SOMAScience: A Novel Platform for Multidimensional, Longitudinal Pain Assessment.

Chronic pain is one of the most significant health issues in the United States, affecting more than 20% of the population. Despite its contribution to the increasing health crisis, reliable predictors of disease development, progression, or treatment outcomes are lacking. Self-report remains the most effective way to assess pain, but measures are often acquired in sparse settings over short time windows, limiting their predictive ability. In this paper, we present a new mobile health platform called SOMAScience. SOMAScience serves as an easy-to-use research tool for scientists and clinicians, enabling the collection of large-scale pain datasets in single- and multicenter studies by facilitating the acquisition, transfer, and analysis of longitudinal, multidimensional, self-report pain data. Data acquisition for SOMAScience is done through a user-friendly smartphone app, SOMA, that uses experience sampling methodology to capture momentary and daily assessments of pain intensity, unpleasantness, interference, location, mood, activities, and predictions about the next day that provide personal insights into daily pain dynamics. The visualization of data and its trends over time is meant to empower individual users' self-management of their pain. This paper outlines the scientific, clinical, technological, and user considerations involved in the development of SOMAScience and how it can be used in clinical studies or for pain self-management purposes. Our goal is for SOMAScience to provide a much-needed platform for individual users to gain insight into the multidimensional features of their pain while lowering the barrier for researchers and clinicians to obtain the type of pain data that will ultimately lead to improved prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of chronic pain.

Age of first distance spectacle prescription for manifest hyperopia.

PURPOSE: This study explores the natural history of hyperopic refractive error in relation to the recalled age of first distance prescription. METHODS: A population of adult office workers, coming for a general health check-up without refractive selection, completed a questionnaire about age of first distance prescription and were refracted by an ophthalmologist with non-cycloplegic subjective procedures. Hyperopia was defined as a spherical equivalent of +0.75 diopters or more. This study included 145 hyperopes aged 50-65 years at interview. RESULTS: The hyperopic subjects were first prescribed spectacles for distance vision in a broad spectrum of ages, from early childhood to adulthood. The subjects with older ages of first prescription tended to develop lower amounts of refractive error but this relation was not significant (Spearman's rho -0.126, p = 0.131). CONCLUSIONS: The age of first spectacle prescription in hyperopes is not strongly related to the final refractive error developed in adulthood.

Age of first distance prescription and final myopic refractive error.

PURPOSE: This study explores the relationship between the recalled age of first distance prescription and the final myopic refractive error developed in adults. METHODS: Adult office workers, sent for a general health check-up without refractive selection, completed a questionnaire about age of first distance prescription, years of university study, and parental history of myopia, and were subjectively refracted by an ophthalmologist. RESULTS: Average age of the 397 consecutive myopic subjects was 42.6 +/- 9.6 years and 80.6% were males. The median age of first prescription was 20 years. In the group with earlier first distance prescription (ages 3 to 10), 25.6% developed low final refractive errors (-0.50 to -3.0 diopters), 38.5% developed moderate myopia (< -3.0 to -6.0 diopters), and 35.9% developed high myopia (< -6.0 diopters), while in the groups with later first distance prescription (ages 23 to 30), 90-100% developed low final refractive errors. CONCLUSIONS: Subjects developing myopia after age 20 had low myopia. Those subjects with an early recalled age of first prescription had a broad spectrum of myopic refractive errors, including a high proportion (approximately 2/3) of moderate to high myopia, and approximately 1/3 of low myopia.

Prevalence of refractive errors in a population of office-workers in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

PURPOSE: To assess the prevalence of refractive errors in a sample of Hispanic adult office-workers in Buenos Aires, Argentina. METHODS: Subjects were office-workers referred from their respective workplaces for a routine medical exam, enlisted sequentially without selection for refractive error. Each subject received a questionnaire about age of onset of distance-lens use, academic achievement, and family history of myopia. Visual acuity was obtained with an early treatment diabetic retinopathy study (ETDRS) chart for each eye using current spectacle correction to provide refractive error estimate, and subjective refraction with trial lens sets was assessed when 20/25 was not reached. Myopia and hyperopia were defined with a +/- 0.50 diopters criterion. If a subject had previously undergone refractive surgery, the pre-surgical correction was considered the refraction for this study. RESULTS: This study includes 1518 subjects, 25 to 65 years old; 81.9% were male, and mean age was 43.2 +/- 9.8 years. In this sample, 29.2% (95% confidence interval [CI], 26.9-31.5) of subjects were myopes and 18.1% (95% CI, 20.0-16.2) were hyperopes. The median age of first prescription for the myopic group was 20 years. This age of first myopic prescription was negatively correlated with final refractive error (r = -0.46, p < 0.001). Hyperopia was associated with older age (p < 0.001). The mean duration of university study was 5.7 +/- 2.0 years. Logistic regression modeling for refractive error as the dependent variable showed significance for years of university study (p < 0.001) and for parental history of myopia (p < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: The present study shows the prevalence of refractive error and the age of first myopic spectacle prescription in a sample of Hispanic well educated office-workers. In this highly educated group, parental history of myopia and years of university education were independently related to myopia.