Relationship of cognitive function in patients with schizophrenia in remission to disability: a cross-sectional study in an Indian sample

Background: Cognitive deficits in various domains have been consistently replicated in patients with schizophrenia. Most studies looking at the relationship between cognitive dysfunction and functional disability are from developed countries. Studies from developing countries are few. The purpose of the present study was to compare the neurocognitive function in patients with schizophrenia who were in remission with that of normal controls and to determine if there is a relationship between measures of cognition and functional disability. <p/>Methods: This study was conducted in the Psychiatric Unit of a General Hospital in Mumbai, India. Cognitive function in 25 patients with schizophrenia in remission was compared to 25 normal controls. Remission was confirmed using the brief psychiatric rating scale (BPRS) and scale for the assessment of negative symptoms (SANS). Subjects were administered a battery of cognitive tests covering aspects of memory, executive function and attention. The results obtained were compared between the groups. Correlation analysis was used to look for relationship between illness factors, cognitive function and disability measured using the Indian disability evaluation and assessment scale. <p/>Results: Patients with schizophrenia showed significant deficits on tests of attention, concentration, verbal and visual memory and tests of frontal lobe/executive function. They fared worse on almost all the tests administered compared to normal controls. No relationship was found between age, duration of illness, number of years of education and cognitive function. In addition, we did not find a statistically significant relationship between cognitive function and scores on the disability scale. <p/>Conclusion: The data suggests that persistent cognitive deficits are seen in patients with schizophrenia under remission. The cognitive deficits were not associated with symptomatology and functional disability. It is possible that various factors such as employment and family support reduce disability due to schizophrenia in developing countries like India. Further studies from developing countries are required to explore the relationship between cognitive deficits, functional outcome and the role of socio-cultural variables as protective factors

Between-group behaviour in health care: gaps, edges, boundaries, disconnections, weak ties, spaces and holes. A systematic review

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Gaps are typically regarded as a problem to be solved. People are stimulated to close or plug them. Researchers are moved to fill deficits in the literature in order to realise a more complete knowledge base, health authorities want to bridge policy-practice disconnections, managers to secure resources to remedy shortfalls between poor and idealised care, and clinicians to provide services to patients across the divides of organisational silos.</p> <p>Despite practical and policy work in many health systems to bridge gaps, it is valuable to study research examining them for the insights provided. Structural holes, spaces between social clusters and weak or absent ties represent fissures in networks, located in less densely populated parts of otherwise closely connected social structures. Such gaps are useful as they illustrate how communication potentially breaks down or interactivity fails. This paper discusses empirical and theoretical work on this phenomenon with the aim of analysing a specific exemplar, the structures of silos within health care organisations.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The research literature on social spaces, holes, gaps, boundaries and edges was searched systematically, and separated into health [n = 13] and non-health [n = 55] samples. The health literature was reviewed and synthesised in order to understand the circumstances between stakeholders and stakeholder groups that both provide threats to networked interactions and opportunities to strengthen the fabric of organisational and institutional inter-relationships.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The research examples illuminate various network structure characteristics and group interactions. They explicate a range of opportunities for improved social and professional relations that understanding structural holes, social spaces and absent ties affords. A principal finding is that these kinds of gaps illustrate the conditions under which connections are strained or have been severed, where the limits of integration between groups occurs, the circumstances in which social spaces are or need to be negotiated and the way divides are bridged. The study's limitations are that it is bounded by the focus of attention and the search terms used and there is yet to be developed a probabilistic, predictive model for gaps and how to connect them.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Gaps offer insights into social structures, and how real world behaviours of participants in workplaces, organisations and institutions are fragile. The paper highlights the circumstances in which network disjunctures and group divides manifest. Knowledge of these phenomenon provides opportunities for working out ways to improve health sector organisational communications, knowledge transmission and relationships.</p

Grey and white matter correlates of recent and remote autobiographical memory retrieval:Insights from the dementias

The capacity to remember self-referential past events relies on the integrity of a distributed neural network. Controversy exists, however, regarding the involvement of specific brain structures for the retrieval of recently experienced versus more distant events. Here, we explored how characteristic patterns of atrophy in neurodegenerative disorders differentially disrupt remote versus recent autobiographical memory. Eleven behavioural-variant frontotemporal dementia, 10 semantic dementia, 15 Alzheimer's disease patients and 14 healthy older Controls completed the Autobiographical Interview. All patient groups displayed significant remote memory impairments relative to Controls. Similarly, recent period retrieval was significantly compromised in behavioural-variant frontotemporal dementia and Alzheimer's disease, yet semantic dementia patients scored in line with Controls. Voxel-based morphometry and diffusion tensor imaging analyses, for all participants combined, were conducted to investigate grey and white matter correlates of remote and recent autobiographical memory retrieval. Neural correlates common to both recent and remote time periods were identified, including the hippocampus, medial prefrontal, and frontopolar cortices, and the forceps minor and left hippocampal portion of the cingulum bundle. Regions exclusively implicated in each time period were also identified. The integrity of the anterior temporal cortices was related to the retrieval of remote memories, whereas the posterior cingulate cortex emerged as a structure significantly associated with recent autobiographical memory retrieval. This study represents the first investigation of the grey and white matter correlates of remote and recent autobiographical memory retrieval in neurodegenerative disorders. Our findings demonstrate the importance of core brain structures, including the medial prefrontal cortex and hippocampus, irrespective of time period, and point towards the contribution of discrete regions in mediating successful retrieval of distant versus recently experienced events

Biochemical and developmental characterization of carbonic anhydrase II from chicken erythrocytes

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Carbonic anhydrase (CA) of the chicken has attracted attention for a long time because it has an important role in the eggshell formation. The developmental profile of CA-II isozyme levels in chicken erythrocytes has not been determined or reported. Furthermore, the relations with CA-II in erythrocyte and egg production are not discussed. In the present study, we isolated CA-II from erythrocytes of chickens and determined age-related changes of CA-II levels in erythrocytes.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Chicken CA-II was purified by a combination of column chromatography. The levels of CA-II in the hemolysate of the chicken were determined using the ELISA system in blood samples from 279 female chickens, ages 1 to 93 weeks, 69 male chickens, ages 3 to 59 weeks and 52 weeks female Araucana-chickens.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The mean concentration of CA-II in hemolysate from 1-week-old female was 50.8 ± 11.9 mg/g of Hb. The mean levels of CA-II in 25-week-old (188.1 ± 82.6 mg/g of Hb), 31-week-old (193.6 ± 69.7 mg/g of Hb) and 49-week-old (203.8 ± 123.5 mg/g of Hb) female-chickens showed the highest level of CA-II. The levels of CA-II in female WL-chickens significantly decreased at 63 week (139.0 ± 19.3 mg/g of Hb). The levels of CA-II in female WL-chicken did not change from week 63 until week 93.The mean level of CA-II in hemolysate of 3-week-old male WL-chickens was 78.3 ± 20.7 mg/g of Hb. The levels of CA-II in male WL-chickens did not show changes in the week 3 to week 59 timeframe. The mean level of CA-II in 53-week-old female Araucana-chickens was 23.4 ± 1.78 mg/g of Hb. These levels of CA-II were about 11% of those of 49-week-old female WL-chickens. Simple linear regression analysis showed significant associations between the level of CA-II and egg laying rate from 16 week-old at 63 week-old WL-chicken (p < 0.01).</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Developmental changes and sexual differences of CA-II concentration in WL-chicken erythrocytes were observed. The concentration of CA-II in the erythrocyte of WL-chicken was much higher than that in Araucana-chicken (p < 0.01).</p

Aging Predisposes Oocytes to Meiotic Nondisjunction When the Cohesin Subunit SMC1 Is Reduced

In humans, meiotic chromosome segregation errors increase dramatically as women age, but the molecular defects responsible are largely unknown. Cohesion along the arms of meiotic sister chromatids provides an evolutionarily conserved mechanism to keep recombinant chromosomes associated until anaphase I. One attractive hypothesis to explain age-dependent nondisjunction (NDJ) is that loss of cohesion over time causes recombinant homologues to dissociate prematurely and segregate randomly during the first meiotic division. Using Drosophila as a model system, we have tested this hypothesis and observe a significant increase in meiosis I NDJ in experimentally aged Drosophila oocytes when the cohesin protein SMC1 is reduced. Our finding that missegregation of recombinant homologues increases with age supports the model that chiasmata are destabilized by gradual loss of cohesion over time. Moreover, the stage at which Drosophila oocytes are most vulnerable to age-related defects is analogous to that at which human oocytes remain arrested for decades. Our data provide the first demonstration in any organism that, when meiotic cohesion begins intact, the aging process can weaken it sufficiently and cause missegregation of recombinant chromosomes. One major advantage of these studies is that we have reduced but not eliminated the SMC1 subunit. Therefore, we have been able to investigate how aging affects normal meiotic cohesion. Our findings that recombinant chromosomes are at highest risk for loss of chiasmata during diplotene argue that human oocytes are most vulnerable to age-induced loss of meiotic cohesion at the stage at which they remain arrested for several years

Multiparticle azimuthal correlations for extracting event-by-event elliptic and triangular flow in Au + Au collisions at sNN =200 GeV

We present measurements of elliptic and triangular azimuthal anisotropy of charged particles detected at forward rapidity 1&lt;|η|&lt;3 in Au + Au collisions at sNN=200 GeV, as a function of centrality. The multiparticle cumulant technique is used to obtain the elliptic flow coefficients v2{2},v2{4},v2{6}, and v2{8}, and triangular flow coefficients v3{2} and v3{4}. Using the small-variance limit, we estimate the mean and variance of the event-by-event v2 distribution from v2{2} and v2{4}. In a complementary analysis, we also use a folding procedure to study the distributions of v2 and v3 directly, extracting both the mean and variance. Implications for initial geometrical fluctuations and their translation into the final-state momentum distributions are discussed

Nonperturbative transverse-momentum-dependent effects in dihadron and direct photon-hadron angular correlations in p+p collisions at s =200 GeV

Dihadron and isolated direct photon-hadron angular correlations are measured in p+p collisions at s=200 GeV. The correlations are sensitive to nonperturbative initial-state and final-state transverse momenta kT and jT in the azimuthal nearly back-to-back region Δφ∼π. To have sensitivity to small transverse momentum scales, nonperturbative momentum widths of pout, the out-of-plane transverse-momentum component perpendicular to the trigger particle, are measured. In this region, the evolution of pout can be studied when several different hard scales are measured. These widths are used to investigate possible effects from transverse-momentum-dependent factorization breaking. When accounting for the longitudinal-momentum fraction of the away-side hadron with respect to the near-side trigger particle, the widths are found to increase with the hard scale; this is qualitatively similar to the observed behavior in Drell-Yan and semi-inclusive deep-inelastic scattering interactions, where factorization is predicted to hold. The momentum widths are also studied as a function of center-of-mass energy by comparing to previous measurements at s=510 GeV. The nonperturbative jet widths also appear to increase with s at a similar xT, which is qualitatively consistent to similar measurements in Drell-Yan interactions. Future detailed global comparisons between measurements of processes where transverse-momentum-dependent factorization is predicted to hold and be broken will provide further insight into the role of color in hadronic interactions

Nonperturbative-transverse-momentum broadening in dihadron angular correlations in sNN =200 GeV proton-nucleus collisions

The PHENIX collaboration has measured high-pT dihadron correlations in p+p, p+Al, and p+Au collisions at sNN=200 GeV. The correlations arise from inter- and intrajet correlations and thus have sensitivity to nonperturbative effects in both the initial and final states. The distributions of pout, the transverse-momentum component of the associated hadron perpendicular to the trigger hadron, are sensitive to initial- and final-state transverse momenta. These distributions are measured multidifferentially as a function of xE, the longitudinal momentum fraction of the associated hadron with respect to the trigger hadron. The near-side pout widths, sensitive to fragmentation transverse momentum, show no significant broadening between p+Au, p+Al, and p+p. The away-side nonperturbative pout widths are found to be broadened in p+Au when compared to p+p; however, there is no significant broadening in p+Al compared to p+p collisions. The data also suggest that the away-side pout broadening is a function of Ncoll, the number of binary nucleon-nucleon collisions, in the interaction. The potential implications of these results with regard to initial- and final-state transverse-momentum broadening and energy loss of partons in a nucleus, among other nuclear effects, are discussed

Measurements of μμ pairs from open heavy flavor and Drell-Yan in p+p collisions at s =200 GeV

PHENIX reports differential cross sections of μμ pairs from semileptonic heavy-flavor decays and the Drell-Yan production mechanism measured in p+p collisions at s=200 GeV at forward and backward rapidity (1.2&lt;|η|&lt;2.2). The μμ pairs from cc, bb, and Drell-Yan are separated using a template fit to unlike- and like-sign muon pair spectra in mass and pT. The azimuthal opening angle correlation between the muons from cc and bb decays and the pair-pT distributions are compared to distributions generated using pythia and powheg models, which both include next-to-leading order processes. The measured distributions for pairs from cc are consistent with pythia calculations. The cc data present narrower azimuthal correlations and softer pT distributions compared to distributions generated from powheg. The bb data are well described by both models. The extrapolated total cross section for bottom production is 3.75±0.24(stat)±0.500.35(syst)±0.45(global) [μb], which is consistent with previous measurements at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider in the same system at the same collision energy and is approximately a factor of 2 higher than the central value calculated with theoretical models. The measured Drell-Yan cross section is in good agreement with next-to-leading-order quantum-chromodynamics calculations