Mediation and moderation of psychological pain treatments: response expectancies and hypnotic suggestibility.

The mediator role of response expectancies and the moderator role of hypnotic suggestibility were evaluated in the analogue treatment of pain. Approximately 1,000 participants were assessed for hypnotic suggestibility. Later, as part of a seemingly unrelated experiment, 188 of these individuals were randomly assigned to distraction, cognitive-behavioral package, hypnotic cognitive-behavioral package, hypnotic analgesia suggestion, placebo control, or no-treatment control conditions.

[Hepato-splenic and peritoneal tuberculosis. A difficult diagnosis].

Peritoneal tuberculosis is a rare extra-pulmonary location of Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection arising in the gastrointestinal tract mostly as a complication of the pulmonary location or seldom as a primary involvement. The authors report the case of a 18-year old girl admitted in 1996 to the Infectious Diseases Department of the Umberto I Hospital, "La Sapienza" State University of Rome for the persistence of fever and dry cough, despite a protracted antibiotic treatment performed in previous hospital admissions for a suspicious diagnosis of a "broncho-pneumonia". As the fever didn't decrease and a pain at the right ilium arose, an anti-tuberculous chemotherapeutic treatment was performed (isoniazid and rifampicin), that improved the state of the patient.