Patterns of structural MRI abnormalities in deficit and nondeficit schizophrenia.

Negative symptoms of schizophrenia have generally been found in association with ventricular enlargement and prefrontal abnormalities. These relationships, however, have not been observed consistently, most probably because negative symptoms are heterogeneous and result from different pathophysiological mechanisms. The concept of deficit schizophrenia (DS) was introduced by Carpenter et al to identify a clinically homogeneous subgroup of patients characterized by the presence of primary and enduring negative symptoms.

Hallucinatory disorder: preliminary data for a clinical diagnostic proposal.

Introduction: Chronic hallucinatory psychosis is a psychopathological profile reported in French literature but not included in the current Anglo-American psychiatric classifications. We compared a group of patients with a clinical picture related to this syndrome to a group of patients with schizophrenia in order to evaluate the possibility of characterising hallucinatory disorder as a diagnostic entity.

Methods: Nine patients with a clinical profile related to chronic hallucinatory psychosis were compared to a group of nine patients with schizophrenia.

Methodological evolution and clinical application of C.G. Jung's Word Association Experiment: a follow-up study.

We became interested in the clinical application of the Word Association Experiment (AE) when we decided to use Jung's theory of complexes in the psycho-diagnostic evaluation and treatment of patients applying to our Psychotherapy Out-patients Unit (Psychiatric Clinic, Milan University). In psychopathological situations, complexes with a particularly high emotional charge become autonomous and disturbing, inhibiting the ego's functions. The representations and affective states corresponding to these complexes become dominant, conditioning the expression of symptoms and the subject's relational modes.

[Crisis interventions: a psychotherapeutical challenge for psychiatric emergencies?].

Taking care of patients consulting the emergency psychiatric unit, raises nosological, legal, ethical and even logistic questions for the emergency departments. The need for emergency psychiatric interventions has grown constantly during the last twenty years and clinicians were challenged to find a new psychotherapeutic approach, more focused on the actual symptoms presented by the patients than the 'classic' psychiatric interventions. The goal of this article is to discuss the possibility of a psychotherapeutic approach in an emergency department, departing from a treatment model that has been developed at the psychiatric emergency of the University of Milan.

Patterns of clinical use of antipsychotics in hospitalized psychiatric patients.

The ways of using antipsychotic drugs have greatly changed over the last 10 years. The aim of this study was to evaluate such changes in psychiatric patients admitted to the Psychiatric Department of Milan's Ospedale Maggiore in 1989 (n=350), 1999 (n=718) and 2002 (n=628). The medical records of the hospitalized patients were evaluated by analyzing the anamnestic and clinical data with particular reference to age, gender, diagnosis and medication use.

Catechol-O-methyltransferase Val158Met polymorphism in schizophrenia: associations with cognitive and motor impairment.

Cognitive and motor deficits have been proposed as markers of abnormal neurodevelopment in schizophrenia and have been associated with genetic liability. In a multicenter study involving 106 subjects, 56 with deficit schizophrenia and 50 with nondeficit schizophrenia, we tested the hypothesis that the catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) Val(158)Met polymorphism is associated with cognitive and motor deficits either in schizophrenia as a whole or in its deficit subtype. The COMT Val(158)Met polymorphism shared 6.

COMT Val(158)Met and BDNF C(270)T polymorphisms in schizophrenia: a case-control study.

In a multicenter study involving 217 subjects of European ancestry [106 patients with schizophrenia and 111 healthy subjects], we tested the hypothesis that the catechol-O-methyl transferase (COMT) Val(158)Met and/or the brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) C(270)T gene polymorphisms are associated with schizophrenia. The COMT and BDNF genotype and their allele distribution did not differ between patients with schizophrenia and healthy comparison subjects. These results do not support the hypothesis that the COMT Val(158)Met or BDNF C(270)T gene polymorphisms are associated with liability to schizophrenia.

Long-term efficacy and therapeutic drug monitoring of sertraline in major depression.

Maintenance treatment for depression should be considered as a chronic disease management programme. Several studies have reported that sertraline (SRT) can be useful in preventing relapses and recurrent episodes of major depression.Twenty-three outpatients, 14 males and 9 females, affected by major depressive disorder, recurrent (DSM-IV criteria) were included.

Historical, psychopathological, neurological, and neuropsychological aspects of deficit schizophrenia: a multicenter study.

Objective: This multicenter study aimed to verify whether the historical and psychopathological characteristics of a large group of patients with deficit schizophrenia were consistent with those reported in previous studies. The authors also tested the hypothesis that neurological and neuropsychological indices sensitive to frontoparietal dysfunction, but not those sensitive to temporal lobe dysfunction, are more impaired in patients with deficit schizophrenia than in those with non-deficit schizophrenia.

Method: For each patient with deficit schizophrenia enrolled in the study, a matched subject with non-deficit schizophrenia was recruited.

Traditional Chinese acupuncture in tension-type headache: a controlled study.

Thirty patients with tension-type headache were randomly chosen to undergo a trial of traditional Chinese acupuncture and sham acupuncture. Five measures were used to assess symptom severity and treatment response: intensity, duration and frequency of headache pain episodes, headache index and analgesic intake. The five measures were assessed during a 4 week baseline period, after 4 and 8 weeks of treatment, and 1, 6 and 12 months thereafter.