Descriptive analysis of free-text comments on healthcare priorities and experiences in a national sample of people with multiple sclerosis.

BACKGROUND: People with multiple sclerosis (PwMS) often require care from multiple healthcare services and providers to fulfill their physical and psychological healthcare needs, including those related to their MS and those due to co-occurring disorders. However, they often experience barriers to accessing healthcare specialists, providers, and services. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study is to understand patients' healthcare preferences, perceived importance of elements of their care, and encountered barriers through analyzing patients' free-text comments. METHODS: We used content analysis to analyze 7105 text responses. RESULTS: We recruited 3,003 participants with MS across the U.S. Of those, 82.9% were females. The mean age was 58.49 years (a range of 18-96 years). The participants self-reported their MS course as relapsing remitting (54.8%) or progressive (30.0%). The healthcare professionals most frequently identified as being most important to PwMS included neurologists, physicians/general practitioners, and physical/occupational therapists. Commonly identified barriers to accessing healthcare included the high cost of healthcare services, insufficient health insurance coverage, limited mobility, and transportation. Approximately 36% of respondents expressed a preference for receiving care from a comprehensive MS center, an MS research center, or an MS specialist as their main healthcare provider. Regarding priorities for improving healthcare quality, about 10% of participants stated that healthcare professionals should focus more time and attention on communicating, consulting, and understanding patients' needs and questions. CONCLUSION: PwMS prioritize accessibility, affordability, insurance coverage, and comprehensiveness in MS healthcare services.

Reversion-reporter transgenes to analyze all six base-substitution pathways in Arabidopsis.

To expand the repertoire of Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) mutation-reporter transgenes, we constructed six mutant alleles in the same codon of the ß-glucuronidase-encoding GUS transgene. Each allele reverts to GUS+ only via a particular one of the six transition/transversion pathways. AcV5 epitope tags, fused carboxyl terminal to the inactive GUS- proteins, enabled semiquantitative immunoassays in plant protein extracts. Spontaneous G:C→T:A transversions, previously not measured using reporter transgenes, were quite frequent. This may reflect mispairing of adenine with 8-oxoguanine in DNA attacked by endogenous oxyradicals. Spontaneous G:C→A:T was modest and other reversions were relatively low, as reported previously. Frequencies of ultraviolet C-induced TT→TC and TC→TT reversions were both high. With increased transgene copy number, spontaneous G:C→T:A reversions increased but ultraviolet C-induced reversions decreased. Frequencies of some reversion events were reduced among T4 versus T3 generation plants. Based on these and other analyses of sources of experimental variation, we propose guidelines for the employment of these lines to study genotoxic stress in planta.

Gender differences in genetic and environmental influences on gambling: results from a sample of twins from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health.

AIMS: To examine the extent to which genetic factors and shared and non-shared environmental factors are implicated in the development of gambling behaviors and to examine whether there are gender differences in the genetic and environmental contributors to gambling behaviors. DESIGN: A genetically informative analysis was performed by using DeFries-Fulker (DF) analysis. SETTING: Analysis of secondary data drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). PARTICIPANTS: A total of 324 monozygotic (MZ) twins and 278 same-sex dizygotic (DZ) twins were included in the analysis. Of these twins, there were 150 male MZ twins, 144 male DZ twins, 174 female MZ twins and 134 female DZ twins. MEASUREMENTS: Gambling behavior was measured through eight self-reported questions that tapped a range of items designed to measure problems related to gambling. Self-reported measures of self-control and delinquent involvement were also included to examine the degree to which these factors covaried with gambling behavior. FINDINGS: The results of the DF analysis indicated that when male and female twin pairs were analyzed simultaneously, genetic factors explained approximately 70% of the variance in gambling and non-shared environmental factors explained the remaining variance. When gender-specific models were calculated, substantial gender differences emerged. For males, genetic factors explained approximately 85% of the variance in gambling, with the non-shared environment accounting for the remaining variance. For females, genetic factors explained none of the variance in gambling behaviors, while the shared environment explained 45% of the variance and the non-shared environment explained 55% of the variance. CONCLUSIONS: Analysis of twins from the Add Health data suggests that there are significant gender differences in the genetic and environmental underpinnings to gambling behaviors.