Anxiety is Prevailing in Non-Cardiac Chest Pain Subjects, while Somatisation is Not A Comparative Study in the Emergency Department

Objective: The main purpose of this study was to verify if non-cardiac chest pain (NCCP) subjects recruited in an Emergency Department were more anxious, depressive or burdened by somatoform symptoms as compared with cardiac chest pain (CCP) subjects, and with subjects without chest pain (WOCP). Methods: We included patients with chest pain not attributable to a gastro-oesophageal reflux disorder. NCCP subjects were negative at ECG examination and at troponin test at baseline and after three months. A number of instruments were administered, measuring anxiety and depression (HADS), somatisation (somatisation scale of SCL- 90, TAS-20), and the health-related QoL (SF-12), along with other scales measuring the social and experiential profile. Results: We recruited 435 subjects (of which NCCP were 44.8%) in the Emergency Department, while other 147 subjects were recruited in a primary care clinic. The logistic regression showed that the levels of HADS anxiety in the three groups were dissimilar, even when adjusted for confounding variables: taking NCCP as reference category, adjusted ORs were 0.64 for CCP (IC95% 0.42 \u2013 0.96) and 0.23 for WOCP (IC95% 0.13 \u2013 0.40). When considering the somatisation construct, CCP and NCCP subjects reported similar somatic symptom complaints, higher than WOCP subjects. Moreover, even if NCCP subjects showed higher TAS-20 scores than WOCP subjects, these scores were below the range of a possible alexithymia. As for the physical health-related QoL (SF-12, subscale PCS-12), regression analyses showed that the PCS-12 mean score of NCCP was higher than that of CCP ( f -2.31; IC95% -4.14 to -0.48) and lower than that of WOCP ( f 2.24; IC95% 0.12 \u2013 4.37). Conclusion : NCCP subjects are characterised from an elevated anxiety, together with a better physical well-being, when compared with subjects who have a cardiac failure. The somatisation construct seems less useful to distinguish NCCP from CCP subjects. Consequently, anxiety should be the major target of our mental-health intervention when treating subjects with chest pain

Indicators of sustainable forest management: application and assessment

Report of the international project Life ManForCBD

Characterization of the lipid fraction of Niger seeds (Guizotia abyssinica cass.) from different regions of Ethiopia and India and chemometric authentication of their geographical origin

The oil extracted from the seeds of niger (Guizotia Abyssinica), collected from 6 different regions of Ethiopia and India, was characterized in terms of its fatty acid, sterol and triglyceride distribution and of its total tocopherol content. Where available, the results have been compared with those reported in the literature or with data on oils from the same botanical family (Compositae). The analytical data have then been elaborated by supervised pattern recognition techniques (Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) and Artifical Neural Network (ANN)) in order to authenticate the geographical origin of the samples. Eight and 11 variables were necessary to achieve a complete discrimination respectively of the country and of the region of origin of the oils under exam, when using LDA, whereas ANN required a smaller number of experimental variables (4 and 6), due to its non-linearity

Review of Deaths Related to Analgesic- and Cough Suppressant-opioids; England and Wales 1996-2002

Original article can be found at: http://www.thieme-connect.com/ejournals/toc/pharmaco--Copyright Georg Thieme Verlag KG DOI : 10.1055/s-2006-949149Peer reviewe

Class-modeling techniques in the authentication of Italian oils from Sicily with a Protected Denomination of Origin (PDO)

In this paper, an example of the application of two chemometric class-modeling tools (SIMCA and UNEQ) to the pattern recognition of Italian extra virgin oils from three different Protected Denominations of Origin is reported. In particular, 200 oil samples from three different PDOs of Sicily (Monte Etna, Valli Trapanesi and Monti Iblei; harvests 2002 and 2003) have been considered. The models built using the whole data set (22 chemical and physico-chemical indices were determined on each sample) resulted in 87% (SIMCA) or 77% (UNEQ) predictive ability, as evaluated by leave-one-out cross-validation. Therefore, SIMCA seems to perform better on the complete data set. A further investigation on the subsets from each of the two production years has shown that the 2003 data (mainly from the category Valli Trapanesi) are significantly different from the 2002 ones. Interestingly, when performing class-modeling on each of these two subsets, UNEQ provides better (or at least comparable) results than SIMCA

Supervised pattern recognition to discriminate the geographical origin of rice bran oils: a first study

Supervised pattern recognition appears to be a useful tool to authenticate foodstuffs according to their geographical or varietal origin, when a set of samples whose classification is known a priori are available. In this work, linear discriminant analysis and artificial neural networks trained by the back-propagation algorithm have been used to discriminate rice bran oils manufactured in three different countries (Italy, Thailand and Switzerland) according to their geographical origin. The variables to be included in the mathematical models have been chosen by means of Fisher F-ratio value among the chemical indices routinely determined on vegetable oils (particularly fatty acids, triglycerides and sterol composition). The prediction ability of all the classifiers was 100% as evaluated by cross-validation. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved

Esperimenti di chimica. Analisi di alimenti

In questo libro viene presentata una raccolta di esperimenti di chimica sul tema dell'analisi degli alimenti. Sono presenti esperimenti riguardanti l'analisi dell'acqua, le bevande alcoliche, il formaggio, i grassi e gli oli alimentari, il latte e le paste alimentari

UV-Vis spectrophotometric method for the quantitation of all the components of Italian general denaturant and its application to check the conformity of alcohol samples

A simple, fast and relatively inexpensive spectrophotometric method for the identification and the quantification of the individual components of the Italian general denaturant in alcohol samples is proposed

Application of differential scanning calorimetry to the study of drug-excipient compatibility

Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) has been used to investigate drug-excipient interactions and, in consequence, their compatibility. In particular, binary mixtures of nefazodone with magnesium stearate and lactose, and fosinopril with the same excipients were prepared and analysed, after proper conditioning. The thermoanalytical results were compared with those obtained by spectroscopic (UV, IR) and chromatographic (HPLC) analysis. We believe that changes in DSC runs cannot always be a sufficient condition to prove that some interaction occurs between drug and excipient during storage at room temperature. Some data on the spectroscopic characteristics of nefazodone and fosinopril drugs and their thermal behaviour are also reported