7beta-hydroxycholesterol induces apoptosis and regulates cyclooxygenase 2 in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma.

Objective: To determine whether treatment with 7beta-hydroxycholesterol (7beta-HC) would trigger cell death in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) cell lines in a dose-dependent fashion.

Design: In vitro study.

Subjects: The study included HNSCC cell lines SCC9, SCC25, CAL27, and FaDu.

Down-regulation of Mcl-1 with antisense technology alters the effect of various cytotoxic agents used in treatment of squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck.

Antisense oligonucleotides have recently been identified as new anticancer agents. Since human head and neck cancer cells highly express the antiapoptotic protein myeloid cell leukemia-1 (Mcl-1), the aim of this study was to explore the efficacy of the Mcl-1 suppression in combination with various cytotoxic agents in the head and neck cancer cell line SCC9. After oligonucleotide transfection and/or treatment with cisplatin, 5-fluorouracil (5-FU), gemcitabine, paclitaxel or cetuximab, proliferation assays were performed to determine cell viability.

Recovery from psychotic illness: a 15- and 25-year international follow-up study.

Background: Poorly defined cohorts and weak study designs have hampered cross-cultural comparisons of course and outcome in schizophrenia.

Aims: To describe long-term outcome in 18 diverse treated incidence and prevalence cohorts. To compare mortality, 15- and 25-year illness trajectory and the predictive strength of selected baseline and short-term course variables.

[Undetected psychiatric disorders in primary health care. A need for psychotherapy].

In joint collaboration of both Institutes the Leipzig-south survey of need of psychotherapy was replicated in a representative sample (N = 1708) of patients waiting one year to be examined and/or treated in out-patient departments of general practitioners and other specialists (gynaecology, orthopaedic surgery and internal medicine) in one district of Prague City (N = 1461) and a rural district in Kromĕríz (N = 247). In a preceding pilot study (N = 207) the zero hypothesis of unspecificity of the Leipzig methodology was rejected. Roughly corresponding proportions of three classes of the need of psychotherapy (defined by means of cluster analysis) were found in the geographic areas, compared in waiting rooms of all out-patient departments except the evidently lower need of psychotherapy found in the rural GP's waiting rooms.

[An international study of the course and outcome of schizophrenia coordinated by the World Health Organization].

Psychiatry Demography Unit of Psychiatric Center Prague is one of the participating sites in the transcultural study on Long-term Course and Outcome of Schizophrenia coordinated by World Health Organization (WHO). The aim of the project is to learn more about factors predicting the long-term course and outcome and to investigate socio-cultural differences in schizophrenic patients. The present research builds upon the earlier WHO coordinated studies: International Pilot Study of Schizophrenia (IPSS) carried out in 1968-1969 in 13 centers including Czechoslovakia (N = 1202) and Study on Determinants of Outcome of Severe Mental Disorder (DOSMed) taken place between 1978-1980.