Posttraumatic stress disorder increases sensitivity to long term losses among patients with major depressive disorder.

Background: Decisions under risk and with outcomes that are delayed in time are ubiquitous in real life and can have a significant impact on the health and wealth of the decision-maker. Despite its potential relevance for real-world choices, the degree of aberrant risky and intertemporal decision-making in patients suffering from major depressive disorder (MDD) and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has received little attention to date.

Method: We used a case-control design to compare decision-making in healthy control subjects (N=16) versus untreated depressed subjects in a current major depressive episode (N=20).

Leishmania infection inhibits cycloheximide-induced macrophage apoptosis in a strain-dependent manner.

Activation of apoptosis is one of the most ancient mechanisms to eliminate intracellular infections; the capacity to subvert this programed cell death provides an adaptive advantage to pathogens that persist in an intracellular environment. Leishmania species are obligate intracellular parasites that primarily reside within host macrophages. We demonstrate here that Leishmania infection protects macrophages from cycloheximide-induced apoptosis in a species and strain specific manner.