Mental disorders frequency alternative and complementary medicine usage among patients with hypertension and type 2 diabetes mellitus

Objectives: Diabetes mellitus (DM) and hypertension (HT) are chronic disorders with which mental disorders may coexist and for which patients may resort to alternative medicine use. Alternative and complementary medicine is a treatment option that patients tend to use. This study is to determine the prevalence of mental disorders among patients diagnosed with DM and HT and their use of alternative medicine methods.Materials and Methods The study was conducted in a primary care setting. The data were collected from the Family Health Center No. 4 at Çankaya, Ankara, Turkey. It involved patients aged between 18 and 65, who were on follow‑up treatment for DM and HT. Patients accepted to participate in the study were administered the sociodemographic data form, the Primary Care Evaluation of Mental Disorders (PRIME‑MD) questionnaire and the alternative medicine inquiry form.Participants: One hundred and sixteen patients with HT and 119 patients with DM (type 2) were recruited for the study.Results: In this study, 47.4% of HT patients and 53.8% of the DM patients were diagnosed with a PRIME‑MD. The most commonly encountered disorder was mood disorders, in 37.1% of the HT patients and 45.4% of the DM patients. In this study, four HT patients (0.3%) and no DM patients stated that they resorted to complimentary medicine, which can use be used alongside conventional medical treatment and may help to feel better and cope better with any chronic condition. All four HT patients were using multivitamin combinations to support the treatment. As the alternative medicine usage was described as treatment used instead of conventional medical treatment we did not find any patient using alternative medicine.Conclusions: Mental disorders may coexist with HT and DM. Some of the HT and DM patients suffering from a mental disorder seek psychiatric support, while others do not. We believe that it is important to examine patients for mental disorders, while being followed‑up for a chronic disease.Keywords: Alternative medicine, diabetes mellitus, hypertension, mental disorde

Drugs with anticholinergic side-effects in primary care

Background: Anticholinergic drugs in elderly people have been associated with some serious side.effects. Patients in Turkey tend to attend primary care centers to have prescriptions of the drugs they chronically use. However, very little are known about how frequent that these drugs are prescribed and their side-effects in Turkish population. We aimed to investigate the usage and side.effects of drugs with anticholinergic  properties in patients over 65 years of age attending to primary care centers.Materials and Methods: Five hundred and sixty.three subjects were interviewed with a questionnaire of 16 questions inquiring their medication and possible side.effects. Timed up and go test (TUGT) and standardized mini.mental test (SMMT) were also performed.Results: Medical records of 563 individuals were screened to detect  anticholinergic medication. Twenty.eight patients were using anticholinergic medication. Mean duration of anticholinergic medication usage was 3.17 years. Mean number of falls occurred in the previous year was 1.14 « 1.17. Mean SMMT score was 27.20 « 1.13. Mean TUGT scores mean was 12.4 « 1.25. Drowsiness in 18 patients (65%), dry mouth in 15 patients (53%), dry eyes in 15 patients (53%), constipation in 11 patients (39%), blurred vision in 11 patients (%39), urinary hesitancy in eight patients (28%), confusion in six patients (21%) were reported. We found that none of the subjects were evaluated in terms of fall risk or mental status by their  doctors before the prescription of drugs with anticholinergic effects.Conclusions: A suggested approach to improve drug safety was reported as to reduce the use of anticholinergic drugs when it is possible. Psychiatrists and family physicians should select less anticholinergic drugs for  medication and have to evaluate their patientsf fall risk and their cognitive status before prescribing drugs with anticholinergic side effects.Key words: Anticholinergic side effects, cognitive status, fall risk, primary car

Relationship between 1,25‑dihydroxy Vitamin D levels and homeostatic model assessment insulin resistance values in obese subjects

Aim: In this study, our aim is to evaluate the insulin resistance and quality of life in obese subjects and nonobese subjects and to find out the Vitamin D (VD) status and correlations between obesity and control groups and also according to their quality of life scores.Materials and Method: The study was carried out between May and October 2013 which is the period of VD synthesis in Turkey. The participants of this study were volunteering individuals – obese and nonobese individuals defined according to the body mass index (BMI) – that did not receive any VD support in the last 1‑year and did not have any known chronic diseases. 1,25‑OH VD status and homeostatic model assessment insulin resistance (HOMA‑IR) values were evaluated.Results: The study population consisted of 39 individuals with normal weight (23 women, 16 men) and 66 individuals categorized as obese (51 women, 15 men). The difference in HOMA‑IR and VD values between the group of obese individuals and the group of nonobese individuals was significant (P < 0.001 vs. P <0.001). The median value of HOMA‑IR was higher in the obese group than in the nonobese group (P < 0.001) while the median value of VD was higher in the nonobese group than in the obese group (P < 0.001). The results regarding the relationship of BMI with HOMA‑IR and VD show that there was a positive correlation between HOMA‑IR and BMI (rs = 0.507; P < 0.001) and there was a negative correlation between HOMA‑IR and VD (rs = −0.316; P = 0.0001).Conclusion: Given serious diseases associated with low serum VD levels such as diabetes and cardiovascular disorders as well as low side effect incidence and low cost of VD treatment, it would be a reasonable approach to identify routine serum 25(OH) D and/or 1,25‑OH VD levels of obese patients and administer a treatment to patients with low levels of VD.Key words: 1,25‑OH Vitamin D, insulin resistance, obesit

THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE FIRST PREFERRED BIOLOGICAL DMARD AND THE DRUG SURVIVAL IN GERIATRIC AND YOUNGER ADULT POPULATION WITH RHEUMATOID ARTHRITIS AND PSORIATIC ARTHRITIS: TREASURE REAL-LIFE DATA

EULAR European Congress of Rheumatology (EULAR) -- JUN 01-04, 2022 -- Copenhagen, DENMARK[Abstract Not Available]European Alliance Assoc Rheumato

Schwarzschild Atmospheric Processes: A Classical Path to the Quantum

We develop some classical descriptions for processes in the Schwarzschild string atmosphere. These processes suggest relationships between macroscopic and microscopic scales. The classical descriptions developed in this essay highlight the fundamental quantum nature of the Schwarzschild atmospheric processes.Comment: to appear in Gen. Rel. Gra

Surface adhesins and exopolymers of selected foodborne pathogens

The ability of bacteria to bind different compounds and to adhere to biotic and abiotic surfaces provides them with a range of advantages, such as colonization of various tissues, internalisation, avoidance of an immune response and survival and persistence in the environment. A variety of bacterial surface structures are involved in this process and these promote bacterial adhesion in a more or less specific manner. In this review, we will focus on those surface adhesins and exopolymers in selected foodborne pathogens that are involved mainly in primary adhesion. Their role in biofilm development will also be considered when appropriate. Both the clinical impact and implications for food safety of such adhesion will be discussed.The authors are members of the EU COST Action FA1202 (CGAFA1202): A European Network for Mitigating Bacterial Colonisation and Persistence on Foods and Food Processing Environments (http://www.bacfoodnet.org/) and acknowledge this action for facilitating collaborative networking that assisted with this study. The work was further supported by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic (project COST LD 14015 and project LO1218 under the NPU I program), the 'Cooperation Scientifique Universitaire (CSU)' France Denmark 2012 from the Embassy of France in Denmark 'Institut Francais du Danemark' (IFD) (no. 14/2012/CSU.8.2.1), the EGIDE Programme Hubert Curien (PHC) France Germany PROCOPE 2013 2015 from the 'Ministere des Affaires Etrangeres et Europeennes' (no. 28297WG) and by the Norwegian Research Council (grant no. 192402)

Impact of Chromatin Structures on DNA Processing for Genomic Analyses

Chromatin has an impact on recombination, repair, replication, and evolution of DNA. Here we report that chromatin structure also affects laboratory DNA manipulation in ways that distort the results of chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) experiments. We initially discovered this effect at the Saccharomyces cerevisiae HMR locus, where we found that silenced chromatin was refractory to shearing, relative to euchromatin. Using input samples from ChIP-Seq studies, we detected a similar bias throughout the heterochromatic portions of the yeast genome. We also observed significant chromatin-related effects at telomeres, protein binding sites, and genes, reflected in the variation of input-Seq coverage. Experimental tests of candidate regions showed that chromatin influenced shearing at some loci, and that chromatin could also lead to enriched or depleted DNA levels in prepared samples, independently of shearing effects. Our results suggested that assays relying on immunoprecipitation of chromatin will be biased by intrinsic differences between regions packaged into different chromatin structures - biases which have been largely ignored to date. These results established the pervasiveness of this bias genome-wide, and suggested that this bias can be used to detect differences in chromatin structures across the genome

Occupation of racial grief, loss as a resource : learning from ‘The Combahee River Collective Black Feminist Statement'

The methodology of ‘occupation’ through rereading The Combahee River Collective Black Feminist Statement (The Combahee River Collective, in: James, Sharpley-Whiting (eds) The Black Feminist Reader. Blackwell Publishers Ltd., Oxford, pp 261–270, 1977) demonstrates the necessity of temporal linkages to historical Black feminist texts and the wisdom of Black feminist situated knowers. This paper argues that racism produces grief and loss and as long as there is racism, we all remain in racial grief and loss. However, in stark contrast to the configuration of racial grief and loss as something to get over, perhaps grief and loss can be thought about differently, for example, in terms of racial grief and loss as a resource. This paper questions Western Eurocentric paternalistic responses to Black women’s ‘talk about their feelings of craziness… [under] patriarchal rule’ (The Combahee River Collective 1977: 262) and suggests alternative ways of thinking about the psychological impact of grief and loss in the context of racism. In this paper, a Black feminist occupation of racial grief and loss includes the act of residing within, and the act of working with the constituent elements of racial grief and loss. The proposal is that an occupation of racial grief and loss is a paradoxical catalyst for building a twenty-first century global intersectional Black feminist movement