Suicidal mothers

Background: Epidemiological research has demonstrated that suicidal ideation is a relatively frequent complication of pregnancy in both developed and developing countries. Hence, the aims of this study are: to assess whether or not pregnancy may be considered a period highly susceptible to suicidal acts; to recognize potential contributing factors to suicidal behaviors; to describe therepercussions of suicide attempts on maternal, fetal, and neonatal outcome; to identify a typical profile of women at high risk of suicide during pregnancy.Methods: Medical literature information published in any language since 1950 was identified using MEDLINE/PubMed, Scopus, and Google Scholar databases. Search terms were: “pregnancy”,(antenatal) “depression”, “suicide”. Searches were last updated on 28 September 2010. Forty-six articles assessing the suicidal risk during pregnancy and obstetrical outcome of pregnancies complicated by suicide attempts were analyzed, without methodological limitations.Results: Worldwide, frequency of suicidal attempts and the rate of death by suicidal acts are low. Although this clinical event is rare, the consequences of a suicidal attempt are medically andpsychologically devastating for the mother-infant pair. We also found that common behaviors exist in women at high risk for suicide during pregnancy. Review data indeed suggest that a characteristicprofile can prenatally identify those at highest risk for gestational suicide attempts.Conclusions: Social and health organizations should make all possible efforts to identify women at high suicidal risk, in order to establish specific programs to prevent this tragic event. The available data informs health policy makers with a typical profile to screen women at high risk ofsuicide during pregnancy. Those women who have a current or past history of psychiatric disorders,are young, unmarried, unemployed, have incurred an unplanned pregnancy (eventually terminated with an induced abortion), are addicted to illicit drugs and/or alcohol, lack effectivepsychosocial support, have suffered from episodes of sexual or physical violence are particularly vulnerable

A systematic review of quality of life and weight gain-related issues in patients treated for severe and persistent mental disorders: focus on aripiprazole

Aripiprazole is a relatively novel second-generation antipsychotic belonging to the chemical class of benzisoxazole derivatives and is characterized by a unique pharmacological profile which suggests that the drug acts as a dopamine-serotonin system stabilizer. Whereas all previously available antipsychotics are antagonists at D2 receptors, aripiprazole is the only available partial agonist at these receptors. Thus, it has been suggested that aripiprazole could be associated with a relatively neutral impact on bodyweight, possibly reducing risks of a detrimental impact on the quality of life that often complicates management for a large number of patients diagnosed with severe and persistent mental disorders (SPMDs) treated chronically with antipsychotic medications. However, data from short- and long-term reviewed studies indicate that the prevalence rate of clinically relevant weight gain during therapy with this drug is similar to that occurring during treatments with other antipsychotic agents, either typical or atypical. Moreover, information on the impact of aripiprazole therapy on the quality of life of patients diagnosed with SPMDs is scarce and characterized by conflicting results. Given these results, further, large, well-designed studies are needed before confirming potential advantages of aripiprazole over first-generation antipsychotics and other SGAs

The earliest site of iodination in thyroglobulin is residue number 5.

In most highly structured native proteins, as well as in thyroglobulin, the reactivity in vitro of the various tyrosyl residues toward iodine is widely different. The present work demonstrates that of nearly 70 tyrosyl residues present in rat thyroglobulin, there is one, residue number 5 from the NH2-terminal end, which has in vivo the highest affinity toward iodine, being the first one to be iodinated. In fact, when 6-(n-propyl)-2-thiouracil (PTU)-treated, iodine-deficient animals were injected with 125I and killed shortly after, we isolated from thyroid glands poorly iodinated thyroglobulin (about 1 iodine atom/thyroglobulin molecule), nearly 90% of the radioactivity of which was found as monoiodotyrosine. Although CNBr cleavage of this protein gave several fragments after gel electrophoresis only one of these, with apparent mass 27,000 Da, contained 125I. This fragment was isolated and fully characterized. Twelve cycles of automated Edman degradation were performed; the sequence found, i.e. N-I-F-E-X-Q-V-X-A-Q-X-L, indicated that the 27,000-Da fragment is the NH2 terminus of thyroglobulin. This portion of the polypeptide chain contains several tyrosyl residues which may well all be potentially involved in the early iodination of the protein. The observation that the removal of seven amino acids from the NH2 terminus is accompanied (at the fifth step) by the total disappearance of radioactivity in the resulting shortened peptide suggested that the fifth residue was the only one iodinated under these conditions. A second, more quantitative experiment was performed on thyroglobulin obtained from 6-(n-propyl)-2-thiouracil-treated animals whose death was postponed 24 h after the injection of 125I. In this case the radioactivity was found not only in a single CNBr fragment (27,000 Da) but also in other discrete species of lower molecular mass. The mixture of these peptides was subjected to seven steps of manual Edman degradation. Fragments before and after partial degradation were run in parallel on a polyacrylamide gel and the distribution of 125I compared. Besides some change in the background, the two profiles were identical except for the absence of the 27,000-Da species. This proves that all the 125I present in the 27,000-Da species was localized at the fifth residue, the same site at which the hormone molecule is preferentially synthesized under normal conditions. This result is not unexpected and is in accord with the known properties of thyroglobulin which has a polypeptide chain designed for efficient synthesis of the hormone even at low levels of iodination

Embedded Knowledge-based Speech Detectors for Real-Time Recognition Tasks

Speech recognition has become common in many application domains, from dictation systems for professional practices to vocal user interfaces for people with disabilities or hands-free system control. However, so far the performance of automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems are comparable to human speech recognition (HSR) only under very strict working conditions, and in general much lower. Incorporating acoustic-phonetic knowledge into ASR design has been proven a viable approach to raise ASR accuracy. Manner of articulation attributes such as vowel, stop, fricative, approximant, nasal, and silence are examples of such knowledge. Neural networks have already been used successfully as detectors for manner of articulation attributes starting from representations of speech signal frames. In this paper, the full system implementation is described. The system has a first stage for MFCC extraction followed by a second stage implementing a sinusoidal based multi-layer perceptron for speech event classification. Implementation details over a Celoxica RC203 board are give

Policaptil Gel Retard in adult subjects with the metabolic syndrome: Efficacy, safety, and tolerability compared to metformin.

Abstract Background Policaptil Gel Retard® (PGR), is a new macromolecule complex based on polysaccharides slowing the rate of carbohydrate and fat absorption. It proved to significantly reduce body weight, acanthosis nigricans expression, HbA1c levels, and glucose metabolism abnormalities in obese, hyper-insulinemic adolescents. No such data are available for adults. Aim to compare the effects of PGR vs. metformin in adult subjects with the Metabolic Syndrome (MS) and T2DM on a Low Glycemic Index diet. Subjects and methods This spontaneous clinical, longitudinal, single-blind, randomized study based on a per-protocol analysis enrolled 100 outpatients with MS and T2DM consecutively referring to our clinic for three months, and randomly assigned to either the active treatment (Group A:, 6 tablets/day) or the comparator (Group B: Metformin tablets, 1500–2000 mg/day in two divided doses during the two main meals, to minimize side effects) to be taken 30 min before each main meal in equally divided doses. Serum lipid profile, anthropometry, HOMA-IR index, and tolerability parameters were evaluated before and after a 6-month follow-up period. Results all parameters improved at a similar rate in both groups but for the lipid profile, which got even better in Group A. Group A also experienced less prominent gastrointestinal side effects than its counterpart. Conclusion For the first time, we showed the non-inferiority of PGR compared to metformin in obese adult subjects with the MS and T2DM as for glycemic control and a clear-cut superiority of PGR in terms of both serum lipid-lowering capacity and tolerability

Genes and primary headaches: discovering new potential therapeutic targets

Genetic studies have clearly shown that primary headaches (migraine, tension-type headache and cluster headache) are multifactorial disorders characterized by a complex interaction between different genes and environmental factors. Genetic association studies have highlighted a potential role in the etiopathogenesis of these disorders for several genes related to vascular, neuronal and neuroendocrine functions. A potential role as a therapeutic target is now emerging for some of these genes. The main purpose of this review is to describe new advances in our knowledge regarding the role of MTHFR, KCNK18, TRPV1, TRPV3 and HCRTR genes in primary headache disorders. Involvement of these genes in primary headaches, as well as their potential role in the therapy of these disorders, will be discussed