Publications

PURPOSE

This is the first study describing the tobacco industry's objectives developing and publishing lifestyle magazines, linking them to tobacco marketing strategies, and how these magazines may encourage smoking.

METHODS

Analysis of previously secret tobacco industry documents and content analysis of 31 lifestyle magazines to understand the motives behind producing these magazines and the role they played in tobacco marketing strategies.

RESULTS

Philip Morris (PM) debuted Unlimited in 1996 to nearly 2 million readers and RJ Reynolds (RJR) debuted CML in 1999, targeting young adults with their interests. Both magazines were developed as the tobacco companies faced increased advertising restrictions. Unlimited contained few images of smoking, but frequently featured elements of the Marlboro brand identity in both advertising and article content. CML featured more smoking imagery and fewer Camel brand identity elements.

CONCLUSIONS

Lifestyle promotions that lack images of smoking may still promote tobacco use through brand imagery. The tobacco industry still uses the "under-the-radar" strategies used in development of lifestyle magazines in branded Websites. Prohibiting lifestyle advertising including print and electronic media that associate tobacco with recreation, action, pleasures, and risky behaviors or that reinforces tobacco brand identity may be an effective strategy to curb young adult smoking.

An HIV-seropositive man who presented with cough, low-grade fever and difficulty in breathing was admitted to the pulmonology unit at Mulago Hospital in Kampala, Uganda. He was initially diagnosed with bacterial pneumonia and treated with ceftriaxone without significant improvement. Induced sputum and bronchoalveolar lavage specimens were collected and stained using a modified Giemsa stain (Diff-Quik). With this technique, it was possible to demonstrate cystic and trophic forms of Pneumocystis jirovecii and confirm the diagnosis of Pneumocystis pneumonia in this patient.

Several functional and structural imaging studies have investigated the neural basis of personality in healthy adults, but human lesions studies are scarce. Personality changes are a common symptom in patients with neurodegenerative diseases like frontotemporal dementia (FTD) and semantic dementia (SD), allowing a unique window into the neural basis of personality. In this study, we used the Interpersonal Adjective Scales to investigate the structural basis of eight interpersonal traits (dominance, arrogance, coldness, introversion, submissiveness, ingenuousness, warmth, and extraversion) in 257 subjects: 214 patients with neurodegenerative diseases such as FTD, SD, progressive nonfluent aphasia, Alzheimer's disease, amnestic mild cognitive impairment, corticobasal degeneration, and progressive supranuclear palsy and 43 healthy elderly people. Measures of interpersonal traits were correlated with regional atrophy pattern using voxel-based morphometry (VBM) analysis of structural MR images. Interpersonal traits mapped onto distinct brain regions depending on the degree to which they involved agency and affiliation. Interpersonal traits high in agency related to left dorsolateral prefrontal and left lateral frontopolar regions, whereas interpersonal traits high in affiliation related to right ventromedial prefrontal and right anteromedial temporal regions. Consistent with the existing literature on neural networks underlying social cognition, these results indicate that brain regions related to externally focused, executive control-related processes underlie agentic interpersonal traits such as dominance, whereas brain regions related to internally focused, emotion- and reward-related processes underlie affiliative interpersonal traits such as warmth. In addition, these findings indicate that interpersonal traits are subserved by complex neural networks rather than discrete anatomic areas.

PURPOSE

Raloxifene reduces vertebral fracture and invasive breast cancer risks, but increases fatal strokes in postmenopausal women at increased coronary risk. We assessed whether this risk is concentrated in postmenopausal women already at high stroke risk.

METHODS

Raloxifene Use for The Heart (RUTH) enrolled 10,101 postmenopausal women (mean age 67 years) with or at increased coronary heart disease risk; Multiple Outcomes of Raloxifene Evaluation (MORE) enrolled 7705 osteoporotic postmenopausal women (mean age 66 years). A Framingham Stroke Risk Score (FSRS) was calculated for all women with no prior cerebrovascular events (n = 16,858). The validity of the FSRS was assessed in the placebo groups, and then raloxifene-associated stroke risk was analyzed by FSRS subgroups.

RESULTS

FSRS predicted an increased stroke risk in the placebo group of both clinical trials. There was no difference in the incidence of nonfatal strokes between the raloxifene and placebo groups in MORE or RUTH, regardless of baseline Framingham stroke risk. In RUTH, women with FSRS <13 showed no increase in raloxifene-associated fatal stroke risk (hazard ratio [HR] 1.08; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.49-2.37). Those with FSRS >or=13 had a 75% increased risk of raloxifene-associated fatal stroke (HR 1.75; 95% CI, 1.01-3.02; interaction P = .33). In MORE, where 80% of women had a FSRS <13, no increase in fatal (HR 0.57; 95% CI, 0.19-1.68) stroke risk was observed.

DISCUSSION

Risk of fatal stroke associated with raloxifene was greater in women at high stroke risk. These results might be useful for identifying postmenopausal women at high risk of first stroke who should avoid raloxifene therapy.

OBJECTIVES

We assessed how different patterns of housing instability affect incarceration and whether correlates of incarceration are gender specific.

METHODS

We used multivariate logistic regression to assess associations between patterns of housing instability and recent jail stays among a reproducible sample of 1175 marginally housed adults in San Francisco, California.

RESULTS

Over the previous year, 71% of men and 21% of women in the sample reported jail stays. Among women, long-term single-room occupancy hotel stays ( > 90 days) were protective for incarceration. Stays in the street were associated with incarceration among both genders, but among men, short-term (i.e.,

CONCLUSIONS

Correlates of incarceration differed by gender, and patterns of housing instability differentially affected incarceration for men and women. Policies to improve housing options and drug treatment for the urban poor are critical to breaking the cycle of incarceration and homelessness and improving health outcomes.

BACKGROUND

Diarrhea kills 2 million children worldwide each year, yet an etiological agent is not found in approximately 30-50% of cases. Picornaviral genera such as enterovirus, kobuvirus, cosavirus, parechovirus, hepatovirus, teschovirus, and cardiovirus have all been found in human and animal diarrhea. Modern technologies, especially deep sequencing, allow rapid, high-throughput screening of clinical samples such as stool for new infectious agents associated with human disease.

RESULTS

A pool of 141 pediatric gastroenteritis samples that were previously found to be negative for known diarrheal viruses was subjected to pyrosequencing. From a total of 937,935 sequence reads, a collection of 849 reads distantly related to Aichi virus were assembled and found to comprise 75% of a novel picornavirus genome. The complete genome was subsequently cloned and found to share 52.3% nucleotide pairwise identity and 38.9% amino acid identity to Aichi virus. The low level of sequence identity suggests a novel picornavirus genus which we have designated klassevirus. Blinded screening of 751 stool specimens from both symptomatic and asymptomatic individuals revealed a second positive case of klassevirus infection, which was subsequently found to be from the index case's 11-month old twin.

CONCLUSION

We report the discovery of human klassevirus 1, a member of a novel picornavirus genus, in stool from two infants from Northern California. Further characterization and epidemiological studies will be required to establish whether klasseviruses are significant causes of human infection.