Search

Current empirical and theoretical understanding of the relation between age and crime is based almost entirely on data from the United States and a few prototypical Western societies for which age-specific crime information across offense types is available. By using Western databases, Hirschi and Gottfredson (1983) projected that the age distribution of crime is always and everywhere robustly right-skewed (i.e., sharp adolescent peak)-a thesis that is both contested and widely accepted in criminology and social science writings. In the study described here, we tested this age-crime invariance thesis by comparing age-crime patterns in Taiwan (a non-Western Chinese society) with those in the United States. In light of Taiwan's collectivist culture versus the U.S. individualist gestalt, we anticipated more divergence than homogeneity in their age-crime schedules. Our findings show robust divergence in Taiwan's age-crime patterns compared with U.S. patterns and the reverted J-shaped norm projected by Hirschi and Gottfredson. Implications for research and theory on the age-crime relation and for studying human development or life-course topics more broadly are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

1. Understand how to conduct and measure outcomes of a pilot study in palliative care 2. Understand the impact of integrated palliative care and nephrology care on symptom burden in advanced kidney disease tested in pilot form 3. Understand how to evaluate the patient experience in a palliative care clinical trial Patients with advanced chronic kidney disease (CKD) live with an elevated symptom burden and experience high mortality. Patients and health care professionals have called for integration of palliative care with nephrology care, but this approach remains limited in the United States. The objectives of this abstract are to report preliminary results and feasibility of a pilot randomized controlled trial testing the effectiveness of integrated palliative care and nephrology care on symptom burden. English-speaking patients with CKD stage V not on dialysis were randomly assigned to monthly palliative care visits for 3 months along with their usual care (intervention arm) compared to usual nephrology care (control group). The primary outcome was change in symptom burden, with secondary outcomes of change in quality of life and documentation of advance care planning. Forty-five patients (67% of all approached) signed informed consent for participation in the study. Twenty-seven completed the study, representing a 60% retention rate. The intervention group had a slightly higher overall symptom burden score and physical symptom burden score. The intervention group also had fewer severe symptoms, psychological symptoms, and communication and practical problems compared to controls. Quality of life scores did not improve. The intervention group did engage in advance care planning more often than controls, and participants had a positive experience in the clinical trial and with the clinic's services. An ambulatory integrated palliative care and nephrology clinical program has the potential to decrease symptom burden and increase engagement in advance care planning for patients with CKD stage V not on dialysis. Participants found the study to be feasible and acceptable and valued the clinical services. The integration of palliative care with nephrology care has potential to improve patient-centered outcomes and should be tested in larger studies with longer follow-up time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Large-scale genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified over 40 genomic regions significantly associated with type 2 diabetes mellitus. However, GWAS results are not always straightforward to interpret, and linking these loci to meaningful disease etiology is often difficult without extensive follow-up studies. The authors expanded on previously reported type 2 diabetes mellitus GWAS from the nested case-control studies of 2 prospective US cohorts by incorporating expression single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) information and applying SNP set enrichment analysis to identify sets of SNPs associated with genes that could provide further biologic insight to traditional genome-wide analysis. Using data collected between 1989 and 1994 in these previous studies to form a nested case-control study, the authors found that 3 of the most significantly associated SNPs to type 2 diabetes mellitus in their study are expression SNPs to the lymphocyte antigen 75 gene (LY75), the ubiquitin-specific peptidase 36 gene (USP36), and the phosphatidylinositol transfer protein, cytoplasmic 1 gene (PITPNC1). SNP set enrichment analysis of the GWAS results identified enrichment for expression SNPs to the macrophage-enriched module and the Gene Ontology (GO) biologic process fat cell differentiation human, which includes the transcription factor 7-like 2 gene (TCF7L2), as well as other type 2 diabetes mellitus-associated genes. Integrating genome-wide association, gene expression, and gene set analysis may provide valuable biologic support for potential type 2 diabetes mellitus susceptibility loci and may be useful in identifying new targets or pathways of interest for the treatment and prevention of type 2 diabetes mellitus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]