA is an important phenotypic variable to characterize at baseline, before deciding whether to prescribe opioids for CLBP.

Self-reports of medication side effects and pain-related activity interference in patients with chronic pain: a longitudinal cohort study.

The primary purpose of this study was to examine the association between self-reports of medication side effects and pain-related activity interference in patients with chronic pain. The potential moderators of the association between reports of side effects and pain-related activity interference were also examined. A total of 111 patients with chronic musculoskeletal pain were asked to provide, once a month for a period of 6 months, self-reports of medication use and the presence of any perceived side effects (eg, nausea, dizziness, headaches) associated with their medications. At each of these time points, patients were also asked to provide self-reports of pain intensity, negative affect, and pain-related activity interference. Multilevel modeling analyses revealed that month-to-month increases in perceived medication side effects were associated with heightened pain-related activity interference (P < 0.05). Importantly, multilevel models revealed that perceived medication side effects were associated with heightened pain-related activity interference even after controlling for the influence of patient demographics, pain intensity, and negative affect. This study provides preliminary evidence that reports of medication side effects are associated with heightened pain-related activity interference in patients with chronic pain beyond the influence of other pain-relevant variables. The implications of our findings for clinical practice and the management of patients with chronic pain conditions are discussed.

Phenotype matters: the absence of a positive association between cortical thinning and chronic low back pain when controlling for salient clinical variables.

AIMS/OBJECTIVES/BACKGROUND: Studies have associated chronic low back pain (cLBP) with grey matter thinning. But these studies have not controlled for important clinical variables (such as a comorbid affective disorder, pain medication, age, or pain phenotype), which may reduce or eliminate these associations. METHODS: We conducted cortical thickness and voxel-based morphometry (VBM) analyses in 14 cLBP patients with a discogenic component to their pain, not taking opioids or benzodiazepines, and not depressed or anxious. They were age and gender matched to 14 pain-free controls (PFCs). An ROI-driven analysis (regions of interest) was conducted, using 18 clusters from a previous arterial spin labeling study demonstrating greater regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) in these cLBP subjects than the PFCs. Cortical thickness and VBM-based gray matter volume measurements were obtained from a structural MRI scan and group contrasts were calculated. RESULTS: Multivariate analysis of variance showed a trend toward cortical thickening in the right paracentral lobule in cLBP subjects (F1,17=3.667, P<0.067), and significant thickening in the right rostral middle frontal gyrus (F1,17=6.880, P<0.014). These clusters were non-significant after including age as a covariate (P<0.891; P<0.279). A whole-brain cortical thickness and VBM analysis also did not identify significant clusters of thinning or thickening. Exploratory analyses identified group differences for correlations between age and cortical thickness of the right rostral middle frontal gyrus (cLBP: R=-0.03, P=0.9; PFCs: R=-0.81, P<0.001), that is, PFCs demonstrated age-related thinning while cLBP patients did not. CONCLUSIONS: Our pilot results suggest that controlling for affect, age, and concurrent medications may reduce or eliminate some of the previously reported structural brain alterations in cLBP.

The association between negative affect and prescription opioid misuse in patients with chronic pain: the mediating role of opioid craving.

UNLABELLED: Over the past decade, considerable research has accumulated showing that chronic pain patients experiencing high levels of negative affect (NA) are at increased risk for prescription opioid misuse. The primary objective of the present study was to examine the factors that underlie the association between NA and prescription opioid misuse among patients with chronic pain. In this study, 82 patients with chronic musculoskeletal pain being prescribed opioid medication completed the Current Opioid Misuse Measure, a well-validated self-report questionnaire designed to assess prescription opioid misuse. Patients were also asked to complete self-report measures of pain intensity, NA, and opioid craving. A bootstrapped multiple mediation analysis was used to examine the mediating role of patients' pain intensity and opioid craving in the association between NA and prescription opioid misuse. Consistent with previous research, we found a significant association between NA and prescription opioid misuse. Interestingly, results revealed that opioid craving, but not pain intensity, mediated the association between NA and opioid misuse. The Discussion addresses the potential psychological and neurobiological factors that might contribute to the interrelationships among NA, opioid craving, and prescription opioid misuse in patients with pain. The clinical implications of our findings are also discussed. PERSPECTIVE: Our study provides new insights into the factors that underlie the association between negative affect and prescription opioid misuse in patients with chronic pain. Our findings could have important clinical implications, particularly for patients being prescribed opioid medication, and for reducing rates of opioid misuse in patients with pain.