Pathways to Violence in Schizophrenia : The role of antisocial personality, substance misuse, delusions, and delusional distress

There is a long held general belief in society that persons with a major mental disorder are dangerous. The media play an important role in the maintenance of this belief by highlighting cases of violent acts by mentally disordered individuals. Though, during the seventies, this belief became more and more criticized. Studies on the relation between severe mental illness and (violent) criminal offending found no relation between the two. In an extensive research on violent crime by ‘mentally abnormal offenders’ in Germany, Häfner and Böker (1973) concluded that “if we define the dangerousness of the mentally abnormal as the probability of their committing a violent crime, then our findings show that this does not exceed the dangerousness of the legally responsible adult population as a whole” (p. 284). From The Baxstrom Studies (Cocozza & Steadman, 1974), we learned that psychiatry failed in the prediction of dangerousness in the mentally ill. Similarly, in the Netherlands, Tuinier (1989) wrote his dissertation on a field study on the relation between psychiatric syndrome and criminality. He also concluded that psychiatric syndromes (except for abuse disorders) have no relation with criminal offending

As tipologias do alcoolismo : "da psicologia à neurobiologia dos fenótipos"

Tese de doutoramento, Ciências e Tecnologias da Saúde (Desenvolvimento Humano e Social), Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Medicina, 2013Perante a heterogeneidade imputada ao fenótipo clínico da dependência do álcool, tem-se assistido a varias tentativas de subtipificação de doentes alcoólicos em grupos mais homogéneos, no sentido de melhorar o conhecimento científico e adequar o doente a um protocolo terapêutico de maior efectividade. O estudo tem como objectivo a avaliação do processo de validação de cinco tipologias do alcoolismo, através de parâmetros psicológicos, clínicos e genéticos. Serão alvo de observação os modelos de Cloninger, Babor, Jellinek, Cardoso e Lesch. Foram recrutados da Consulta de Etilo-Risco do Serviço de Psiquiatria e Saúde Mental do Hospital de Santa Maria (HSM), 247 doentes dependentes do álcool (127 para o estudo dos polimorfismos genéticos). Os resultados demonstram que os subgrupos de dependentes do álcool se diferenciam em termos de características sócio-demográficas (idade, sexo), clínicas (precocidade e gravidade do problema, consumo de outras drogas) e psicológicas (psicopatologia e personalidade). A avaliação prospectiva (3 meses), verificou, no geral, uma pior evolução clínica (adesão e recaída) nos subtipos delta de Jellinek, sociopático e adictopático de Cardoso, tipo II de Cloninger e tipo IV de Lesch. Quanto a análise dos polimorfismos genéticos, destaca-se a associação entre o alelo L do polimorfismo da COMT e do alelo S do polimorfismo 5-HTT_LPR com o subtipo II de Cloninger. Conclui-se que a heterogeneidade da dependência do álcool não se expressa fenotipicamente de modo aleatório, pois os resultados enunciam que a sua disposição sintomatológica, configura-se em entidades sindromáticas clinicamente intuitivas, designadas por subtipos. Este paradigma das tipologias do alcoolismo visa a otimização do processo de diagnóstico, fornecendo um nível de compreensão e raciocínio clínicos indispensáveis à accão terapêutica futura.Given the heterogeneity attributed to the clinical phenotype of alcohol dependence, several attempts have been made to subtype alcoholic patients in more homogeneous groups, in order to improve the scientific knowledge and matched patients to a therapeutical protocol of greater effectiveness. The study aims to evaluate the process of validation of five alcoholism typologies, through psychological, clinical and genetic parameters. Will be target for observation the models of Cloninger, Babor, Jellinek, Cardoso and Lesch. A sample of 247 alcohol dependent patients was collected in the alcoholism unit (NETER) of the Psychiatric Service of Santa Maria Universitary Hospital (127 for the study of genetic polymorphisms). The results demonstrate that the subgroups of alcohol-dependent subjects differ in terms of socio-demographic characteristics (age, gender), clinical (age of onset and severity of the problem, use of other drugs) and psychological (personality and psychopathology). Prospective evaluation (3 months), found, in general, a worse clinical outcome (compliance and relapse) in delta subtypes of Jellinek, sociopathic and adictopatic of Cardoso, Cloninger type II and type IV of Lesch. As for the analysis of genetic polymorphisms, highlights the association between the L allele of the COMT polymorphism and the S allele polymorphism 5-HTT_LPR with subtype II Cloninger. It could be concluded that the heterogeneity of alcohol dependence is not expressed phenotypically in a random basis, since the results state that its symptomatology is organized in clinically intuitive entities, called subtypes. This paradigm of alcoholism typologies aims the optimization of the diagnostic procedure, providing a level of understanding and clinical reasoning essential for future therapeutic action

A Model-Based graphical editor for supporting the creation, verification and validation of OntoUML conceptual models

Essa tese apresenta um editor gráfico baseado em modelos para o suporte à criação, verificação e validação de modelos conceituais e ontologias de domínio em uma linguagem de modelagem filosoficamente e cognitivamente bem-fundada chamada OntoUML. O editor é projetado de forma que, por um lado, ele protege o usuário da complexidade dos princípios ontológicos subjacentes à essa linguagem. Por outro lado, ele reforça esses princípios nos modelos produzidos por prover um mecanismo para verificação formal automática de restrições, daí assegurando que os modelos criados serão sintaticamente corretos. Além disso, avaliar a qualidade de modelos conceituais é um ponto chave para assegurar que modelos conceituais podem ser utilizados efetivamente como uma base para o entendimento, acordo e construção de sistemas de informação. Por essa razão, o editor é também capaz de gerar instâncias de modelos automaticamente por meio da transformação desses modelos em especificações na linguagem, baseada em lógica, chamada Alloy. Como as especificações Alloy geradas incluem os axiomas modais da ontologia fundacional subjacente à OntoUML, chamada Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO), então as instâncias geradas automaticamente vão apresentar um comportamento modal enquanto estiverem sendo classificadas dinamicamente, suportando, assim, a validação das meta-propriedades modais dos tipos fornecidos pela linguagem OntoUML

Desarrollo y aplicación de métodos bioinformáticos al análisis de datos de expresión genómica y datos de supervivencia de pacientes con cáncer

[EN] The development of robust omic technologies (genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, etc) to generate and understand genome-wide alterations is already having an impact on health care, with a particular relevance on cancer and oncology. Within the current context of Personalised Medicine, Precision Medicine and Genomic Medicine (Roden and Tyndale, 2013), modern cancer research has to be done considering an adecuate use of the large-scale data derived from these new omic technologies. Some of these technologies, such as transcriptomic expression pro ling, have been already applied to thousands of human samples (see public database GEO (NCBI, 2019)), and provide information about the expression status of all the known genes in the analised individuals. In order to be useful and applicable to medical research, such omic data should be integrated with the corresponding clinical data using adequate computational and bioinformatic tools and methods. This is a main framework where the current Doctoral Thesis work is proposed

Correlation of influenza infection with glycan array

Poster Presentation: SPB1 / SPB2 - Virus Host Interaction/Pathogensis/Transmission: abstract no. B109PINTRODUCTION: The past 6 years has seen the introduction of glycan arrays containing large numbers of sialic acid (Sia) containing compounds and these arrays have been used to demonstrate the relative binding affinity of influenza viruses to different glycans. Though infor...postprin

An analysis of target recipient groups for monovalent 2009 pandemic influenza vaccine and trivalent seasonal influenza vaccines in 2009-10 and 2010-11

Poster Presentation: SPA5 - How to Evaluate Vaccine Effectiveness and Efficacy?: abstract no. A513PINTRODUCTION: Vaccination is generally considered to be the best primary prevention measure against influenza virus infection. Many countries encourage specific target groups of people to undertake vaccination, often with financial subsidies or a list of priority. To understand differential patterns of national target groups for influenza vaccination before, during and after the 2009 influenza pandemic, we reviewed and identified changes in national target groups for trivalent seasonal influenza and the monovalent 2009 pandemic influenza vaccines dur...postprin