Adult smokers' perception of the role of religion and religious leadership on smoking and association with quitting: a comparison between Thai Buddhists and Malaysian Muslims.

In recent years, attempts have been made to incorporate religion into tobacco control efforts, especially in countries like Malaysia and Thailand where religion is central to the lives of people. This paper is a prospective examination of the perceived relevance and role of religion and religious authorities in influencing smoking behaviour among Muslims in Malaysia and Buddhists in Thailand. Data were collected from 1482 Muslim Malaysian and 1971 Buddhist Thai adult smokers who completed wave 1 (early 2005) of the International Tobacco Control Southeast Asia Survey (ITC-SEA).

Bax-induced apoptosis in Leber's congenital amaurosis: a dual role in rod and cone degeneration.

Pathogenesis in the Rpe65(-/-) mouse model of Leber's congenital amaurosis (LCA) is characterized by a slow and progressive degeneration of the rod photoreceptors. On the opposite, cones degenerate rapidly at early ages. Retinal degeneration in Rpe65(-/-) mice, showing a null mutation in the gene encoding the retinal pigment epithelium 65-kDa protein (Rpe65), was previously reported to depend on continuous activation of a residual transduction cascade by unliganded opsin.

Neuroticism and psychopathy predict brain activation during moral and nonmoral emotion regulation.

Functional neuroimaging has identified brain regions associated with voluntary regulation of emotion, including the prefrontal cortex and amygdala. The neural mechanisms underlying individual differences in emotion regulation have not been extensively studied. We investigated the neural correlates of neuroticism and psychopathic personality traits in the context of an emotion regulation task.

Low-dose intrathecal naloxone to enhance intrathecal morphine analgesia: a case report.

Ultra low doses of opioid antagonists such as naloxone block excitatory opioid receptor pathways may paradoxically enhance morphine analgesia. This case study reports safety and efficacy of ultra low-dose intrathecal (IT) naloxone added to IT morphine for the treatment of severe refractory chronic low back pain. A 56-year-old man with a history of severe chronic low back pain (post-laminectomy syndrome) was evaluated.

Category and perceptual interference in second-language phoneme learning: an examination of English /w/-/v/ learning by Sinhala, German, and Dutch speakers.

The present study investigated the perception and production of English /w/ and /v/ by native speakers of Sinhala, German, and Dutch, with the aim of examining how their native language phonetic processing affected the acquisition of these phonemes. Subjects performed a battery of tests that assessed their identification accuracy for natural recordings, their degree of spoken accent, their relative use of place and manner cues, the assimilation of these phonemes into native-language categories, and their perceptual maps (i.e.

Systems pathology approach for the prediction of prostate cancer progression after radical prostatectomy.

Purpose: For patients with prostate cancer treated by radical prostatectomy, no current personalized tools predict clinical failure (CF; metastasis and/or androgen-independent disease). We developed such a tool through integration of clinicopathologic data with image analysis and quantitative immunofluorescence of prostate cancer tissue.

Patients And Methods: A prospectively designed algorithm was applied retrospectively to a cohort of 758 patients with clinically localized or locally advanced prostate cancer.

fMRI evidence for word association and situated simulation in conceptual processing.

The LASS theory proposes that Language and Situated Simulation both play central roles in conceptual processing. Depending on stimuli and task conditions, different mixtures of language and simulation occur. When a word is processed in a conceptual task, it first activates other linguistic forms, such as word associates.

Tobacco control in developing countries: Tanzania, Nepal, China, and Thailand as examples.

This paper illustrates case studies of four developing countries and compares them as to relative advancement in tobacco control as prescribed by the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. Tobacco-control efforts first seem to involve assessment of tobacco use prevalence and passage of tobacco-control legislation (e.g.

Oral naltrexone to enhance analgesia in patients receiving continuous intrathecal morphine for chronic pain: a randomized, double-blind, prospective pilot study.

Background: Years' worth of observations suggest that morphine has both inhibitory and excitatory actions, and that selective blockade of excitatory effects by low doses of opioid antagonists (e.g., naltrexone) may paradoxically enhance morphine analgesia.

The relation of cortisol levels with hippocampus volumes under baseline and challenge conditions.

Several studies using animal models have revealed an inverse relation between gluco-corticoid levels and hippocampus volumes. This inverse relation has been interpreted as reflecting the role of the hippocampus in modulating glucocorticoid secretion, as well as the effect of glucocorticoids on the hippocampus. The objective of this study was to examine the relation between hippocampus volumes and baseline and post-challenge salivary cortisol levels in healthy young adults.

Preoperative high-dose steroid administration attenuates the surgical stress response following liver resection: results of a prospective randomized study.

Background/purpose: Major abdominal surgery such as liver resection is associated with an excessive hyperinflammatory response and transient immunosuppression. We investigated the immunomodulating effect of preoperative pulse administration of high-dose methylprednisolone in patients undergoing hepatic resection without pedicle clamping.

Methods: Twenty patients who underwent hepatic resection were randomized into two groups: a steroid group (n = 10), in which patients were given 30 mg/kg per body weight (BW) methylprednisolone intravenously, and a control group (n = 10), in which patients received a placebo (sodium chloride) infusion.

Improved prediction of prostate cancer recurrence through systems pathology.

We have developed an integrated, multidisciplinary methodology, termed systems pathology, to generate highly accurate predictive tools for complex diseases, using prostate cancer for the prototype. To predict the recurrence of prostate cancer following radical prostatectomy, defined by rising serum prostate-specific antigen (PSA), we used machine learning to develop a model based on clinicopathologic variables, histologic tumor characteristics, and cell type-specific quantification of biomarkers. The initial study was based on a cohort of 323 patients and identified that high levels of the androgen receptor, as detected by immunohistochemistry, were associated with a reduced time to PSA recurrence.

Neural correlates of positive and negative emotion regulation.

The ability to cope adaptively with emotional events by volitionally altering one's emotional reactions is important for psychological and physical health as well as social interaction. Cognitive regulation of emotional responses to aversive events engages prefrontal regions that modulate activity in emotion-processing regions such as the amygdala. However, the neural correlates of the regulation of positive emotions remain largely unexplored.

Ultra-low-dose opioid antagonists to enhance opioid analgesia.

This article will review decades of science contributing to current interest in opioid excitatory pharmacology. A long history of clinical confusion provided the stimulus for recent, detailed in vivo and in vitro investigations of the neuropharmacologic mechanisms involved in analgesic and hyperalgesic actions of opioid agonists and antagonists. Following the discovery of central nervous system opioid excitatory-hyperalgesic processes in animals, detailed neuronal cell culture experiments established opioid receptor/Gprotein/adenylate cyclase neurobiochemical mechanisms for bimodal inhibitory versus excitatory actions of opioids.

Integrated health promotion strategies: a contribution to tackling current and future health challenges.

This paper was presented as a technical background paper at the WHO sixth Global Conference on Health Promotion in Bangkok Thailand, August 2005. It describes what we know about the effectiveness of four of the Ottawa Charter health promotion strategies from eight reviews that have been conducted since 1999. The six lessons are that (i) the investment in building healthy public policy is a key strategy; (ii) supportive environments need to be created at the individual, social and structural levels; (iii) the effectiveness of strengthening community action is unclear and more research and evidence is required; (iv) personal skills development must be combined with other strategies to be effective; (v) interventions employing multiple strategies and actions at multiple levels are most effective; (vi) certain actions are central to effectiveness, such as intersectoral action and interorganizational partnerships at all levels, community engagement and participation in planning and decision-making, creating healthy settings (particularly focusing on schools, communities, workplaces and municipalities), political commitment, funding and infrastructure and awareness of the socio-environmental context.

Neural bases of motivated reasoning: an FMRI study of emotional constraints on partisan political judgment in the 2004 U.S. Presidential election.

Research on political judgment and decision-making has converged with decades of research in clinical and social psychology suggesting the ubiquity of emotion-biased motivated reasoning. Motivated reasoning is a form of implicit emotion regulation in which the brain converges on judgments that minimize negative and maximize positive affect states associated with threat to or attainment of motives. To what extent motivated reasoning engages neural circuits involved in "cold" reasoning and conscious emotion regulation (e.

Combined central retinal artery and vein occlusion in Churg-Strauss syndrome: case report.

Purpose: To describe a rare case of Churg-Strauss syndrome presenting with severe visual loss due to a combined central retinal vein and artery occlusion.

Methods: A 42-year old man with a medical history of asthma and blood hypereosinophilia developed a sudden loss of vision in his right eye. We describe the clinical features and evolution of the case after treatment.

A645G (Lys216Glu) polymorphism of the bactericidal/permeability-increasing protein gene in periodontal disease.

Bactericidal/permeability-increasing protein (BPI) is a member of the pattern recognition receptors of the innate immune system and recognizes lipopolysaccharides (LPS), a bacterial component belonging to the pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs). BPI mediates the neutralization of LPS and increases the phagocytosis and cytotoxicity against bacteria. Recently, the functionally effective polymorphism A645G resulting in the amino acid alteration Lys216Glu has been described.

Cortisol responses of healthy volunteers undergoing magnetic resonance imaging.

Self-reported anxiety is associated with various medical procedures, including structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The present study tested the hypothesis that MRI scanning would be associated with elevated cortisol levels in participants with no prior scanning experience. Baseline and post-scan cortisol levels, as well as measures of state and trait anxiety, were obtained from scanner-naive (n = 6) and scanner-experienced (n = 8) research participants.

Neural correlates of regulating negative emotions related to moral violations.

Previous neuroimaging studies have identified several brain regions associated with regulating emotional responses. Different kinds of emotional stimuli, however, may recruit different regulatory processes and, in turn, recruit different regions. We compared emotion regulation for two types of negative emotional stimuli: those involving moral violations (moral stimuli), and those not involving moral violations (non-moral stimuli).

Sex differences in the responses of the human amygdala.

The amygdala is a structure in the temporal lobe that has long been known to play a key role in emotional responses and emotional memory in both humans and nonhuman animals. Growing evidence from recent neuroimaging studies points to a new, expanded role for the amygdala as a critical structure that mediates sex differences in emotional memory and sexual responses. This review highlights current findings from studies of sex differences in human amygdala response during emotion-related activities, such as formation of emotional memories and sexual behavior, and considers how these findings contribute to the understanding of behavioral differences between men and women.