Providing practitioner-specific outcomes is associated with higher patient satisfaction with information about prostate cancer treatment

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Background: After being diagnosed with prostate cancer, patients must assimilate abundant cancer related information. Satisfaction with Information (SWI) is a patient’s cognitive evaluation of information sources used to understand and select therapy. We sought to describe sources of information used by prostate cancer patients and to identify factors associated with SWI. Methods: 1,072 men with newly diagnosed prostate cancer have enrolled in the prospective, multi-center PRostate cancer Outcomes and Satisfaction with Treatment Quality Assessment (PROST-QA) study. Reports of source(s) of information were documented prior to treatment (radical prostatectomy, external radiation, brachytherapy or combination). The validated SWI domain of the Service Satisfaction Scale-Cancer (SSS-Ca) was completed by patients 2 months following treatment. Relationships between socio-economic factors, demographics, cancer severity, and types of information sources and satisfaction (SWI) were evaluated with multivariate regression. Results: Sources of information endorsed by patients varied by race ( Table ), education, and study site. The most helpful sources of information were description of treatment by a physician (32.8%), books and internet (18.3% each), family/friends (16.6%) and pamphlets/brochures (11.4%). In bivariate analysis internet use was negatively associated with SWI (p=0.025). In multivariable models patient age (p=0.005) and information provided by the physician regarding their own outcomes (p=0.01) were independently associated with SWI. Conclusions: Although a variety of informational sources were endorsed by patients, only printed results for physician’s own patients was associated with SWI. Because SWI is a function of both experiences and expectations, providing patients with a treating physician’s results may improve satisfaction by enhancing concordance of expectations and outcomes.

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Molecular structure, IR and Raman spectra as well as DFT chemical calculations for alkylaminoacetylureas: vibrational characteristics of dicarbonylimide bridge

The present work reports room temperature IR and Raman study of R-NH-CH2-CO-NH-CO-NH2 alkylaminoacetylureas (R=C3H7, C4H9, C5H11, C6H13, C7H15, C8H17, C9H19, C10H21, C12H25, C14H29, C16H33 and C18H37). The experimental energy levels have been compared to those obtained from DFT chemical quantum calculations performed with the use of B3LYP/6-31G (d,p) basis for the R=C3H7 derivative. Energies of 66 vibrational states have been calculated for this molecule. Its molecular symmetry was taken as C1 and was optimized in the both quantum models applied. The role of the hydrogen bond in the stabilization of the structure has been analyzed.

Second-generation recombination-based in vivo expression technology for large-scale screening for Vibrio cholerae genes induced during infection of the mouse small intestine

We have constructed an improved recombination-based in vivo expression technology (RIVET) and used it as a screening method to identify Vibrio cholerae genes that are transcriptionally induced during infection of infant mice. The improvements include the introduction of modified substrate cassettes for resolvase that can be positively and negatively selected for, allowing selection of resolved strains from intestinal homogenates, and three different tnpR alleles that cover a range of translation initiation efficiencies, allowing identification of infection-induced genes that have low-to-moderate basal levels of transcription during growth in vitro. A transcriptional fusion library of 8,734 isolates of a V. cholerae El Tor strain that remain unresolved when the vibrios are grown in vitro was passed through infant mice, and 40 infection-induced genes were identified. Nine of these genes were inactivated by in-frame deletions, and their roles in growth in vitro and fitness during infection were measured by competition assays. Four mutant strains were attenuated >10-fold in vivo compared with the parental strain, demonstrating that infection-induced genes are enriched in genes essential for virulence.