Psicometria dell\u2019affettivit\ue0 dell\u2019anziano

Rating scales in the assessment of affective disorders of the aged are widely used, but Italian versions of these instruments are lacking. In literature two 15-items evaluation schedules, both derived from MMPI and validated in aged people, may be found. A study was designed to assess whether their Italian versions behave in the same manner in classifying the sample (590 aged subjects, males and females) and whether concomitant variables (age, sex, physical fitness, etc.) may be source of variability. Final results showed that sex only was a significant source of variability for both scales, besides the sample was classified into two main groups (normal and psychopathological) without significant difference. A discriminant analysis on the scores showed that in both scales six items only had the main right classification power

Reduction of Ammonium Pertechnetate and Ammonium Perrhenate with CO: Synthesis of M2(CO)10 (M: Tc, Re) and Crystal and Molecular Structure of the Trinuclear Cyano-Bridged Derivative Re3(CN)3(CO)12

International audienceThe reaction of the tetra-oxo MO4- anions with CO under pressure and at temperatures around 290 °C (Re) or 200 °C (Tc) leads to the corresponding decacarbonyls Re2(CO)10 and Tc2(CO)10, in yields as high as 69% (Re) or almost quantitative (Tc). The ammonium countercation (NH4+) is an essential pre-requisite for the carbonylation of the tetra-oxo anions, although the [N-n-Bu4]+ or the [N-(n-C8H17)4]+ cations led to satisfactory results in the case of ReO4-. The trimeric cyano-complex Re3(CN)3(CO)12 forms as a by-product in the reaction of ReO4-; its crystal and molecular structure was solved by X-ray diffraction methods. Crystal data for C15N3O12Re3, MW 972.9: orthorhombic; space group Pna21; a = 20.639(3), b = 6.705(3), c = 16.657(3) Å, V = 2305(1) Å3; Z = 4; Dc = 2.802 g cm-3; μ (Mo-Kα) = 159.7 cm-1; Rw = 0.036. The molecular structure consists of a cyano-bridged trimer, the rhenium atom being in a pseudo-octahedral coordination of four carbonyl groups, the other two coordination sites being occupied by atoms from bridging cyano groups

ChemInform Abstract: Reduction of Ammonium Pertechnetate and Ammonium Perrhenate with CO: Synthesis of M2(CO)10 (M: Tc, Re) and Crystal and Molecular Structure of the Trinuclear Cyano-Bridged Derivative Re3(CN)3(CO)12.

International audienceThe reaction of the tetra-oxo MO4- anions with CO under pressure and at temperatures around 290 °C (Re) or 200 °C (Tc) leads to the corresponding decacarbonyls Re2(CO)10 and Tc2(CO)10, in yields as high as 69% (Re) or almost quantitative (Tc). The ammonium countercation (NH4+) is an essential pre-requisite for the carbonylation of the tetra-oxo anions, although the [N-n-Bu4]+ or the [N-(n-C8H17)4]+ cations led to satisfactory results in the case of ReO4-. The trimeric cyano-complex Re3(CN)3(CO)12 forms as a by-product in the reaction of ReO4-; its crystal and molecular structure was solved by X-ray diffraction methods. Crystal data for C15N3O12Re3, MW 972.9: orthorhombic; space group Pna21; a = 20.639(3), b = 6.705(3), c = 16.657(3) Å, V = 2305(1) Å3; Z = 4; Dc = 2.802 g cm-3; μ (Mo-Kα) = 159.7 cm-1; Rw = 0.036. The molecular structure consists of a cyano-bridged trimer, the rhenium atom being in a pseudo-octahedral coordination of four carbonyl groups, the other two coordination sites being occupied by atoms from bridging cyano groups

Pharmacological outline of chronic headache patients: overlap between depressive and nociceptive symptomatology

This book is a collection of 30 chapters of widely varying subject matter—the unifying theme being that these chapters deal with depression, headache, or both. Sections include the following: neurochemistry of 5-hydroxytryptamine pathways, with four excellent chapters on this subject and review of findings as they relate to headache, depression, and pain; chronic headache and mood disorders, four primarily clinical chapters with a brief, interesting review of pain threshold studies; periodicity of affective and headache disorders, with chapters on seasonal cycles found in depression, menstrual cycles in mood and headache, and effects of different treatments; drugs affecting the serotonergic system (seven chapters of widely varying quality) with three review articles, one (by Sicuteri) giving a summary of his overall formulation of central pain systems, another summarizing data on serotonin and depression, and three subsequent studies briefly reporting results on specific pharmacologic agent

What is the biopsychosocial role of human immunodeficiency virus positivity in patients with end-stage liver disease who undergo orthotopic liver transplantation?

INTRODUCTION: Since 2003 the National Research Program for Solid Organ Transplantation in patients with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is active at our liver transplantation center. Patients with HIV who enter this protocol are assessed by the Consultation Liaison Psychiatry Service. The aim of the present study was to evaluate their psychiatric comorbidity. METHODS: An observational prospective study was conducted comparing end-stage liver disease (ESLD) patients with and without HIV. After the assessment, the psychiatrist compiled the Transplant Evaluation Rating Scale (TERS) and the Montgomery Asberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS). Baseline evaluation was made before inclusion on the OLT waiting list and the follow-up evaluation was made 12 months later. RESULTS: From January 2003 to December 2006 we assessed 553 patients: 39 (6%) with HIV and 361 (94%) without HIV. The 2 groups were homogeneous for gender (75% of male patients; P=not significant [NS]) but not for age (46+/-5 vs 56+/-9; P=NS). Psychiatric history was negative in 176 (49%) patients without HIV and in 6 (15%) patients with HIV (P< .001). At baseline psychiatric comorbidity was present in 33 HIV patients (85%) and in 148 non-HIV patients (41%; P< .001). At follow-up MADRS highlighted an improvement in all of the items for HIV patients. In the non-HIV group, the variation was as follows: baseline, 7.10; follow-up, 8.15. In the HIV group, the variation was as follows: baseline, 10.20; follow-up, 4.09 (P< .001). The average score at TERS was higher among patients with HIV (43+/-9 vs 35+/-9; P=NS). CONCLUSIONS: At baseline HIV patients with ESLD showed a higher rate of psychopathology, but they improved at follow-up; the contrary happened in the non-HIV group

Thyroid Metastasis from Primary Breast Cancer

Breast cancer (BC), the most commonly diagnosed malignancy, frequently metastasizes to the bone, lungs, brain and liver at advanced stages, whereas the thyroid gland represents a rare target site for secondary disease. We examined the most recent literature about thyroid metastasis (TM) from BC after we encountered a peculiar case of a 71-year-old woman who developed sudden dysphagia, severe hypothyroidism and hypoparathyroidism due to TM 18 years after the diagnosis of her primary cancer. Based on published data, the prevalence of TM in BC ranges from 3% to 34%, with a median onset time of 48.2 months, although longer time intervals are not infrequent. TM negatively impacts the prognosis of these patients, however thyroid surgery can limit the local disease burden. Therefore, we suggest that clinicians involved in the follow-up care of BC patients should consider a differential diagnosis of secondary thyroid malignancy when incidental lesions are diagnosed during radiological evaluations or local symptoms affect the cervical region, even many years after the diagnosis of the primary cancer

Prosody abilities in a large sample of affective and non-affective first episode psychosis patients

Objective: Prosody comprehension deficits have been reported in major psychoses. It is still not clear whether these deficits occur at early psychosis stages. The aims of our study were to investigate a) linguistic and emotional prosody comprehension abilities in First Episode Psychosis (FEP) patients compared to healthy controls (HC); b) performance differences between non-affective (FEP-NA) and affective (FEP-A) patients, and c) association between symptoms severity and prosodic features. Methods: A total of 208 FEP (156 FEP-NA and 52 FEP-A) patients and 77 HC were enrolled and assessed with the Italian version of the "Protocole Montreal d'Evaluation de la Communication" to evaluate linguistic and emotional prosody comprehension. Clinical variables were assessed with a comprehensive set of standardized measures. Results: FEP patients displayed significant linguistic and emotional prosody deficits compared to HC, with FEP-NA showing greater impairment than FEP-A. Also, significant correlations between symptom severity and prosodic features in FEP patients were found. Conclusions: Our results suggest that prosodic impairments occur at the onset of psychosis being more prominent in FEP-NA and in those with severe psychopathology. These findings further support the hypothesis that aprosodia is a core feature of psychosis

Olanzapine metabolic side effects: a weight gain issue?

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Classification of first-episode psychosis in a large cohort of patients using support vector machine and multiple kernel learning techniques

First episode psychosis (FEP) patients are of particular interest for neuroimaging investigations because of the absence of confounding effects due to medications and chronicity. Nonetheless, imaging data are prone to heterogeneity because for example of age, gender or parameter setting differences. With this work, we wanted to take into account possible nuisance effects of age and gender differences across dataset, not correcting the data as a pre-processing step, but including the effect of nuisance covariates in the classification phase. To this aim, we developed a method which, based on multiple kernel learning (MKL), exploits the effect of these confounding variables with a subject-depending kernel weighting procedure. We applied this method to a dataset of cortical thickness obtained from structural magnetic resonance images (MRI) of 127 FEP patients and 127 healthy controls, who underwent either a 3Tesla (T) or a 1.5T MRI acquisition. We obtained good accuracies, notably better than those obtained with standard SVM or MKL methods, up to more than 80% for frontal and temporal areas. To our best knowledge, this is the largest classification study in FEP population, showing that fronto-temporal cortical thickness can be used as a potential marker to classify patients with psychosis