Contingency management is effective across cocaine-dependent outpatients with different socioeconomic status

Contingency management (CM) has demonstrated its efficacy for treating cocaine dependence, but there is still some controversy with regard to its dissemination. Understanding how individual differences affect CM outcomes is important for detecting barriers to its dissemination. The aim of this study is to examine the impact of socioeconomic variables in cocaine-dependent outpatients on the effectiveness of CM in a community setting. Cocaine-dependent outpatients (N = 118) were randomized to community reinforcement approach (CRA) treatment or a CRA plus vouchers program. The impact of baseline economic variables, alone and in combination with treatment conditions, on abstinence and retention outcomes after 6 months of treatment was assessed. Results showed that income had no effect on retention or abstinence outcomes after 6 months of treatment in either treatment condition. The addition of a CM component was beneficial for individuals with any socioeconomic status. These results support the generalizability of CM strategies with patients of different socioeconomic status in community settings.     

Anatomical Regurgitant Orifice Detection and Quantification from 3-D Echocardiographic Images

The vena contracta and effective regurgitant orifice area (EROA) are currently used for the clinical assessment of mitral regurgitation (MR) from 2-D color Doppler imaging. In addition to being highly user dependent and having low repeatability, these methods do not represent accurately the anatomic regurgitant orifice (ARO), which affects the adequate assessment of MR patients. We propose a novel method for semi-automatic detection and quantitative assessment of the 3-D ARO shape from 3-D transesophageal echocardiographic images. The algorithm was tested on a set of 25 patients with MR, and compared with EROA for validation. Results indicate the robustness of the proposed approach, with low variability in relation to different settings of user-defined segmentation parameters. Although EROA and ARO exhibited a good correlation (r = 0.8), relatively large biases were measured, indicating that EROA probably underestimates the real shape and size of the regurgitant orifice. Along with the higher reproducibility of the proposed approach, this highlights the limitations of current clinical approaches and underlines the importance of accurate assessment of the ARO shape for diagnosis and treatment in MR patients.     

FCGR3A V(176) polymorphism for systemic lupus erythematosus susceptibility in Mexican population

The objective of this study is to establish whether there is an association between the presence of FCGR3A V(176) polymorphism with SLE or its manifestations. We included 94 patients according to the 1982 ACR criteria as well as 98 controls matched by age and gender. The 11 ACR diagnostic criteria were analyzed on the clinical files. The polymorphism FCGR3A V(176) was determined by direct sequencing. There was not an association between the polymorphism FCGR3A V(176) with SLE or its main manifestations. The allelic frequency for F(176) was: 0.80 and 0.72 in cases and controls, respectively (P?=?0.09, IC95%: 0.42?C1.07); and the genotypic frequency in the group of cases was: 0.65 for homozygotes F(176)/F(176), 0.30 for heterozygotes and 0.05 for the homozygotes V(176)/V(176), while for the control group it was 0.53, 0.39 and 0.08, respectively. The polymorphism FCGR3A V(176) is not associated with SLE or any of its manifestations in patients with SLE from the West of Mexico.