DSM-5 Attenuated Psychosis Syndrome in Adolescents Hospitalized With Non-psychotic Psychiatric Disorders.

Although attenuated psychotic symptoms often occur for the first time during adolescence, studies focusing on adolescents are scarce. Attenuated psychotic symptoms form the criteria to identify individuals at increased clinical risk of developing psychosis. The study of individuals with these symptoms has led to the release of the DSM-5 diagnosis of Attenuated Psychosis Syndrome (APS) as a condition for further research.

Demographic and Clinical Characteristics, Including Subsyndromal Symptoms Across Bipolar-Spectrum Disorders in Adolescents.

Bipolar disorder (BD) is a debilitating illness that often starts at an early age. Prevention of first and subsequent mood episodes, which are usually preceded by a period characterized by subthreshold symptoms is important. We compared demographic and clinical characteristics including severity and duration of subsyndromal symptoms across adolescents with three different bipolar-spectrum disorders.

Bipolar Prodrome Symptom Scale - Abbreviated Screen for Patients: Description and validation.

Objective: There is no standard method for assessing symptoms of the prodrome to bipolar disorder (BD), which has limited progress toward early identification and intervention. We aimed to validate the Bipolar Prodrome Symptom Scale-Abbreviated Screen for Patients (BPSS-AS-P), a brief self-report derived from the validated, clinician-rated Bipolar Prodrome Symptom Interview and Scale-Full Prospective (BPSS-FP), as a means to screen and identify people for whom further evaluation is indicated.

Method: Altogether, 134 participants (aged 12-18 years) were drawn from a study of the pre-syndromal stage of mood and psychotic disorders.

Interpersonal sensitivity and persistent attenuated psychotic symptoms in adolescence.

Interpersonal sensitivity defines feelings of inner-fragility in the presence of others due to the expectation of criticism or rejection. Interpersonal sensitivity was found to be related to attenuated positive psychotic symptom during the prodromal phase of psychosis. The aims of this study were to examine if high level of interpersonal sensitivity at baseline are associated with the persistence of attenuated positive psychotic symptoms and general psychopathology at 18-month follow-up.

Pattern of food intolerance in patients with gastro-esophageal reflux symptoms.

Background: Many food items have been involved in gastro-esophageal reflux disease pathogenesis and dietary modification has been proposed as first-line treatment. Test-based exclusion diets have shown to significantly reduce reflux symptoms. We aimed to assess the patterns of food intolerance in a series of patients with typical gastro-esophageal reflux symptoms (GERS).

Predictors of Hepatitis B Surface Antigen Titers two decades after vaccination in a cohort of students and post-graduates of the Medical School at the University of Palermo, Italy.

The introduction of a vaccine against hepatitis B virus (HBV) for newborn babies in Italy in 1991, extended to 12-year-old children for the first 12 years of application, has been a major achievement in terms of the prevention of HBV infection. The objective of this study was to analyse the long-term immunogenicity and effectiveness of HBV vaccination among healthcare students with different working seniorities. A cross-sectional observational study of undergraduate and postgraduate students attending the Medical School of the University of Palermo was conducted from January 2014 - July 2016.

Interpersonal sensitivity, bullying victimization and paranoid ideation among help-seeking adolescents and young adults.

Aim: The effects of a negative interpersonal experience, such as bullying victimization in childhood and adolescence, can be strong and long lasting. Bullying victimization is associated with paranoid ideation and suspiciousness. Few studies have focused on personality traits of victims of bullying.

Impairment in Social Functioning differentiates youth meeting Ultra-High Risk for psychosis criteria from other mental health help-seekers: A validation of the Italian version of the Global Functioning: Social and Global Functioning: Role scales.

Social and occupational impairments are present in the schizophrenia prodrome, and poor social functioning predicts transition to psychosis in Ultra-High Risk (UHR) individuals. We aimed to: 1) validate the Italian version of the Global Functioning: Social (GF: S) and Global Functioning: Role (GF: S) scales; 2) evaluate their association with UHR criteria. Participants were 12-21-years-old (age, mean=15.

Youth mental health services in Italy: An achievable dream?

Aim: "Liberiamo il futuro" (LIF) project was designed to assess psychological problems of adolescents and young adults and to identify individuals at high-risk for developing a psychosis through a collaboration between a University team, Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services and Adult Mental Health Services. This paper presents the baseline demographic and clinical characteristics of the cohort, particularly the nature and severity of psychopathology.

Method: All help-seeking young people aged 12-35 years residing in the health district involved in LIF were invited to participate in the study and completed a battery of self- report and interviewer-administered measures of psychopathology and functioning at baseline.

Attenuated psychotic and basic symptom characteristics in adolescents with ultra-high risk criteria for psychosis, other non-psychotic psychiatric disorders and early-onset psychosis.

While attenuated psychotic symptoms (APS) and basic symptoms (BS) are the main current predictors of psychosis in adults, studies in adolescents are scarce. Thus, we (1) described the prevalence and severity of positive, negative, disorganization, general, and basic symptoms in adolescent patients at ultra-high risk for psychosis (UHR), with other non-psychotic psychiatric disorders (PC) and with early-onset psychosis (EOP); and (2) investigated BS criteria in relation to UHR criteria. Sixty-nine 12-18-year-old adolescents (15.

Self-Disorders and Clinical High Risk for Psychosis: An Empirical Study in Help-Seeking Youth Attending Community Mental Health Facilities.

Anomalous subjective experiences involving an alteration of the basic sense of self (ie, Self-disorder [SD]) are emerging as a core marker of schizophrenia spectrum disorders with potential impact on current early detection strategies as well. In this study, we wished to field-test the prevalence of SD in a clinical sample of adolescent/young adult help-seekers at putative risk for psychosis attending standard community mental health facilities in Italy. Participants (n = 47), aged between 14 and 25, underwent extensive psychopathological evaluations with current semi-structured tools to assess Clinical High Risk (CHR) state (ie, Structured Interview for Prodromal Syndromes/Scale of Prodromal Symptoms [SIPS/SOPS], Schizophrenia Proneness Instrument-Adult/Child and Youth [SPI-A/CY]).

Twelve-month psychosis-predictive value of the ultra-high risk criteria in children and adolescents.

Objective: The validity of current ultra-high risk (UHR) criteria is under-examined in help-seeking minors, particularly, in children below the age of 12 years. Thus, the present study investigated predictors of one-year outcome in children and adolescents (CAD) with UHR status.

Method: Thirty-five children and adolescents (age 9-17 years) meeting UHR criteria according to the Structured Interview for Psychosis-Risk Syndromes were followed-up for 12 months.

[Cross-sectional study of the variability of work-related stress among post-graduate medical residents at the main University Polyclinic of Sicily].

Background: Among health care workers (HCWs), work-related stress is one of the main topics in risk assessment and prevention at the workplace. Post-graduate medical residents (MRs) are a group of HCWs comparable to medical doctors in terms of occupational exposure and occurrence of work-related stress syndromes.

Objectives: Risk assessment of work-related stress among MRs attending the major University Hospital of Sicily.

Test-based exclusion diets in gastro-esophageal reflux disease patients: a randomized controlled pilot trial.

Aim: To investigate the clinical response of gastro-esophageal reflux disease (GERD) symptoms to exclusion diets based on food intolerance tests.

Methods: A double blind, randomized, controlled pilot trial was performed in 38 GERD patients partially or completely non-responders to proton pump inhibitors (PPI) treatment. Fasting blood samples from each patients were obtained; leukocytotoxic test was performed by incubating the blood with a panel of 60 food items to be tested.

CD8+ T cells expressing IL-10 are associated with a favourable prognosis in lung cancer.

The dual role of tumour-infiltrating macrophages and lymphocytes on nonsmall cell lung cancer (NSCLC) progression and prognosis may be due to the differential activity of their phenotypes. To investigate the impact of inflammatory cells on NSCLC, we first quantified the number of macrophages (CD68+) and lymphocytes (CD8+ and CD4+) and the percentage of CD8+ cells expressing IL-10 (CD8+/IL-10+) in tumour stroma and epithelium. Then, we evaluated the possible relationships between the numbers of these cells and the clinicopathological features and the overall survival of patients.

[Organization of work, hardship at work, mobbing: new problem areas that must be considered by the competent doctor in formulating fitness evaluation].

In recent years, in addition to the more common occupational-health risks (chemical, physical, biological), increasing importance is given to psychological and psychosomatic illness as a result of malfunction in the organization of work: burn-out, mobbing, maladjustment at work. In order to be able to evaluate the influence of such phenomenon whilst judging fitness in some working realities in Sicily, 18 small, medium and large dimension companies with a total of 1413 employees were examined. The typology of the work embraced the industrial, health, information-technology, construction and telephony sectors.

[Work related diseases: assistance to delivery among obstetricians].

In the course of Sanitary Surveillance, a high incidence of pathologies of the superior limbs was encountered in a homogeneous group of midwives operating in the AOUP of Palermo. These findings induced the authors' starting a retrospective study aimed at understanding the possibility of correlation between work effected and damage to people, and geared at being able to frame the findings in the ambit of the related to occupational pathologies. It is a fact that the positions taken by midwives in the course of gynecological vaginal delivery, or those necessary to the maneuvers during childbirth, such as the lateral or the simple and/or exaggerated MacRoberts maneuver, require substantial overcharging of the spinal column and a significant engagement of the muscles of the upper limbs.

[Upper limb mechanical overcharge among health care workers].

In medical circle, the disclosure of recurrent symptomatologies on the upper limbs begins to assume characteristics common to many working classes, raising not few problematic issues regarding the interactions between them and the working environment. In the AOUP of Palermo, some working categories were identified, whose activity implicates the upper limbs for instrument use, as well as repetitious movements (odontologists, ultrasonographers, endoscope technicians). The analysis covered a group of endoscopy technicians, both of the medical area and of the surgical one, the first being middle aged and with working seniority significantly higher than the latter.

[Occupational exposure and chronic heart failure severity].

Chronic heart failure (CHF) is characterized by the inability of the heart to supply the body with sufficient amount of blood for metabolic and circulatory needs. The main risk factors for CHF development are: hypertension, type 2 diabetes, obesity, smoking, chronic kidney diseases. Many occupational exposures, such as extremes of heat or cold temperatures, prolonged exposure to noise, vibrations, pesticides, can contribute to etiology of this disease.

[The risk management in health personnel tuberculosis].

Within work environment and even more among health service areas, to deepen the monitoring efforts and awareness of the workers in order to accomplish a more effective and fast response against morbidity indexes and prevalence of tbc, constitute the necessary prerequisite for any subsequent action of prevention and control. On the other hand, one of the employer's obligations toward a health facility is to identify professionally exposed subjects (Legislative Decree 626/94 art.78), and perform risk assessment.

Decreased heme-oxygenase (HO)-1 in the macrophages of non-small cell lung cancer.

Reactive oxygen species (ROS) are important in the initiation and promotion of cells to neoplastic growth. Heme-oxygenase (HO)-1, the inducible form of heme-oxygenase, is a cytoprotective enzyme that plays a central role in the defence against oxidative stress and is implicated in the protection of lung tissue against exogenous oxidant exposure. We investigated whether the expression of HO-1 would be decreased in lung tumour as compared with tumour-free adjacent lung tissues.

Macrophage expression of interleukin-10 is a prognostic factor in nonsmall cell lung cancer.

Interleukin (IL)-10 is expressed in many solid tumours and plays an ambiguous role in controlling cancer growth and metastasis. In order to determine whether IL-10 is involved in tumour progression and prognosis in nonsmall cell lung cancer (NSCLC), IL-10 expression in tumour cells and tumour-associated macrophages (TAMs) and its associations, if any, with clinicopathological features were investigated. Paraffin-embedded sections of surgical specimens obtained from 50 patients who had undergone surgery for NSCLC were immunostained with an antibody directed against IL-10.

CC ligand 2 levels are increased in LPS-stimulated peripheral monocytes of patients with non-small cell lung cancer.

Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) shows a particular aggressive behaviour. Tumour associated macrophages (TAMs) play an important role in tumour growth and progression and CC ligand 2 (CCL2)/CCR2 axis is markedly involved in their recruitment in the tumour mass from the circulation. The aim of this study was to determine the plasma levels of CCL2 and the expression of CCR2 in the peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) of 18 smokers with NSCLC, eight healthy smokers and nine non-smokers.