Publications

We conducted a telephone survey of pharmacies in 2 New York City neighborhoods on same-day availability, type, and cost of over-the-counter emergency contraception. There was no difference in availability of over-the-counter emergency contraception between Upper East Side and East Harlem pharmacies (93% vs 94%; P = .71). Average cost of medication was less in East Harlem than in the Upper East Side ($45.16 vs $51.64; P < .001). Efforts should accentuate overcoming cost and knowledge barriers associated with the use of emergency contraception.

BACKGROUND

Prior research has documented a counterintuitive positive association between physical activity and indices of alcohol consumption frequency and heaviness.

OBJECTIVES

To investigate whether this relation extends to alcohol use disorder and clarify whether this association is non-linear.

METHODS

This is a cross-sectional, correlational population-based study of US adults (N = 34,653). The Alcohol Use Disorder and Associated Disabilities Interview Schedule was used to classify past-year DSM-IV alcohol use disorder and self-reported federal government-recommended weekly physical activity cutoffs.

RESULTS

After statistically controlling for confounds, alcohol abuse but not dependence was associated with greater prevalence of physical activity. Number of alcohol use disorder symptoms exhibited a curvilinear relationship with meeting physical activity requirements, such that the positive association degraded with high symptom counts.

CONCLUSION

There is a positive association between physical activity and less severe forms of alcohol use disorder in US adults. More severe forms of alcohol use disorder are not associated with physical activity.

Cervical dystonia (CD; spasmodic torticollis) can be evoked by inhibition of substantia nigra pars reticulata (SNpr) in the nonhuman primate (Burbaud et al., 1998; Dybdal et al., 2012). Suppression of GABAergic neurons that project from SNpr results in the disinhibition of the targets to which these neurons project. It therefore should be possible to prevent CD by inhibition of the appropriate nigral target region(s). Here we tested the hypothesis that the deep and intermediate layers of the superior colliculus (DLSC), a key target of nigral projections, are required for the emergence of CD. To test this hypothesis, we pretreated the DLSC of four macaques with the GABA(A) agonist muscimol to determine whether this treatment would prevent CD evoked by muscimol infusions in SNpr. Our data supported this hypothesis: inhibition of DLSC attenuated CD evoked by muscimol in SNpr in all four animals. In two of the four subjects, quadrupedal rotations were evoked by muscimol application into SNpr sites that were distinct from those that induced dystonia. We found that inhibition of DLSC did not significantly alter quadrupedal rotations, suggesting that this response is dissociable from the SNpr-evoked CD. Our results are the first to demonstrate a role of DLSC in mediating the expression of CD. Furthermore, these data reveal a functional relationship between SNpr and DLSC in regulating posture and movement in the nonhuman primate, raising the possibility that the nigrotectal pathway has potential as a target for therapeutic interventions for CD.