Spanish medical students' attitudes and views towards mental health and psychiatry: a multicentric cross-sectional study.

Objective: The aim of this study is to investigate the attitudes towards mental illness and psychiatry among fifth year Spanish medical students.

Methods: The study included 171 students from three medical schools located in different areas of Spain: Cádiz; UCA (n = 113), Madrid; San Pablo-CEU (n = 22), and Barcelona; UAB (n = 36). They responded, prior to their undergraduate medical course in psychiatry, to the AMI questionnaire to measure the attitudes towards mental illness and to Balon's adapted questionnaire to investigate their view towards psychiatry.

Preclinical discovery of duloxetine for the treatment of depression.

Introduction: Affective disorders, including major depressive disorder (MDD), are among the most severely disabling mental disorders, and in many cases are associated with poor treatment outcomes. From the emergence of the monoamine hypothesis of depression, the first-line treatment for MDD had mainly acted by inhibiting monoamine reuptake, and thereby increasing these levels in the synaptic cleft. However, in recent years, several new antidepressant drugs have appeared, including duloxetine, a dual serotonin (5-HT) and noradrenaline (NA) reuptake inhibitor recommended for the treatment of MDD.

Cognitive impairment is related to oxidative stress and chemokine levels in first psychotic episodes.

Introduction: This study measures the levels of various markers of oxidative stress and inflammation in blood samples from first-episode psychosis (FEP) patients, and examines the association between these peripheral biomarkers and cognitive performance at 6 months after treatment.

Methods: Twenty-eight FEP patients and 28 healthy controls (matched by age, sex and educational level) had blood samples taken at admission for assessment of total antioxidant status, superoxide dismutase (SOD), total glutathione (GSH), catalase (CAT), glutathione peroxidase, lipid peroxidation, nitrites and the chemokine monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1). A battery of cognitive tests was also applied to the healthy controls and those FEP patients who were in remission at 6 months after the acute episode.