110 research outputs found

    Effects of Music Therapy On Hospitalized Patients with Severe Mental Illnesses

    Get PDF
    Previous studies reported that music therapy (MT) exerts a positive effect on many medical and neuropsychiatric disorders. The use of MT has been proposed also for patients with severe mental illnesse (SMI), altrough further studies are still needed. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the effects on a structured MT program on clinical and social functioning indices of patient with SMI, hospitalized in an psychiatric emergency ward. The MT intervention followed the Benenzon model of MT and was delivered biweekly to 61 patients consecutively admittted to the psychiatric emergency ward. Subjects who did not complete the two-week MT intervention (N=45) were considered as the control group. all subjects were administred the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS) to evaluate the general psychopatology, the Hospital Anxiety And Depression Scale (HADS) for affective symptomatology, the Clinical Global Impression Scale (CGI-S) for severity of symptoms and the Global Assestment of Functioning (GAF) for psychosocial functioning. A repeated measures analysis of variance revealed that patients who unerwent the MT intervention had a statistically significant reduction of general and affective psychopatology scores and of symptoms severity with respect to the control group, after observation period. Our result are in line with previous studies confirming that MT may exert positive effects on psychopatology (in particular, on affective symptomatology) of patient with SMI, and extend this observation to an emergency setting, with short period of hospital stay

    Comparison of efavirenz levels in blood and hair with pharmacy refills as measures of adherence and predictors of viral suppression among people living with HIV in Nigeria

    Get PDF
    BackgroundStrategies to support adherence are constrained by the lack of tools to objectively monitor medication intake in low-resource settings. Pharmacologic measures are objective, but pharmacy refill data is more accessible and cost-efficient. This study compared short-term and long-term efavirenz (EFV) drug levels with pharmacy refill adherence data (PRA) and evaluated their ability to predict viral suppression among people living with HIV in Nigeria.MethodsPaired hair and dried blood spot (DBS) samples were obtained from 91 adults living with HIV receiving 600 mg EFV-based antiretroviral therapy (ART) and EFV concentrations were measured via validated methods using liquid-chromatography-mass-spectrometry. PRA was estimated from pharmacy records, based on the number of days a patient collected medication before or after the scheduled pick-up date. PRA was categorized into ≤ 74%, 75-94% and ≥ 95%, defined as poor, medium and high adherence, respectively. HIV viral loads closest to the hair sampling time (within 6 months) were also abstracted. Receiver Operating Characteristics (ROC) curve analyses compared the ability of adherence metrics to predict viral suppression.ResultsBased on PRA, 81% of participants had high adherence while 11% and 8% had medium and poor adherence, respectively. The median (IQR) EFV concentrations were 6.85 ng/mg (4.56-10.93) for hair and 1495.6 ng/ml (1050.7-2365.8) for DBS. Of the three measures of adherence, hair EFV concentration had the highest Area Under Curve (AUC) to predict viral suppression. Correlations between EFV concentrations in DBS and hair with PRA were positive (r = 0.12, P = 0.27 and r = 0.21, P = 0.05, respectively) but not strong.ConclusionsEFV concentrations in hair were the strongest predictor of viral suppression and only weakly correlated with pharmacy refill adherence data in Nigeria. This study suggests that resource-limited settings may benefit from objective adherence metrics to monitor and support adherence

    Therapeutic implications of cellular and molecular biology of cancer stem cells in melanoma

    Full text link

    Chromosome Study In Males Of Nearctic Species Of Gerris And Limnoporus Hemiptera Heteroptera Gerridae

    No full text
    Volume: 84Start Page: 535End Page: 53

    Cytogenetic study in males of nearctic genera of Gerridae (Hemiptera: Heteroptera)

    No full text
    Volume: 86Start Page: 354End Page: 35
    corecore