The Associations of Dietary Inflammatory Potential With Musculoskeletal Health in Chinese Community-Dwelling Older People: The Mr. OS and Ms. OS (Hong Kong) Cohort Study

Inflammation, an important contributory factor of muscle and bone aging, is potentially modulated by diet. This study examined the associations of dietary inflammatory index (DII) score with musculoskeletal parameters and related disease outcomes in 3995 community-dwelling Chinese men and women aged ≥65 years in Hong Kong. DII score at baseline was estimated from a food frequency questionnaire. Bone mineral density (BMD) and muscle mass estimated by dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA), hand grip strength, gait speed, and chair stand test were measured at baseline, year 4, and year 14. The associations of DII score with the longitudinal changes of musculoskeletal parameters, and incidence of osteoporosis, sarcopenia, and fractures were examined by using general linear model, multinomial logistic regression model, and Cox proportional hazards regression model, respectively. After multiple adjustments, each tertile increase in DII score in men was associated with 0.37 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.10–0.64) kg loss in grip strength and 0.02 (95% CI, 0.01–0.03) m/s loss in gait speed over 4 years. In men, the highest tertile of DII was associated with a higher risk of incident fractures, with adjusted and competing death adjusted hazard ratio (HR) (95% CI) of 1.56 (1.14–2.14) and 1.40 (1.02–1.91), respectively. In women, DII score was not significantly associated with any muscle-related outcomes or incidence of fracture, but a significant association between higher DII score and risk of osteoporosis at year 14 was observed, with the highest tertile of DII score having adjusted odds ratio (OR) (95% CI) of 1.90 (1.03–3.52). In conclusion, pro-inflammatory diet consumption promoted loss of muscle strength and physical function, and increased risk of fractures in older Chinese men. Pro-inflammatory diets had no significant association with muscle related outcomes but increased the long-term risk of osteoporosis in older Chinese women. © 2022 American Society for Bone and Mineral Research (ASBMR).     

Etomidate for Rapid-sequence Intubation in Young Children: Hemodynamic Effects and Adverse Events

OBJECTIVES: Physicians commonly use etomidate for adult rapid-sequence intubation (RSI), but the manufacturer does not recommend its use for children under 10 years of age due to a lack of data. The authors present their experience with etomidate for pediatric RSI in order to further develop its risk-benefit profile in this age group. METHODS: Trained abstractors reviewed the medical records for all children under 10 years old who received etomidate for RSI between July 1996 and April 2001. RESULTS: 105 children, with an average age of 3 (+/-2.9) years, received a median dose of 0.32 (+/-0.12) mg/kg of etomidate. The systolic blood pressure increased an average of 4 mm Hg (95% CI = -3.3 to 9.2); the diastolic blood pressure increased 7 mm Hg (95% CI = -3.1 to 11) within 10 minutes of receiving etomidate. The heart rate increased an average of 10 beats/min (95% CI = 4.0 to 17.4). Complications included three patients who vomited within 10 minutes of etomidate administration. There were no cases of documented myoclonus, status epilepticus, or new-onset seizures. Thirty-eight patients received corticosteroids during the hospital course, none for suspected adrenal insufficiency. Three patients died, all from severe brain injury. CONCLUSIONS: In children less than 10 years old, etomidate seems to produce minimal hemodynamic changes, and appears to have a low risk of clinically important adrenal insufficiency, myoclonus, and status epilepticus. The association between etomidate and emesis (observed in less than 3% of enrolled patients) remains unclear. For clinical situations in which minimal blood pressure changes during RSI are critical, etomidate appears to have a favorable risk-benefit profile for children under 10 years old.     

Youth Tobacco Access and Possession Policy Interventions: Effects on Observed and Perceived Tobacco Use

This study evaluated the effects of tobacco Purchase, Use and Possession (PUP) laws on student perceptions of adolescent tobacco use within towns and schools. Twenty‐four towns were randomly assigned into two conditions, the experimental condition (E PUP) involved efforts to increase both PUP law enforcement and reduce minors' access to commercial sources of tobacco, whereas the control condition (C) focused only on efforts to reduce minors' access to commercial sources of tobacco. A hierarchical linear modeling analytical approach was selected due to the multilevel data and nested design. The present study found that over time, youth in the experimental PUP condition observed less youth tobacco usage at school and in their town, and perceived lower rates of tobacco among their peers at school and among friends than youth in the control condition. The findings suggest that PUP law enforcement might be used to strengthen community norms against youth tobacco use.     

Prostatitis: Updates on diagnostic evaluation

Prostatitis accounts for almost 2 million office visits to urologists and primary care physicians. The label “prostatitis” refers to a diverse constellation of symptoms and disease processes. The diagnosis and treatment of this disorder present numerous challenges for the physician, including a lack of abnormal findings on physical examination, laboratory tests, and radiographic images. In this article, we offer a review of the current literature and recommendations for the evaluation and diagnosis of the patient presenting with prostatitis.     

Myocardial perfusion SPECT reconstruction: Receiver operating characteristic comparison of CAD detection accuracy of filtered backprojection reconstruction with all of the clinical imaging information available to readers and solely stress slices iteratively reconstructed with combined compensation

BACKGROUND: Past receiver operating characteristic (ROC) studies have demonstrated that single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) perfusion imaging by use of iterative reconstruction with combined compensation for attenuation, scatter, and detector response leads to higher area under the ROC curve (A(z)) values for detection of coronary artery disease (CAD) in comparison to the use of filtered backprojection (FBP) with no compensations. A new ROC study was conducted to investigate whether this improvement still holds for iterative reconstruction when observers have available all of the imaging information normally presented to clinical interpreters when reading FBP SPECT perfusion slices. METHODS AND RESULTS: A total of 87 patient studies including 50 patients referred for angiography and 37 patients with a lower than 5% likelihood for CAD were included in the ROC study. The images from the two methods were read by 4 cardiology fellows and 3 attending nuclear cardiologists. Presented for the FBP readings were the short-axis, horizontal long-axis, and vertical long-axis slices for both the stress and rest images; cine images of both the stress and rest projection data; cine images of selected cardiac-gated slices; the CEQUAL-generated stress and rest polar maps; and an indication of patient gender. This was compared with reading solely the iterative reconstructed stress slices with combined compensation for attenuation, scatter, and resolution. With A(z) as the criterion, a 2-way analysis of variance showed a significant improvement in detection accuracy for CAD for the 7 observers (P = .018) for iterative reconstruction with combined compensation (A(z) of 0.895 +/- 0.016) over FBP even with the additional imaging information provided to the observers when scoring the FBP slices (A(z) of 0.869 +/- 0.030). When the groups of 3 attending physicians or 4 cardiology fellows were compared separately, the iterative technique was not statistically significantly better; however, the A(z) for each of the 7 observers individually was larger for iterative reconstruction than for FBP. Compared with results from our previous studies, the additional imaging information did increase the diagnostic accuracy of FBP for CAD but not enough to undo the statistically significantly higher diagnostic accuracy of iterative reconstruction with combined compensation. CONCLUSIONS: We have determined through an ROC investigation that included two classes of observers (experienced attending physicians and cardiology fellows in training) that iterative reconstruction with combined compensation provides statistically significantly better detection accuracy (larger A(z)) for CAD than FBP reconstructions even when the FBP studies were read with all of the extra clinical nuclear imaging information normally available.