Lankenau Medical Research Center

No abstract available

Cognitive functioning, clinical profile and life events in young adults addicted to drugs. Does being a girl make a difference?

Objective: Gender features play a fundamental role as risk factors in drug addiction, entailing differences in vulnerability, onset, drug use and clinical trajectories. Even if increasing empirical evidence has attested that drug abuse in emerging adulthood is associated with cognitive impairments, personality disorders and psychological distress, limited research has analyzed these aspects from a gender perspective. The present research focuses on gender differences in youths (18–24 years of age) diagnosed with substance use disorders (SUDs), in order to detect possible differences between females and males as regards their neuropsychological functioning, clinical profiles and past life experiences. Method: Neuropsychological functioning (neuropsychological battery Esame Neuropsicologico Breve-2), the severity of the symptomatology (Symptom Checklist-90-Revised), personality profile and disorders (Shedler Westen Assessment Procedure-200) and life history were assessed in two groups of young adults with SUDs, 20 males and 20 females (mean age = 21 years, SD = 2.2). Participants were recruited in a therapeutic community in Venice, Italy. Results: Girls showed less cognitive impairment but higher psychological distress with respect to boys; between the two groups, no differences emerged regarding the personality profiles. The girls’ life histories presented more experiences of abuse and maltreatment; they also moved more quickly from substance use to dependence. Boys, instead, were more involved in criminal activity. Conclusions: Given our results, it seems that gender differences manifest early, at emerging adulthood. Consequently, a gender-oriented treatment for drug addiction should be offered even at an early age, focusing on early adverse experiences and their potential traumatic effect on girls. By contrast, young men seem to rely on compromised cognitive functions, which require a specific treatment approach, since they constitute a crucial factor for individual adjustment and treatment outcomes. Results should be interpreted relative to some limitations (such as the small sample size and the preliminary and cross-sectional nature of the research), and future studies are require

Alexithymia in young adults with substance use disorders: Critical issues about specificity and treatment predictivity

Several studies have reported high rates of alexithymia in drug-dependent individuals, but supporting evidence attests association between alexithymia and a variety of psychiatric disorders, raising doubts about its specificity. Moreover, controversies are emerging about alexithymia assessment: self-report measures present shortcomings with respect to discriminant validity and reliability. As regards treatment for substance use disorders (SUDs), alexithymia has been linked to poorer outcomes, but the results are inconsistent. The aim of the present study is to investigate alexithymia in substance-dependent young adults by examining: (a) the specificity of alexithymia in drug-dependent inpatients, compared to healthy individuals and patients with psychiatric disorders (behavioral and emotional disorders) and (b) the predictivity of alexithymia in determining treatment outcomes in terms of relapses, drop outs from treatment and the rate of relapse per month of treatment. Two studies were conducted to fulfill these aims: Study 1 and Study 2. Study 1 involved 90 late adolescents, aged 17-21. To fulfill the first aim, 30 inpatients diagnosed with SUD were compared with 30 healthy controls and 30 individuals referred to an outpatient neuropsychiatric unit (a). The participants completed the Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20 (TAS-20) and the Symptom Checklist-90-Revised (SCL-90-R). The results indicated that both clinical groups reported higher TAS-20 scores than the non-clinical subjects, but they did not differ from each other (a); moreover, a large correlation was detected between alexithymia and depressive symptoms, as assessed by the SCL-90-R. Study 2 involved 55 inpatients with SUD recruited in a therapeutic community. The participants completed the TAS-20, and clinicians filled out the Observer Alexithymia Scale (OAS). No association was found between self-report and observational measures. Neither self-reported nor observed alexithymia predicted the number of relapses, drop-out from treatment, or the rate of relapses per month of treatment (b). When the interaction with gender was explored, the global score of alexithymia and the "Distant" OAS subscale predicted the number rate relapses only in males. The TAS-20 did not discriminate between the clinical groups. The limited ability of both observed and self-reported measures in predicting treatment outcome raises questions on the specificity of alexithymia among the substance-dependent inpatient population

I risultati del progetto CNR Energy+ Rapporto finale

Questo rapporto riassume i risultati finali del progetto “Miglioramento del Servizio di Energy Management del CNR con la partecipazione dei dipendenti” (acronimo: Energy+), vincitore del Premio per l’Innovazione del CNR edizione 2013 (1° classificato)

Consensus-based Distributed 3D Pose Estimation with Noisy Relative Measurements

In this paper we study consensus-based tributed estimation algorithms for estimating the global translation and rotation of each agent in a multi-agent system. We consider the case in which agents measure the noisy relative pose of their neighbors and communicate their estimates to agree upon the global poses in an arbitrary reference frame. The main contribution of this paper is a formal analysis that provides necessary and sufficient conditions to guarantee stability (in a Lyapunov sense) of the estimation system''s equilibria. We prove that consensus-based algorithms will diverge, even with arbitrarily small inconsistencies on the relative pose, unless the measurements satisfy minimum consistency conditions. We determine these consistency conditions for translation-only, rotation-only, and combined 3D pose estimation using the axis-angle rotation representation over undirected graphs. We then propose an initialization method based on these conditions that guarantees consistency and stability of the estimator''s equilibria. Additionally, we show that existing distributed estimation methods in literature exploit these conditions to guarantee convergence of their algorithms. Lastly, we perform simulations that show convergence when consistency conditions hold and divergence when they do not

Medication overuse headache, addiction and personality pathology: a controlled study by SWAP-200

Background: Medication Overuse Headache (MOH) is a type of chronic headache, whose mechanisms are still unknown. Some empirical investigations examining the addiction-like behaviors and processes, as well as personality characteristics underlying MOH development, reached contrasting findings. This study aimed at detecting personality and its disorders (PDs) in MOH patients, with a specific attention to the features of addiction. Methods: Eighty-eight MOH patients have been compared with two clinical populations including 99 patients with Substance Use Disorder (SUD) and 91 with PDs using the Shedler-Westen Assessment Procedure-200 (SWAP-200). MANCOVAs were performed to evaluate personality differences among MOH, SUD and PD groups, controlling for age and gender. Results: MOH patients showed lower traits of the SWAP-200’s clusters A and B disorders than SUD and PD patients, whom presented more severe levels of personality impairment. No differences in the SWAP-200’s cluster C have been found, indicating common personality features in these populations. At levels of specific PDs, MOH patients presented higher obsessive and dysphoric traits, as well as better overall psychological functioning than SUD and PD patients. Conclusions: The study supported the presence of a specific pattern of personality in MOH patients including obsessive (perfectionist) and dysphoric characteristics, as well as good enough psychological resources. No similarities with drug addicted and personality-disordered patients were found. Practitioners’ careful understanding of the personality of MOH patients may be useful to provide more effective treatment strategies and patient-tailored intervention programs

Aging in vitro and D-glucose uptake kinetics of diploid human fibroblasts

By use of a rapid technique, initial rates of D-glucose transport were obtained during the lifespan in vitro of a commercially available strain of human embryo lung fibroblasts (Flow 2000). The apparent Km of the D-glucose carrier did not change during senescence in vitro: = 1.8 mM (range 1.3-2.3) in phase II, = 1.8 mM (range 1.5-2.2) in phase III. Transport rates remained constant in stationary phase II cultures, which had completed between 30% and 80% of their replicative lifespan. A wide variation, however, was observed in terminally differentiated cells (phase III), which showed a two- to threefold increase in average cell size and protein content. In some senescent cultures, glucose transport calculated on a per cell basis was also two-to threefold increased, while it was strongly decreased (-75%) in others. When calculated per unit of cell water, protein, and surface area, respectively, transport rates in phase III cultures ranged from values established for stationary phase II cultures down to very low values. Detaching cells flushed off from senescent cultures did not show measurable rates of glucose transport into the inulin impermeable cell space. Present evidence argues against the idea that an impairment of D-glucose transport might precede loss of replicative potential in aging human fibroblasts. Instead our data indicate that the transport capacity of cell membrane finally decreases during postreplicative senescence in terminally differentiated cells