Tag: nevin manimala

Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2022 Dec 6;119(49):e2209490119. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2209490119. Epub 2022 Nov 28.

ABSTRACT

Emissions of fine particulate matter (PM_2.5) from human activities have been linked to substantial disease burdens, but evidence regarding how reducing PM_2.5 at its sources would improve public health is sparse. We followed a population-based cohort of 2.7 million adults across Canada from 2007 through 2016. For each participant, we estimated annual mean concentrations of PM_2.5 and the fractional contributions to PM_2.5 from the five leading anthropogenic sources at their residential address using satellite observations in combination with a global atmospheric chemistry transport model. For each source, we estimated the causal effects of six hypothetical interventions on 10-y nonaccidental mortality risk using the parametric g-formula, a structural causal model. We conducted stratified analyses by age, sex, and income. This cohort would have experienced tangible health gains had contributions to PM_2.5 from any of the five sources been reduced. Compared with no intervention, a 10% annual reduction in PM_2.5 contributions from transportation and power generation, Canada’s largest and fifth-largest anthropogenic sources, would have prevented approximately 175 (95%CI: 123-226) and 90 (95%CI: 63-117) deaths per million by 2016, respectively. A more intensive 50% reduction per year in PM_2.5 contributions from the two sources would have averted 360 and 185 deaths per million, respectively, by 2016. The potential health benefits were greater among men, older adults, and low-income earners. In Canada, where PM_2.5 levels are among the lowest worldwide, reducing PM_2.5 contributions from anthropogenic sources by as little as 10% annually would yield meaningful health gains.

PMID:36442082 | DOI:10.1073/pnas.2209490119

J Public Health Manag Pract. 2022 Nov 23. doi: 10.1097/PHH.0000000000001664. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

CONTEXT: Childhood lead poisoning prevention in the United States was marked by a largely failed medical approach from 1971 to 1990; an emergent (but small) healthy housing primary prevention strategy from 1991 to 2015; and implementation of large-scale proven interventions since then.

PROGRAM: Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention & Healthy Housing.

METHODS: Historic and recent health and housing data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) and the American Healthy Homes Survey (AHHS) were retrieved to analyze trends and associated policy gaps.

EVALUATION: Approximately 590 000 US children aged 1 through 5 years had elevated blood lead levels of 3.5 μg/dL and greater in 2016, and 4.3 million children resided in homes with lead paint in 2019. Despite large improvements, racial and other disparities remain stubbornly and statistically significant. The NHANES and the AHHS require larger sample sizes. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has not published children’s blood lead surveillance and NHANES data in several years; the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has no analogous housing surveillance system; and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) have not updated training, Superfund, and occupational standards in decades.

DISCUSSION: The nation has been without a plan and an associated budget for more than 2 decades. Congress has not reformed the nation’s main lead poisoning prevention laws in more than 30 years. Such reforms include stopping US companies from producing new residential lead paint in other countries; enabling the disclosure law to identify all residential lead hazards; closing loopholes in federally assisted housing regulations and mortgage insurance standards; harnessing tax policy to help homeowners mitigate lead hazards; streamlining training requirements; increasing the size of health and housing surveys and surveillance systems; and updating housing codes, medical guidance, dust lead standards, training, Superfund, and worker exposure limits. Congress and the president should reauthorize a cabinet-level task force (dormant since 2010) to develop a new strategic plan with an interagency budget to implement it. These reforms will scale and optimize markets, subsidies, enforcement, and other proven interventions to end ineffective, costly, harmful, and irrational cost shifting that threatens children, workers, and affordable housing. International Lead Poisoning Prevention Week in October 2022 presents an opportunity to initiate long-overdue reforms in the United States.

PMID:36442070 | DOI:10.1097/PHH.0000000000001664

Ann Intern Med. 2022 Nov 29. doi: 10.7326/M22-2202. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Clinicians and patients want to know the benefits and harms of outpatient treatment options for SARS-CoV-2 infection.

PURPOSE: To assess the benefits and harms of 12 different COVID-19 treatments in the outpatient setting.

DATA SOURCES: Epistemonikos COVID-19 L·OVE Platform, searched on 4 April 2022.

STUDY SELECTION: Two reviewers independently screened abstracts and full texts against a priori-defined criteria. Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that compared COVID-19 treatments in adult outpatients with confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection were included.

DATA EXTRACTION: One reviewer extracted data and assessed risk of bias and certainty of evidence (COE). A second reviewer verified data abstraction and assessments.

DATA SYNTHESIS: The 26 included studies collected data before the emergence of the Omicron variant. Nirmatrelvir-ritonavir and casirivimab-imdevimab probably reduced hospitalizations (1% vs. 6% [1 RCT] and 1% vs. 4% [1 RCT], respectively; moderate COE). Nirmatrelvir-ritonavir probably reduced all-cause mortality (0% vs. 1% [1 RCT]; moderate COE), and regdanvimab probably improved recovery (87% vs. 72% [1 RCT]; moderate COE). Casirivimab-imdevimab reduced time to recovery by a median difference of 4 days (10 vs. 14 median days [1 RCT]; high COE). Molnupiravir may reduce all-cause mortality, sotrovimab may reduce hospitalization, and remdesivir may improve recovery (low COE). Lopinavir-ritonavir and azithromycin may have increased harms, and hydroxychloroquine may result in lower recovery rates (low COE). Other treatments had insufficient evidence or no statistical difference in efficacy and safety versus placebo.

LIMITATION: Many outcomes had few events and small samples.

CONCLUSION: Some antiviral medications and monoclonal antibodies may improve outcomes for outpatients with mild to moderate COVID-19. However, the generalizability of the findings to the currently dominant Omicron variant is limited.

PRIMARY FUNDING SOURCE: American College of Physicians. (PROSPERO: CRD42022323440).

PMID:36442056 | DOI:10.7326/M22-2202

Plast Reconstr Surg. 2022 Nov 29. doi: 10.1097/PRS.0000000000009937. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: “Spin” refers to a manipulation of language that implies benefit for an intervention when none may exist. Randomized clinical trials (RCTs) in other fields have been demonstrated to employ spin, which can mislead clinicians to use ineffective or unsafe interventions. This study’s objective was to determine the strategies, severity, and extent of spin in plastic surgery RCTs with non-significant primary outcomes.

METHODS: A literature search of the top 15 plastic surgery journals using MEDLINE was performed (2000-2020). Parallel 1:1 RCTs with a clearly identified primary outcome showing statistically non-significant results (p ≥ .05) were included. Screening, data extraction, and spin analysis were performed by two independent reviewers. The spin analysis was then independently assessed in duplicate by two plastic surgery residents with graduate level training in clinical epidemiology.

RESULTS: From 3,497 studies identified, 92 RCTs were included in this study. Spin strategies were identified in 78 RCTs (85%), including 64 Abstracts (70%) and 77 Main Texts (84%). Severity of spin was rated moderate or high in 43 Abstract Conclusions (47%) and 42 Main Text Conclusions (46%). The most identified spin strategy in the Abstract was claiming equivalence for statistically non-significant results (26%), and in the Main Text was focusing on another objective (24%).

CONCLUSIONS: This study suggests that 85% of statistically non-significant RCTs in plastic surgery employ spin. Readers of plastic surgery research should be aware of strategies, whether intentional or unintentional, used to manipulate language in reports of statistically non-significant RCTs when applying research findings to clinical practice.

PMID:36442055 | DOI:10.1097/PRS.0000000000009937

Psychol Assess. 2022 Nov 28. doi: 10.1037/pas0001182. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

Identifying substance use disorders (SUDs) early and accurately improves case formulation and treatment. Previous studies have investigated validity and reliability of the Child and Adolescent Symptom Inventory (CASI) for anxiety, mood, and behavior problems. The present study’s aim was to test if the embedded CASI Substance Use (SU) subscale can discriminate adolescents and young adults (AYA) with and without a SUD diagnosis accurately enough to justify clinical application within an evidence-based assessment framework. N = 479 outpatient AYA (age 14-21) and their caregivers completed K-SADS-PLW semistructured diagnostic interviews; caregivers completed the CASI and adolescents completed a parallel version, the Youth (self-report) Inventory (YI). K-SADS-PLW indicated that 33 youth met Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition criteria for SUDs. Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) analyses found that both CASI and YI Substance Use subscale scores significantly identified K-SADS-diagnosed SUDs in AYA: Caregiver area under curve (AUC) = .91, p < .0005; YI(AUC) = .90, p < .0005. There was no significant difference in diagnostic accuracy between informants. Both subscales showed diagnostic and clinical utility in identifying AYA SUDs in outpatient mental health settings. Findings suggest that the CASI-4R subscale could be a helpful screening instrument for AYA SUDs. A case vignette illustrates the clinical application of study findings. Future research should examine rapport as a moderator of reporting accuracy, and replicate use of these measures under varying clinical scenarios. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

PMID:36442043 | DOI:10.1037/pas0001182

J Exp Psychol Gen. 2022 Nov 28. doi: 10.1037/xge0001323. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

We determined the scope of five decision models of choices across four environmental niches defined by whether outcome probabilities are described (risk) or experienced by sampling (uncertainty) and whether lotteries are simple (one or two outcomes per prospect) or complex (three or four). The majority of participants chose in accordance with cumulative prospect theory only in simple environments involving decisions from description (75%). In complex environments involving decisions from description and experience, however, skewness-preference models were more prevalent (57% and 68%, respectively). Consequently, in niches outside of simple lotteries under risk, rank dependence and nonlinear probability weighting failed to accurately describe the majority of choices. Exploiting elicited subjective beliefs in decisions from experience, we found that experienced (sampled) outcome likelihoods outperformed elicited beliefs in predicting choices and found scant evidence for two-stage models of decisions under uncertainty. Finally, we found statistically significant evidence that 90% of participants chose as if they relied on different models across environments; nonetheless, assuming as if participants used a single model across all environments to predict out-of-sample choice only minimally reduced prediction accuracy. We discuss the implications of model mimicry and task diagnosticity in light of these results in terms of both economic and statistical significance, both for model comparisons and inference. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

PMID:36442037 | DOI:10.1037/xge0001323

J Exp Psychol Gen. 2022 Nov 28. doi: 10.1037/xge0001330. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

People infer that individuals are socially related if they have overlapping preferences, beliefs, and choices. Here we examined whether people also infer relationships by attending to social network information. In five preregistered experiments, participants were shown the social networks of two target people and their friends or acquaintances within a group, and judged if the targets were socially related to one another. In the first three experiments, adults (total N = 528) were more likely to judge that individuals were friends when a high rather than low proportion of their friendships were mutual. Adults also considered other factors when inferring friendships, such as the number of friends each individual had. In the final two experiments, 5-7-year-olds (total N = 135) were also sensitive to the proportion of mutual relationships. Together, our work suggests that people use proportional information and statistical inferences when assessing whether individuals are socially related. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

PMID:36442033 | DOI:10.1037/xge0001330

Psychol Addict Behav. 2022 Nov 28. doi: 10.1037/adb0000889. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE: Howard Rachlin wrote extensively on how value diminishes in a hyperbolic form, and he contributed to understanding choice processes between different commodities as a molar pattern of behavior. The field of behavioral economic demand has been dominated by exponential decay functions, indicating that decreases in consumption of a commodity are best fit by exponential functions. Because of the success of Rachlin’s equation at describing how hyperbolic decay affects the value of a commodity across various factors (e.g., delay, probability, social distance), we attempted to extend his equation to behavioral economic demand data for alcohol and opioids.

METHOD: Rachlin’s discounting equation was applied to estimate consumption on alcohol purchase task data and nonhuman drug demand data. We compared results of his equation to the exponentiated demand equation using both a mixed-effects modeling approach and a two-stage approach.

RESULTS: Rachlin’s equation provided better fits to consumption data than the exponentiated equation for both mixed-effects and two-stage modeling. We also found that traditional demand metrics, such as P_max, can be derived analytically when using Rachlin’s equation. Certain metrics derived from Rachlin’s equation appeared to be related to clinical covariates in ways similar to the exponentiated equation.

CONCLUSIONS: Rachlin’s equation better described demand data than did the exponentiated equation, indicating that demand for a commodity may decrease hyperbolically rather than exponentially. Other benefits of his equation are that it does not have the same pitfalls as the current exponential equations and is relatively straightforward in its conceptualization when applied to demand data. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

PMID:36442017 | DOI:10.1037/adb0000889

J Pers Soc Psychol. 2022 Dec;123(6):1406. doi: 10.1037/pspa0000332.

ABSTRACT

Reports an error in “Disentangling stereotype activation and stereotype application in the stereotype misperception task” by Regina Krieglmeyer and Jeffrey W. Sherman (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2012[Aug], Vol 103[2], 205-224). In the article (https://doi.org/10.1037/a0028764), there was an error in the data analysis of Experiment 4. The mean proportions of “more threatening” responses in trials with White and Neutral primes in the aggregated data file were not correct. Correction of the error leads to deviations in the descriptive, inferential and modeling statistics (including changes in Figure 6), but does not substantively alter the primary conclusions drawn from the data. The raw data is freely available at osf.io/cp9ga/. The online version of this article has been corrected (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 2012-14232-001.) When forming impressions about other people, stereotypes about the individual’s social group often influence the resulting impression. At least 2 distinguishable processes underlie stereotypic impression formation: stereotype activation and stereotype application. Most previous research has used implicit measures to assess stereotype activation and explicit measures to assess stereotype application, which has several disadvantages. The authors propose a measure of stereotypic impression formation, the stereotype misperception task (SMT), together with a multinomial model that quantitatively disentangles the contributions of stereotype activation and application to responses in the SMT. The validity of the SMT and of the multinomial model was confirmed in 5 studies. The authors hope to advance research on stereotyping by providing a measurement tool that separates multiple processes underlying impression formation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

PMID:36442013 | DOI:10.1037/pspa0000332

J Fam Psychol. 2022 Nov 28. doi: 10.1037/fam0001049. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

We conducted an evaluation of a court-initiated randomized controlled trial comparing outcomes for parents assigned to either a no-program control group or one of two online parenting programs-Two Families Now (TFN) or Children in Between (CIB)-among 221 parents in initial divorce or separation court cases. We gathered parent report measures of family functioning at study entry, completion of program, and 1-year following study entry. We also gathered and coded court records to capture the content of the document resolving issues and occurrence of relitigation in the following year. All findings became statistically nonsignificant when a Bonferroni correction was employed. Before correction, however, a few statistically significant differences between groups emerged. Immediately following program completion, there were no study condition differences on measures of parental beliefs and intentions regarding parenting. One year following study entry, three statistically significant differences between program and no-program conditions emerged. Those assigned to a program reported significantly less intimate partner abuse and had less relitigation in court than those in the no-program condition, both with small effect sizes. Contrary to hypotheses, parents assigned to a program reported less social support than parents in the no-program condition. Overall, the findings do not provide strong support for the two investigated brief online parenting programs, demonstrating the need for continued rigorous evaluation of online parenting programs for divorcing and separating parents. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

PMID:36441999 | DOI:10.1037/fam0001049