Does cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia improve cognitive performance? A systematic review and narrative synthesis.

Individuals with insomnia report difficulties pertaining to their cognitive functioning. Cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) is associated with robust, long-term improvements in sleep parameters, however less is known about the impact of CBT-I on the daytime correlates of the disorder. A systematic review and narrative synthesis was conducted in order to summarise and evaluate the evidence regarding the impact of CBT-I on cognitive functioning.

Predictors of Nightly Subjective-Objective Sleep Discrepancy in Poor Sleepers over a Seven-Day Period.

This study sought to examine predictors of subjective/objective sleep discrepancy in poor sleepers. Forty-two individuals with insomnia symptoms (mean age = 36.2 years, 81% female) were recruited to take part in a prospective study which combined seven days of actigraphy with daily assessment of sleep perceptions, self-reported arousal, sleep effort, and mood upon awakening.

Integrating an Academic Electronic Health Record: Challenges and Success Strategies.

Technology is increasing the complexity in the role of today's nurse. Healthcare organizations are integrating more health information technologies and relying on the electronic health record for data collection, communication, and decision making. Nursing faculty need to prepare graduates for this environment and incorporate an academic electronic health record into a nursing curriculum to meet student-program outcomes.

Cancer Nursing Research Output in Africa 2005 to 2014: An Integrative Review.

Background: This study is the first review of African cancer nursing research as only 1 review focusing on South Africa was conducted in the past decade.

Objective: The aim of this study was to identify, summarize, and synthesize the findings from previous independent studies conducted by nurses in Africa.

Methods: The terms cancer nursing and oncology nursing and Africa were used to search PubMed, CINAHL, Web of Science, SA e-publications, and Scopus.

[Cutaneous granulomatous reactions at botulinum neurotoxin A injection sites: First manifestation of systemic sarcoidosis].

Case Report: We report a case of granulomatous skin reaction after injection of an unknown botulinum neurotoxin (BoNT) A preparation. Four years after occurrence of skin lesions, systemic sarcoidosis became manifest.

Conclusion: In addition to injection trauma, the BoNT A preparation may have acted as an immunogenic stimulus leading to cutaneous manifestation of sarcoidosis.

Wikipedia--challenges and new horizons in enhancing medical education.

Background: Wikipedia gains growing attention as a provider of health information. This study aimed to investigate the use, relevance and challenges of Wikipedia among medical students.

Methods: An online questionnaire was made accessible to students at five medical universities in Germany, Austria, and Norway.

[Psoriasis-associated keratitis: case report].

Psoriasis is a common skin disease, which is associated with multiple extracutaneous manifestations. This article presents a case report of a rare ocular manifestation of psoriasis; psoriasis-associated keratitis. In a 37-year-old man we could show that systemic immunomodulatory therapy led to a rapid improvement of the ocular symptoms.

Depression in small-vessel disease relates to white matter ultrastructural damage, not disability.

Objective: To determine whether cerebral small-vessel disease (SVD) is a specific risk factor for depression, whether any association is mediated via white matter damage, and to study the role of depressive symptoms and disability on quality of life (QoL) in this patient group.

Methods: Using path analyses in cross-sectional data, we modeled the relationships among depression, disability, and QoL in patients with SVD presenting with radiologically confirmed lacunar stroke (n = 100), and replicated results in a second SVD cohort (n = 100). We then compared the same model in a non-SVD stroke cohort (n = 50) and healthy older adults (n = 203).

Memory processes in the development of reduced-salt foods.

Acceptance of a reduced-salt food is likely to be influenced by a mismatch between the sensory characteristics of a reformulated product and a memory for a previously-encountered formulation. In two initial pilot studies we established the reliability of a new measure of memory for saltiness, based on a method of constant stimuli. We then used this technique to explore the effects of different patterns of repeated exposure on memory for the taste of a reduced-salt soup.

Verbal fluency in cerebral small vessel disease and Alzheimer's disease.

Patterns of verbal fluency deficits have been explored across different neurodegenerative disorders. This study sought to investigate the specific pattern of verbal fluency performance in cerebral small vessel disease (SVD), which is the most common cause of vascular cognitive impairment, and compare this with Alzheimer's disease (AD). Participants with SVD (n = 45), AD (n = 24) and healthy controls (n = 80) completed assessments of semantic and phonemic fluency.

Executive dysfunction, awareness deficits and quality of life in patients with cerebral small vessel disease: a structural equation model.

Objective: To investigate the relationships between executive dysfunction, awareness deficits and perceptions of quality of life (QOL) in patients with cerebral small vessel disease (SVD).

Method: We tested neuropsychological function with simultaneous measurement of awareness performance in 125 participants. Forty-five were carefully phenotyped patients with SVD, defined as a lacunar stroke with corresponding infarct on neuroimaging; and 80 were age-matched controls, providing a normal comparison for neuropsychological measures.

Knowledge of and Adherence to Hygiene Guidelines among Medical Students in Austria.

Background. Adherence to hygiene guidelines is of utmost importance for healthcare professionals. The aim of this study was to evaluate the knowledge on and the adherence to hygiene guidelines among medical students in Austria.

Expression of matrix metalloproteinases in human growth plate chondrocytes is enhanced at high levels of mechanical loading: A possible explanation for overuse injuries in children.

Matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs), responsible for extracellular matrix remodelling and angiogenesis, might play a major role in the response of the growth plate to detrimental loads that lead to overuse injuries in young athletes. In order to test this hypothesis, human growth plate chondrocytes were subjected to mechanical forces equal to either physiological loads, near detrimental or detrimental loads for two hours. In addition, these cells were exposed to physiological loads for up to 24 hours.

Thrombophilia and damage of kidney during pregnancy.

Objectives: It's known that heritable thrombophilias are a risk factor for the development of obstetrics complications associated to inadequate uterine-placental circulation, as pre-eclampsia/eclampsia, HELLP syndrome, placental abruption and intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR), however it was never investigated the role that they could have in the renal failure associated to such conditions. The purpose of this study is to evaluate if thrombophilia itself that predispose to a possible renal damage or if its occurrence determines a more severe involvement of the kidneys in the course of these obstetric pathologies.

Methods: In the study were enrolled 301 pregnant women, who carried a thrombophilic state, 125 of whom (B group) has had an obstetric complication.

Starting out - Effective teamwork resulted in the best outcome for everyone.

I was on a placement in a rheumatology clinic and was helping to look after a patient who had been given a local anaesthetic and a steroid injection as part of a procedure.

Dopamine and food reward: effects of acute tyrosine/phenylalanine depletion on appetite.

It has been suggested that obese individuals over-eat in order to compensate for deficits in the dopaminergic reward system. The current study used acute tyrosine/phenylalanine depletion (ATPD) to investigate the effect of reduced dopamine function on appetite and the reward value of food in healthy volunteers. The compensatory-eating hypothesis would predict an increase in the reward value and consumption of food following depletion by this method.

Optimization of a highly standardized carboxyfluorescein succinimidyl ester flow cytometry panel and gating strategy design using discriminative information measure evaluation.

The design of a panel to identify target cell subsets in flow cytometry can be difficult when specific markers unique to each cell subset do not exist, and a combination of parameters must be used to identify target cells of interest and exclude irrelevant events. Thus, the ability to objectively measure the contribution of a parameter or group of parameters toward target cell identification independent of any gating strategy could be very helpful for both panel design and gating strategy design. In this article, we propose a discriminative information measure evaluation (DIME) based on statistical mixture modeling; DIME is a numerical measure of the contribution of different parameters towards discriminating a target cell subset from all the others derived from the fitted posterior distribution of a Gaussian mixture model.

Serotonin and dopamine play complementary roles in gambling to recover losses.

Continued gambling to recover losses--'loss chasing'--is a prominent feature of social and pathological gambling. However, little is known about the neuromodulators that influence this behavior. In three separate experiments, we investigated the role of serotonin activity, D(2)/D(3) receptor activity, and beta-adrenoceptor activity on the loss chasing of age and IQ-matched healthy adults randomized to treatment or an appropriate control/placebo.

Procalcitonin and C-reactive protein levels in HIV-positive subjects with tuberculosis and pneumonia.

Pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB) and pneumococcal community-acquired pneumonia (PCAP) are common causes of lower respiratory tract infections in HIV-seropositive patients and may have similar clinical and radiological features. This study aimed to assess the value of serum procalcitonin (PCT) and C-reactive protein (CRP) levels in HIV-seropositive patients with pneumonia, and to investigate their potential role in differentiating pneumococcal from mycobacterial infections. HIV-seropositive patients admitted with pneumonia were evaluated prospectively, 34 with PTB and 33 with PCAP.