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Purpose Symptoms and medication use in patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) affect the quality of life of patients and caregivers, yet prior research seldom focused on their experiences with medications. This study explored comprehensive living and medication experience from patients with PD and their caregivers. Methods Patients diagnosed with PD for ≥2 years, with or without their caregivers, were recruited from an outpatient clinic in Taiwan. Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted based on the Common Sense Model. A qualitative content analysis was used to identify salient themes from verbatim transcripts. Results In total, 15 patients and eight caregivers were interviewed. Five themes were derived: (1) symptoms and help-seeking behaviours before a diagnosis, (2) emotional impacts and life adaptations after a PD diagnosis, (3) life affected by medications, (4) experiences of caregivers in taking care of PD patients, and (5) communication between doctors and patients. Conclusions Patients frequently adjusted their daily schedules to live with PD and the medication side effects. Caregivers struggle to overcome caring burdens and to stay positive to support patients. More attention on providing medication information, mental support, and communication between stakeholders is needed to improve the quality of life of patients and caregivers.

Context. According to traditional gas-phase chemical models, O2 should be abundant in molecular clouds, but until recently, attempts to detect interstellar O2 line emission with ground- and space-based observatories have failed. Aims. Following the multi-line detections of O2 with low abundances in the Orion and ? Oph A molecular clouds with Herschel, it is important to investigate other environments, and we here quantify the O2 abundance near a solar-mass protostar. Methods. Observations of molecular oxygen, O2, at 487 GHz toward a deeply embedded low-mass Class 0 protostar, NGC 1333- IRAS 4A, are presented, using the Heterodyne Instrument for the Far Infrared (HIFI) on the Herschel Space Observatory. Complementary data of the chemically related NO and CO molecules are obtained as well. The high spectral resolution data are analysed using radiative transfer models to infer column densities and abundances, and are tested directly against full gas-grain chemical models. Results. The deep HIFI spectrum fails to show O2 at the velocity of the dense protostellar envelope, implying one of the lowest abundance upper limits of O2/H2 at ⩽6× 10-9 (3σ). The O2/CO abundance ratio is less than 0.005. However, a tentative (4.5σ) detection of O2 is seen at the velocity of the surrounding NGC 1333 molecular cloud, shifted by 1 km s-1 relative to the protostar. For the protostellar envelope, pure gas-phase models and gas-grain chemical models require a long pre-collapse phase (∼0.7-1 × 106 years), during which atomic and molecular oxygen are frozen out onto dust grains and fully converted to H2O, to avoid overproduction of O2 in the dense envelope. The same model also reproduces the limits on the chemically related NO molecule if hydrogenation of NO on the grains to more complex molecules such as NH2OH, found in recent laboratory experiments, is included. The tentative detection of O2 in the surrounding cloud is consistent with a low-density PDR model with small changes in reaction rates. Conclusions. The low O2 abundance in the collapsing envelope around a low-mass protostar suggests that the gas and ice entering protoplanetary disks is very poor in O2. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]