Attrition among families of divorce: Patterns in an outpatient psychiatric population

The accelerated divorce rate has greatly increased the number of children of divorce. In addition, the children and families of divorce are proportionately overrepresented in populations seeking child guidance and psychiatric services. However, the patterns in the use of such services by these families has been unexamined. In our study we find no differences in the use of outpatient psychiatric services between families where both biological parents are present and families of divorce. A closer look at the divorced families reveals that recently divorced mother-headed families more frequently interrupt both the evaluation and treatment phases of clinic contact. Several clinical patterns are described which help explain the finding and it is suggested that the traditional child guidance model may not be the most suitable intervention modality in working with these families.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/44293/1/10591_2004_Article_BF00927093.pd

Subtypes of familial breast tumours revealed by expression and copy number profiling

Extensive expression profiling studies have shown that sporadic breast cancer is composed of five clinically relevant molecular subtypes. However, although BRCA1-related tumours are known to be predominantly basal-like, there are few published data on other classes of familial breast tumours. We analysed a cohort of 75 BRCA1, BRCA2 and non-BRCA1/2 breast tumours by gene expression profiling and found that 74% BRCA1 tumours were basal-like, 73% of BRCA2 tumours were luminal A or B, and 52% non-BRCA1/2 tumours were luminal A. Thirty-four tumours were also analysed by single nucleotide polymorphism-comparative genomic hybridization (SNP-CGH) arrays. Copy number data could predict whether a tumour was basal-like or luminal with high accuracy, but could not predict its mutation class. Basal-like BRCA1 and basal-like non-BRCA1 tumours were very similar, and contained the highest number of chromosome aberrations. We identified regions of frequent gain containing potential driver genes in the basal (8q and 12p) and luminal A tumours (1q and 17q). Regions of homozygous loss associated with decreased expression of potential tumour suppressor genes were also detected, including in basal tumours (5q and 9p), and basal and luminal tumours (10q). This study highlights the heterogeneity of familial tumours and the clinical consequences for treatment and prognosis