Faculty Bibliography

Background: We conducted a focus group study to assess the influence of partner communication on breast and cervical cancer screening and the perceived existing and potential support from male partners in participating in cancer screening. Secondarily, Mexican male and female views on health care and cancer were explored. Methods: Seven focus groups (two female-only, three male-only, and two couples) were conducted in Spanish. Results: Findings suggest that knowledge about cervical cancer was significantly less than knowledge about breast cancer among both men and women. Barriers to cancer screening included language barriers, lack of health insurance, and lack of awareness of the need for screening. Male partners expressed willingness to support their female partners in cancer screening activities. Conclusion: Cervical cancer education is desperately needed, including education on the availability of free and low cost screening services. Education efforts should include the male community members, especially as the males perceive themselves as responsible for the financial burden of care.

A number of phylogenetic studies of Mycobacterium tuberculosis have suggested a highly clonal population structure. Despite the extreme homogeneity of M. tuberculosis strains, the genome is punctuated by a number of polymorphic regions that give rise to sufficient diversity, thus forming the basis for molecular epidemiologic studies of tuberculosis. As such, insertion sequence (IS) 6110, which is unique to members of the M. tuberculosis complex and is present in variable numbers and in discrete genomic locales among strains, has been extensively used in molecular epidemiologic studies. Genotyping, using IS6110-based restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP), was standardized by the international community, and this has facilitated inter- and intralaboratory comparison, thereby serving as a model system for subspeciation of M. tuberculosis. When IS6110-based RFLP was used in conjunction with conventional epidemiologic data, its utility was realized. In this chapter, we discuss the basic methodology for conducting IS6110-based RFLP and analyzing the resulting hybridization profiles

BACKGROUND: Research suggests that forgiveness is associated with better psychological and physical health and in particular cardiovascular functioning. Despite these findings, most forgiveness studies involve healthy participants. PURPOSE: The current study assessed the psychological and physiological correlates of forgiveness in individuals with coronary artery disease (CAD). METHOD: Self-reported forgiveness, perceived stress, anxiety, and depression, and physiological data, including triglycerides, total cholesterol, high- (HDL) and low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, were obtained from 85 hospitalized CAD patients. RESULTS: Higher levels of forgiveness were associated with lower levels of anxiety (p < 0.05), depression (p < 0.01), and perceived stress (p < 0.005) as well as lower total cholesterol to HDL and LDL to HDL ratios (both at p < 0.05) after controlling for age and gender. The psychological indices did not mediate the relationship between forgiveness and cholesterol ratios. CONCLUSIONS: Results suggest that the psychological correlates of forgiveness are similar in cardiac patients and healthy individuals. Further, among cardiac patients, forgiveness may be associated with reduced risk for future cardiovascular events

In this paper, I argue that social science and genomics can be integrated; however, the way this marriage is currently occurring rests on spurious methods and assumptions and, as a result, will yield few lasting insights. However, recent advances in both econometrics and in developmental genomics provide scientists with a novel opportunity to understand how genes and environment interact to produce social outcomes. Key to any causal inference about the interplay between genes and social environment is that either genotype be exogenously manipulated (i.e. through sibling fixed effects) while environmental conditions are held constant, and/or that environmental variation is exogenous in nature, i.e. experimental or arising from a natural experiment of sorts. Further, initial allele selection should be motivated by findings from genetic experiments in model animal studies linked to orthologous human genes. Likewise, genetic associations found in human population studies should then be tested through knock-out and over-expression studies in model organisms

The blue rubber bleb nevus syndrome, a rare condition characterized by lesions of the skin, gastrointestinal tract, and other parts of the body, can result in serious gastrointestinal bleeding and other adverse results and be challenging to manage. The clinical features and treatment of this rare disorder are reviewed here