Combination of behaviour therapy with fluvoxamine in comparison with behaviour therapy and placebo. Results of a multicentre study.

Background: We investigated whether the combination of multi-modal behaviour therapy (BT) with fluvoxamine is superior to BT and placebo in the acute treatment of severely ill in-patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).

Method: In a randomised, double-blind design, 30 patients were treated for nine weeks with BT plus placebo and 30 patients with BT plus fluvoxamine (maximum dosage 300 mg, mean dose 288.1 mg).

Discrimination of Alzheimer's disease and normal aging by EEG data.

Quantitative EEG results in Alzheimer's disease may be summarized by the term 'slowing', i.e. slow frequencies (delta, theta) are increased and fast frequencies (alpha, beta) are decreased.

[Alzheimer dementia and normal aging. Clinical, neuroradiologic, neurophysiologic and molecular biology follow-up data].

A total of 30 patients with clinically diagnosed Alzheimer's disease and 55 healthy, age-approximated controls were followed up over a 2-year period to compare the course of functional and cognitive impairment, quantitative morphological and functional brain changes. No remarkable changes were observed within the control group in any of these modalities. There were significant differences between patients and controls at the first examination: Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), 16.

[Self and informant perception of clinical manifestations of Alzheimer dementia: results of a structured interview (CAMDEX)].

The correlations between (a) the patients' memory complaints, (b) the informants' rating of the patients' cognitive impairment, and (c) cognitive performance according to the Cambridge Examination for Mental Disorders of the Elderly (CAMDEX) were examined in 163 patients with probable or possible Alzheimer's disease. The patients' complaints were weakly correlated with informants' view (p < 0.05), closely correlated with depressive mood (p < 0.

Longitudinal cognitive, electroencephalographic and morphological brain changes in ageing and Alzheimer's disease.

Background: The natural course of cognitive performance, electrophysiological alterations and brain atrophy in ageing and Alzheimer's disease (AD) has been investigated in numerous studies, but only few attempts have been made to examine the relationship between clinical, electroencephalographic (EEG) and morphological changes with quantitative methods prospectively over longer periods of time.

Method: Fifty-five patients with clinically diagnosed AD and 66 healthy elderly controls were examined biannually using a cognitive test (CAMCOG), EEG band power and volumetric estimates of brain atrophy.

Results: On average cognitive performance deteriorated by 28 points on the CAMCOG in the AD group, the alpha/theta ratio decreased by 0.