Prospective memory impairment and its implications for community living skills in bipolar disorder

Objective: Prospective memory (PM) refers to the ability to undertake intended actions in the future. The functional significance of PM in bipolar disorder (BD) has not yet been investigated. This study examined PM impairment and its role in community living skills in clinically stable individuals with BD.Methods: Seventy-six individuals with BD and 44 healthy individuals were assessed with the Chinese version of the Cambridge Prospective Memory Test. Socio-demographic characteristics, retrospective memory (RM; the ability to recall or recognize past information), and intelligence were also measured in all participants. The clinical condition and community living skills of patients with BD were rated independently with standardized instruments.Results: Patients with BD showed PM impairment and their PM total scores independently predicted the level of community living skills in regression analyses. In follow-up analyses, the contribution was found to be accounted for by the time-based PM scores.Conclusions: Given the expanding body of research on the utility of PM in predicting functioning, these findings further support the role of PM in community living skills in individuals with BD. The results suggest that PM training might be an integral part of clinical rehabilitation devised for individuals with BD.Department of Rehabilitation Science

Assessment of prospective memory in schizophrenia using the Chinese version of the Cambridge Prospective Memory Test: A controlled study

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Prospective memory deficits in patients with bipolar disorder: A preliminary study

Prospective memory (PM) is the ability to remember to do something in the future without explicit prompts. To date, little has been known about PM deficits in bipolar disorder (BD). This study examined the nature and correlates of PM in patients with BD. Forty clinically stable BD patients and 40 matched healthy controls formed the study sample. Socio-demographic characteristics, PM, psychosocial functioning, retrospective memory (RM), and IQ were measured in all participants, whereas clinical condition was measured in patients with standardized assessment instruments. Patients performed significantly more poorly on the time-based PM task than controls (10.6 ± 5.0 vs. 14.6 ± 3.0, p <. 001). In correlation analyses, older age, lower education, more severe depressive and manic symptoms, poor psychosocial functioning, poor RM, and lower scores in IQ were significantly associated with poor performance in the time-based PM task, whereas poor RM and lower scores in IQ associated with poorer performance in the event-based PM task in patients. In multivariate analyses, severity of depression and older age significantly contributed to poor performance in the time-based PM task, whereas poor RM contributed to poor performance in the event-based PM task in patients. The time-based PM is impaired in BD patients. Depressive symptoms, age, and RM were determinants of certain aspects of impaired PM performance in BD patients. © The Author 2010.link_to_subscribed_fulltex

Plasma microRNA as a potential marker for breast cancer detection

Poster Session 4 - MicroRNA Profiling in Cancer 2: abstract no. 3027BACKGROUND: Recently, the emergence of small non-protein-coding RNAs, so-called microRNAs (miRNAs), playing important roles in oncogenesis has opened new opportunities for early cancer diagnosis. We have previously shown that microRNAs (miRNAs) in plasma are promising biomarkers for colorectal cancer detection. Here, we investigated whether plasma miRNAs could discriminate patients with and without breast cancer (BC). METHODS: Using TaqMan-based low density miRNA array, miRNAs were profiled from cancerous and adjacent non-cancerous breast tissues, corresponding plasma of 5 BC patients, along with plasma from 5 healthy controls. Marker selection and validation were performed by real-time quantitative RT-PCR on a small set of plasma. Independent set of plasma from 80 BC patients, 20 gastric cancer, 20 lung cancer, 20 colorectal cancer, 20 hepatocellular carcinoma and 50 healthy controls were further validated. RESULTS: Of the panel of 377 miRNAs analyzed, 8 miRNAs (miR-16, miR-21, miR-27a, miR-141, miR-191, miR-200c, miR-210, miR-451) were up-regulated both in plasma and tissue samples of 5 BC patients. All 8 putative miRNA markers were validated on the plasma of 15 BC patients and 15 healthy controls. Only three miRNAs were significantly elevated in this cohort of BC patients (p<0.0005). The plasma levels of the three markers in those 15 BC patients were significantly reduced after surgery (p<0.05). Further validation with an independent set of plasma samples (n=210) indicated that two markers differentiate BC from normal subjects, colorectal cancer, gastric cancer, hepatocellular carcinoma and lung cancer. These two markers yielded a combined receiver operating characteristic curve area of 88.5%, the sensitivity was 92% and the specificity was 72% in discriminating BC from control subjects. CONCLUSIONS: Plasma miRNAs significantly elevated in BC patients are identified. This can be a novel noninvasive molecular marker for BC screening.link_to_OA_fulltextThe 101st Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), Washington, DC., 17-21 April 2010. In AACR Meeting Abstracts, 201