Clerkship students' use of a video library for training the mental status examination.

Fewer patient encounters and diminished bedside teaching pose a challenge to medical students' opportunity to learn during clinical clerkships in psychiatry. Videos can be used for close examination of signs and symptoms and to increase engagement and recall. A video library holding recordings of psychiatric patients with mental status examinations were prepared.

Variability between psychiatrists on domains of the mental status examination.

The Mental Status Examination (MSE) is a core element of the psychiatric assessment. To investigate the current level of psychopathological knowledge, the reliability of the MSE can be used as a proxy as it is based on descriptive psychopathology. Three psychiatrists wrote their MSE based on 27 video recordings.

E-Library of Authentic Patient Videos Improves Medical Students' Mental Status Examination.

Objective: During psychiatric rotation, clerkship students must learn the clinical skill of recording an accurate Mental Status Examination (MSE). The authors built a video e-library consisting of 23 authentic patient videos that were accessible on a secure website during the rotation period, aimed at assisting students' acquisition of MSE skills.

Methods: The authors conducted a prospective case comparison study investigating the impact of the video e-library as "add-on" intervention, on acquisition of MSE skills, as measured by a test consisting of three videos with adjoining forced choice questionnaires.

Decreased gene expression of neuropeptide Y and its receptors in hippocampal regions during ethanol withdrawal in rats.

Ethanol withdrawal is associated with neuronal hyperexcitability and increased hippocampal glutamate release. Neuropeptide Y (NPY) appears to play an important role in regulation of hippocampal neuronal excitability by inhibiting glutamate release. Expression of NPY and its receptors Y1, Y2, and Y5 was studied in hippocampal areas of rats during ethanol withdrawal after repeated intragastric ethanol administration for 2 or 4 days using in situ hybridization.

Pre- and postgraduate education in international health--secondary publication.

The aim of this article is to provide information about possibilities for medical students and doctors to obtain knowledge about international health. Increasing globalisation requires knowledge about international health in such a way that Danish doctors are able to diagnose and treat patients, regardless of the patient's nationality and ethnic background. Denmark has a global responsibility towards low and middle income countries to increase the standard of health.

Basal ganglia volumes in drug-naive first-episode schizophrenia patients before and after short-term treatment with either a typical or an atypical antipsychotic drug.

The present study examined basal ganglia volumes in drug-naive first-episode schizophrenic patients before and after treatment with either a specific typical or atypical antipsychotic compound. Sixteen antipsychotic drug-naive and three minimally medicated first-episode schizophrenic patients and 19 matched controls participated. Patients were randomly assigned to treatment with either low doses of the typical antipsychotic drug, zuclopenthixol, or the atypical compound, risperidone.

Delayed early proprioceptive information processing in schizophrenia.

It was first suggested that disordered proprioception was a core feature of schizophrenia by Sandor Rado in 1953. Using a recently designed proprioceptive event-related potential paradigm based on a change of load, we studied 12 unmedicated male out-patients with schizophrenia and 24 controls. In the patients, the early contralateral parietal activity was delayed and later central activity had increased amplitude, but gating was unaffected.

The prefrontal cortex in the Göttingen minipig brain defined by neural projection criteria and cytoarchitecture.

In an attempt to delineate the prefrontal cortex (PFC) in the Göttingen minipig brain the distribution of reciprocal thalamocortical projections was investigated using anterograde and retrograde tracing techniques and evaluated in relation to the specific cytoarchitectonic organization. Tracers were visualized using standard immunohistochemistry or evaluated in vivo using manganese (Mn2+) as an MRI paramagnetic tracer. The in vivo tract tracing turned out to be very sensitive with a high correspondence to the histological labelling.

Structural brain abnormalities in early onset first-episode psychosis.

Background: Brain morphometry in children and adolescents with first-episode psychosis offer a unique opportunity for pathogenetic investigations.

Methods: We compared high-resolution 3D T1-weighted magnetic resonance images of the brain in 29 patients (schizophrenia, schizotypal disorder, delusional disorder or other non-organic psychosis), aged 10-18 to those of 29 matched controls, using optimized voxel-based morphometry.

Results: Psychotic patients had frontal white matter abnormalities, but expected (regional) gray matter reductions were not observed.

[Undergraduate and postgraduate education in international health].

The aim of this article is to provide information about possibilities for medical students and doctors to obtain knowledge about international health. Increasing globalisation requires knowledge about international health in such way that Danish doctors are able to diagnose and treat patients, regardless of the patient's nationality and ethnic background. Denmark has a global responsibility towards low and middle income countries to increase the standard of health.

The postnatal development of cerebellar Purkinje cells in the Göttingen minipig estimated with a new stereological sampling technique--the vertical bar fractionator.

The postnatal development of total number and perikaryon volume of cerebellar Purkinje cells was estimated in the Göttingen minipig cerebellar cortex using a new stereological approach, the vertical bar fractionator. Data were obtained from the brains of five neonate and five adult female Göttingen minipigs. The total number of Purkinje cells ranged from 1.

Cognitive deficits and levels of IQ in adolescent onset schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders.

Cognitive deficits have been found to be prevalent in early onset schizophrenia. Whether these deficits also characterise other early onset psychotic disorders to a similar degree is unclear, as very few comparative studies have been done. The primary purpose of this study was to compare the profile and severity of cognitive impairments in first-episode early onset psychotic patients who received the schizophrenia diagnosis to those diagnosed with other non-organic, non-affective psychotic disorders.

Schizoaffective disorder-- the reliability of its clinical diagnostic use.

Objective: Patients with psychoses often suffer from affective symptoms. The originally broad concept of schizoaffective disorder (SAD) has been significantly narrowed, transformed into a convoluted set of criteria both in the ICD-10 and DSM-IV. We examined the reliability of the clinical use of this diagnosis in university settings.

Frontal dopamine D(2/3) receptor binding in drug-naive first-episode schizophrenic patients correlates with positive psychotic symptoms and gender.

Background: The aim of the study was to examine extrastriatal dopamine D(2/3) receptor binding and psychopathology in schizophrenic patients, and to relate binding potential (BP) values to psychopathology.

Methods: Twenty-five drug-naive schizophrenic patients and 20 healthy controls were examined with single-photon emission computerized tomography (SPECT) using the D(2/3)-receptor ligand [123I]epidepride.

Results: In the hitherto largest study on extrastriatal D(2/3) receptors we detected a significant correlation between frontal D(2/3) BP values and positive schizophrenic symptoms in the larger group of male schizophrenic patients, higher frontal BP values in male (n = 17) compared to female (n = 8) patients, and - in accordance with this - significantly fewer positive schizophrenic symptoms in the female patients.

The postnatal development of neocortical neurons and glial cells in the Göttingen minipig and the domestic pig brain.

The first mathematically unbiased estimates of neocortical cell numbers are presented from the developing pig brain, including a full description of tissue processing and optimal sampling for application of the stereological optical fractionator method in this species. The postnatal development of neocortical neurons and glial cells from the experimental Göttingen minipig was compared with the postnatal development of neocortical neurons in the domestic pig. A significant postnatal development was observed in the Göttingen minipig brain for both neuronal (28%; P=0.

Association between the CCR5 32-bp deletion allele and late onset of schizophrenia.

Objective: The 32-bp deletion allele in chemokine receptor CCR5 has been associated with several immune-mediated diseases and might be implicated in schizophrenia as well.

Method: The authors genotyped DNA samples from 268 schizophrenia patients and 323 healthy subjects. Age at first admission to a psychiatric hospital department served as a measure of disease onset.

No significant association of the 5' end of neuregulin 1 and schizophrenia in a large Danish sample.

Neuregulin 1 has been implicated as a susceptibility gene in schizophrenia. Several research groups have reported association with the 5' end of the gene although no causative variant has been reported. We have investigated whether there is association with the 5' end of the gene in Danish schizophrenia patients.

Apolipoprotein D is associated with long-term outcome in patients with schizophrenia.

Accumulating evidence implicates deficiencies in apolipoprotein D (ApoD) function and arachidonic acid signaling in schizophrenic disorders. We addressed two hypotheses in relation to ApoD: first, polymorphisms in the ApoD gene confer susceptibility to or are markers of disease, and, second, genetic variation in the ApoD is associated with long-term clinical outcome to antipsychotic treatment. We genotyped two single-nucleotide polymorphisms in the ApoD gene in 343 chronic patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders (ICD-10) and 346 control subjects of Danish origin.

Integrated treatment of first-episode psychosis: effect of treatment on family burden: OPUS trial.

Background: The families of patients with first-episode psychosis often play a major role in care and often experience lack of support.

Aims: To determine the effect of integrated treatment v. standard treatment on subjective burden of illness, expressed emotion (EE), knowledge of illness and satisfaction with treatment in key relatives of patients with a first episode of schizophrenia-spectrum disorder.

Behavioral response to novelty correlates with dopamine receptor availability in striatum of Göttingen minipigs.

Behavioral response to novelty in rats has been linked both to dopamine transmission in the ventral striatum, and to propensity to self-administer psychostimulant drugs. In order to probe the relationship between behavioral response to novelty and dopamine systems we have developed a behavioral model for correlation with positron emission tomography (PET) of dopamine transmission in brain of Göttingen minipigs. In the present study, we measured exploration of a novel object by recording the number of contacts, and duration of contact with a novel object, in groups of six male and six female adult minipigs.

Assessment of in vivo MR imaging compared to physical sections in vitro--a quantitative study of brain volumes using stereology.

The object of the present study was to compare stereological estimates of brain volumes obtained in vivo by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to corresponding volumes from physical sections in vitro. Brains of ten domestic pigs were imaged using a 3-T scanner. The volumes of different brain compartments were obtained from MR images by two observers and from physical sections using the Cavalieri estimator in combination with point counting.