The longitudinal interplay between negative and positive symptom trajectories in patients under antipsychotic treatment: a post hoc analysis of data from a randomized, 1-year pragmatic trial

BACKGROUND: Schizophrenia is a highly heterogeneous disorder with positive and negative symptoms being characteristic manifestations of the disease. While these two symptom domains are usually construed as distinct and orthogonal, little is known about the longitudinal pattern of negative symptoms and their linkage with the positive symptoms. This study assessed the temporal interplay between these two symptom domains and evaluated whether the improvements in these symptoms were inversely correlated or independent with each other. METHODS: This post hoc analysis used data from a multicenter, randomized, open-label, 1-year pragmatic trial of patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorder who were treated with first- and second-generation antipsychotics in the usual clinical settings. Data from all treatment groups were pooled resulting in 399 patients with complete data on both the negative and positive subscale scores from the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS). Individual-based growth mixture modeling combined with interplay matrix was used to identify the latent trajectory patterns in terms of both the negative and positive symptoms. Pearson correlation coefficients were calculated to examine the relationship between the changes of these two symptom domains within each combined trajectory pattern. RESULTS: We identified four distinct negative symptom trajectories and three positive symptom trajectories. The trajectory matrix formed 11 combined trajectory patterns, which evidenced that negative and positive symptom trajectories moved generally in parallel. Correlation coefficients for changes in negative and positive symptom subscale scores were positive and statistically significant (P < 0.05). Overall, the combined trajectories indicated three major distinct patterns: (1) dramatic and sustained early improvement in both negative and positive symptoms (n = 70, 18%), (2) mild and sustained improvement in negative and positive symptoms (n = 237, 59%), and (3) no improvement in either negative or positive symptoms (n = 82, 21%). CONCLUSIONS: This study of symptom trajectories over 1 year shows that changes in negative and positive symptoms were neither inversely nor independently related with each other. The positive association between these two symptom domains supports the notion that different symptom domains in schizophrenia may depend on each other through a unified upstream pathological disease process

Национальная модель мира в живописном мифотворчестве Владимира Кабаченко

Urinary bladder cancer is a historical disease of rubber workers often been associated with exposure to aromatic amines such as 2-naphthylamine. While exposure to these compounds has decreased markedly over time, the bladder cancer risk has not decreased in direct proportion. Polycyclic aromatic compounds (PAC) are candidates for urinary bladder cancer causation. We determined pre- and post-exposure urinary levels of 2-napthol (2NAP), the major metabolite of a model volatile PAC, in a group of non-smoking rubber workers. Pre- and post-exposure urine samples were collected from 43 non-smoking workers. Overall mean post-shift 2-naphthol levels were increased (13.95 ± 28.4 μg/l), but non-significantly compared to samples collected pre-exposure (7.97 ± 22.1 μg/l; p=0.29). The greatest difference was observed in the curing department where post-exposure samples were 4.5 fold higher, post shift samples were significantly higher in production workers as compared to non-production workers (p=0.02). Levels of 2NAP were not correlated with levels of carcinogen-DNA adducts in exfoliated urothelial cells nor with other estimates of exposure or effect. These data suggest that post-shift urinary 2NAP levels are increased, particularly in the curing department. However, the differences were not significantly different overall and urinary 2NAP levels did not predict the level of carcinogen DNA adducts in exfoliated urothelial cells

Charles River Sprague Dawley Rats Lack Early Age-Dependent Susceptibility to DMBA-Induced Mammary Carcinogenesis

<p>Developmental stages of mammary glands influence their susceptibility to initiating events related to carcinogenesis. The &#8220;window of susceptibility&#8221; to mammary carcinogenesis is classically defined as the time in early puberty when the mammary gland morphology is most sensitive to initiation events. Administration of the polyaromatic hydrocarbon, 7,12-dimethylbenz(a)anthracene (DMBA), in a single oral dose yields maximal mammary tumor formation when administered in this &#8220;window&#8221;. We examined the DMBA treated mammary glands, precursor lesions, and morphology of the uninvolved mammary epithelium for the first 100 days of life for Charles River Sprague Dawley CD^R IGS. Our goal was to determine the DMBA dose at which 50% of the rats (IC50) developed carcinoma in situ (CIS) within three months of dosing. Here we demonstrate, rather than the classical U-shaped dose curve in which there is maximum sensitivity for DMBA at 50 days, there is an increasing degree of sensitivity with age in the CD^R IGS rat. Additionally, we report that vehicle-treated animals developed mammary CIS without any known initiator, and 100 day virgin animals demonstrated lactational changes, independent of DMBA exposure or dose. Lastly, we demonstrate this strain of virgin female rats has elevated pituitary prolactin immunoreactivity independent of the level of mammary differentiation. We conclude this strain of Charles River Sprague Dawley rats has prolactin-induced pituitary stimulation, and therefore, the window of susceptibility for mammary tumorigenesis is absent.</p

A Classification System for Characterization of Physical and Non-Physical Work Factors

A comprehensive evaluation of work-related perfomance factors is a prerequisite to developing integrated and long-term solutions to workplace performance improvement. This paper describes a work-factor classification system that categorizes the entire domain of workplace factors impacting performance. A questionnaire-based instrument was developed to implement this classification system in industry. Fifty jobs were evaluated in 4 different service and manufacturing companies using the proposed questionnaire-based instrument. The reliability coefficients obtained from the analyzed jobs were considered good (.589 to .862). In general, the physical work factors resulted in higher reliability coefficients (.847 to .862) than non-physical work factors (.589 to .768)