Acceptability of Hormonal Contraceptives as a Smoking Cessation Aid for Women of Reproductive Age: A Web-Based Cross-Sectional Survey.

Introduction: Cigarette smoking is the most common cause of preventable cancers and other premature morbidity and mortality. Modifying hormonal patterns using hormonal contraceptives (HCs) may lead to improved smoking cessation outcomes in women, though the acceptability of this is unknown. Therefore, we explored the willingness of reproductive-age women who smoke to use HC for cessation. Methods: A cross-sectional online survey was conducted with a convenience sample of reproductive-age women living in the United States who self-reported smoking combustible cigarettes. Questions covered smoking history, previous HC use, and willingness to use various HC methods (i.e., injectable, oral, patch, vaginal insert) for cessation. Chi-squared tests and logistic regression were conducted using StataBE 17.1. Results: Of 358 eligible respondents, n = 312 (86.9%) reported previous HC use. Average age of those with HC use history was 32.1 ± 6.1 years compared with 27.8 ± 6.7 years for those without history of HC use (p = 0.001). Of respondents who reported previous HC use, 75.6% reported willingness to use HCs, compared with 60.9% of those without a history of HC use. Overall, willingness to use various types of HC ranged from 22.6% for the vaginal insert to 59.2% willing to use an oral contraceptive. Discussion: These observations indicate that most women who smoke cigarettes are willing to use HC for a smoking cessation aid, especially if they have a history of HC use and with an oral form of HC. To improve the rate of smoking cessation for women of reproductive age, future interventions should explore how to incorporate HC for cessation.

Outcomes for collaborative care versus routine care in the management of postpartum depression.

BACKGROUND: Even with routine screening, women diagnosed with postpartum depression (PPD) often experience delays in treatment with consequences affecting mother, infant, families and communities. A collaborative care management (CCM) approach may provide more timely, effective and higher quality of care for women suffering from postpartum depression. AIMS: This study compared the outcomes of women diagnosed with depression within a year of giving birth, comparing management using a collaborative care model with routine primary care. METHODS: In a retrospective quantitative cohort pilot study (n = 78), the outcomes of days to first follow-up, one-year healthcare utilisation, remission rates and other quality metrics were investigated. RESULTS: Those who were managed with CCM had fewer days to first follow-up (6.1 versus 31.4; P < 0.01), were more likely to meet the quality metrics of three or more related contacts in the three months after diagnosis (P < 0.01), and had documented Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) or Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) measurements at 3 (P < 0.01), 6 (P < 0.01) and 12 (P < 0.01) months. With an intention to treat model, 6-month remission rates were improved with CCM (46.7 vs. 6.3%, P <0.01). Those managed collaboratively versus routinely used healthcare in the year following diagnosis at similar rates. CONCLUSIONS: A CCM model offers timelier and higher quality care to women suffering from PPD, without contributing to higher healthcare utilisation.

Students as resurrectionists--A multimodal humanities project in anatomy putting ethics and professionalism in historical context.

Because medical students have many different learning styles, the authors, medical students at Mayo Clinic, College of Medicine researched the history of anatomical specimen procurement, reviewing topic-related film, academic literature, and novels, to write, direct, and perform a dramatization based on Robert Louis Stevenson's The Body-Snatcher. Into this performance, they incorporated dance, painting, instrumental and vocal performance, and creative writing. In preparation for the performance, each actor researched an aspect of the history of anatomy. These micro-research projects were presented in a lecture before the play. Not intended to be a research study, this descriptive article discusses how student research and ethics discussions became a theatrical production. This addition to classroom and laboratory learning addresses the deep emotional response experienced by some students and provides an avenue to understand and express these feelings. This enhanced multimodal approach to"holistic learning" could be applied to any topic in the medical school curriculum, thoroughly adding to the didactics with history, humanities, and team dynamics.

Associative conditioning tunes transient dynamics of early olfactory processing.

Odors evoke complex spatiotemporal responses in the insect antennal lobe (AL) and mammalian olfactory bulb. However, the behavioral relevance of spatiotemporal coding remains unclear. In the present work we combined behavioral analyses with calcium imaging of odor induced activity in the honeybee AL to evaluate the relevance of this temporal dimension in the olfactory code. We used a new way for evaluation of odor similarity of binary mixtures in behavioral studies, which involved testing whether a match of odor-sampling time is necessary between training and testing conditions for odor recognition during associative learning. Using graded changes in the similarity of the mixture ratios, we found high correlations between the behavioral generalization across those mixtures and a gradient of activation in AL output. Furthermore, short odor stimuli of 500 ms or less affected how well odors were matched with a memory template, and this time corresponded to a shift from a sampling-time-dependent to a sampling-time-independent memory. Accordingly, 375 ms corresponded to the time required for spatiotemporal AL activity patterns to reach maximal separation according to imaging studies. Finally, we compared spatiotemporal representations of binary mixtures in trained and untrained animals. AL activity was modified by conditioning to improve separation of odor representations. These data suggest that one role of reinforcement is to "tune" the AL such that relevant odors become more discriminable.