Background
Identifying the factors that influence health-related quality of life (HRQoL) is of great scientific interest, but a potential causal relationship between treatment and HRQoL has yet to be fully elucidated. Japanese patients reported better HRQoL outcomes on the Parkinson’s Disease Questionnaire (PDQ-39) emotional well-being domain, a 6-question subset of the PDQ-39 which is considered to reflect the emotional aspects of the disease-specific HRQoL, when treated with rasagiline, than placebo, in both a monotherapy clinical trial (NCT02337725) and an adjunctive therapy clinical trial in patients with wearing-off phenomena (NCT02337738).
Objective
To investigate how rasagiline exerts its effect on the PDQ-39 emotional well-being domain in Japanese patients with Parkinson’s disease.
Methods
A path analysis was performed to assess the direct treatment effects of rasagiline on the PDQ-39 emotional well-being domain and the effects mediated indirectly through the influence on items related to motor symptoms by a post-hoc analysis of two clinical trials in Japan.
Results
In the monotherapy trial, the PDQ-39 emotional well-being domain was mainly affected indirectly through items related to motor symptoms (80.7%) composed of the Movement Disorder Society-Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale (MDS-UPDRS) Part II (67.2%) and Part III (13.5%). In the adjunctive therapy trial, the PDQ-39 emotional well-being domain was also mainly influenced indirectly through effects on items related to motor symptoms (1 mg/day: 54.7%, 0.5 mg/day: 57.6%) composed of MDS-UPDRS Part II (1 mg/day: 35.6%, 0.5 mg/day: 40.9%), Part III (1 mg/day: 8.0%, 0.5 mg/day: 8.3%) and mean daily OFF-time (1 mg/day: 11.1%, 0.5 mg/day: 8.4%).
Conclusions
The effects of rasagiline on the PDQ-39 emotional well-being domain were mediated primarily by influence on the subjective aspects of motor experiences of daily living.
We examined by transmission electron microscopy the structure and crystallization behavior of hydrogenerated and non-hydrogenerated amorphous germanium films (a-Ge:H and a-Ge) prepared by sputtering to figure out the effects of hydrogen on them. In pair-distribution function, first and second peaks at the interatomic distance of 0.26 and 0.40 nm, respectively, were found to be higher and sharper in a-Ge:H than in a-Ge; therefore amorphous structure was organized in a more ordered state within a short range by hydrogeneration. On thermal annealing, fine nanograins (FGs) of about 10 nm in size appeared preferentially at 350 °C and above in a-Ge:H, which is in contrast with the formation of coarse particles of about 100 nm in size at 500 °C in a-Ge. Hydrogeneration would make a certain number of short-range ordered clusters distributed in the amorphous matrix, inducing the preferential formation of FGs at lower temperatures.
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