Affective states in normal and depressed older people.

Ratings on a 10-item affect checklist yielding composite positive affect and negative affect scores were made daily for 30 days by older people in residential care: 19 were diagnosed as having major depression, 21 had minor depression, and 37 were without psychiatric diagnosis ("normal"). Mean levels of positive affect were highest in normal people and least in those with major depression; negative affect was lowest in normal ones and highest in those with a major depression. Variability was least among those with major depression in positive affect and among normal people in negative affect, while residents with minor depression showed some tendency, although inconsistent, toward greater day-to-day variability in positive affect.

Induction of inhibitory activity for B cell differentiation in human CD8 T cells with pokeweed mitogen, dimaprit, and cAMP upregulating agents: countersuppressive effect of platelet factor 4.

As shown previously, native or recombinant (r) human platelet factor 4 (PF4) alleviates the suppression induced by Con A or dimaprit, a histamine type 2 receptor (H2-R) agonist, in a murine system. The effect of rPF4 on human peripheral blood cells has now been studied, using as a model pokeweed mitogen (PWM)-induced, T-cell-mediated suppression of Ig-secreting cell (ISC) formation by Staphylococcus aureus and rIL-2 activated B cells. PWM, but not phytohemagglutinin (PHA), induced inhibitory activity in mitomycin-treated CD8+ T cells, but not unfractionated or CD4+ T cells, for both ISC formation and B cell proliferation.

Use of the Hamilton and Montgomery-Asberg Depression Scales in Institutionalized Elderly Patients.

In screening for a study of drug treatment of major depression, the authors obtained data on depressive symptoms in elderly residential care patients (N = 116; average age 84 years; 81% women). Principal-components analysis (with varimax rotation) of the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression yielded a four-factor solution (accounting for 47.2% of variance): core depression, anxiety, insomnia-hypochondriasis, and cognitive-ideational symptoms.

[Findings of periodic thoracic X-ray screening of Israel Defense Forces career personnel].

Findings of routine, periodic, medical examinations of approximately 5000 Israel Defense Forces (IDF) career personnel, included a screening postero-anterior chest radiograph were reviewed. Previous studies have indicated low efficacy of routine chest X-rays in various populations. We evaluated this screening test among 4593 career military personnel.

Atopy, bronchial hyperresponsiveness, and peak flow variability in children with mild occasional wheezing.

Background: Children who suffer from recurrent wheezy episodes are often promptly classified as asthmatic. The aim of this study was to evaluate a population of mild wheezy children with repeatedly normal spirometric tests at rest for atopy, bronchial hyperresponsiveness, and peak expiratory flow variability.

Methods: Thirty nine children aged 6-16 years with 1-12 wheezy attacks during the previous year were recruited from a community paediatric primary health care clinic serving an urban Israeli population.

On the Inseparability of Mental and Physical Health in Aged Persons: Lessons From Depression and Medical Comorbidity.

Recent research findings demonstrate that general medical and mental health are inseparable in older individuals. The medical consequences of depression can be summarized with the unifying hypothesis that depression interacts with medical or neurological illness to modify the course of disease and to amplify its associated effects. The medical causes of depression can be divided into specific mechanisms of certain diseases or medications and general mechanisms that may integrate effects of a number of the common chronic disorders of late life.

Anticonvulsant and other non-neuroleptic treatment of agitation in dementia.

Studies have shown that the vast majority of patients with dementia experience some psychopathologic symptoms during the course of their illness. Symptoms of this nature, which can include frightening hallucinations or anxiety of phobic proportions, are subjectively distressing and can lead both to unsafe or violent situations as well as to the preventable use of inappropriate medication, physical restraint, and frequently to institutionalization. These psychopathologic manifestations of dementia often prove to be a burden on family, caregivers, and the health care system as well.

Use of Prediction Intervals to Characterize Electroencephalographic Changes Caused by Diphenhydramine.

The authors report on progress in the use of a two-channel, microprocessor-based electroencephalographic (EEG) device and the statistical strategy of prediction intervals for characterizing the normal limits of variability in cerebral state in older subjects and recognition of excessive change caused by mildly toxic medications. Prediction intervals for relative delta, theta, alpha, and beta power were calculated from repeated EEG measures on 54 medically stable elderly subjects. The authors subsequently evaluated the effects of diphenhydramine (25-75 mg) administered to 10 additional subjects.

The relationships among anxiety, depression, and pain in a geriatric institutionalized sample.

This study sought to determine if depression and/or anxiety is uniquely related to pain after controlling for the strong association between anxiety and depression. Both depression and anxiety were assessed in an elderly institutionalized sample using: (1) research-based diagnoses based on Diagnostic and Statistical Manual-revised 3rd edition (DSM-IIIR) criteria, and (2) evaluations of one's recent affective states using the Profile of Moods States (POMS). Pain was assessed by pain intensity and number of pain complaints.

Depression in Older Patients in Residential Care: Significance of Dysphoria and Dimensional Assessment.

To investigate the significance of subsyndromal depressive states in geriatric patients, the authors used data from ongoing studies of depression in older patients in residential care to evaluate the clinical correlates of dysphoria. They find that dysphoria is, in general, a persistent state associated with increased medical illness, pain, self-care deficits, and mortality relative to euthymic subjects; thus it is clinically significant. Differences between dysphoria and major depression in the extent of associated disability and mortality, but not in measures of medical illness, pain, or persistence, remain significant after controlling for self-ratings of depression from the Geriatric Depression Scale.

A technical problem in the calculation of laminar flow near irregular surfaces described by sampled geometric data.

The numerical simulation of fluid flow and transport near biological surfaces must take into account the natural irregularity of these surfaces if the influence of the surface geometry on the near-wall flow field is to be modeled. If the geometric description of a biological surface has a limited resolution, what impact will this have on the accuracy of a computational simulation of the near-wall flow field? It is important to emphasize here that the problem arises from the limited number of data points describing the geometry and not from any limit on the number of mesh points in any subsequent calculation. In this note we show that if every point in a geometric data set describing an axisymmetric model of a diseased coronary artery is taken as a mesh point, then a well converged and otherwise accurately calculated wall shear stress distribution contains a degree of uncertainty which is attributable wholly to the limited resolution of the original geometric model.

Validation of the Cumulative Illness Rating Scale in a geriatric residential population.

Objective: To evaluate the validity of the Cumulative Illness Rating Scale (CIRS) in a geriatric institutional population by examining its associations with mortality, hospitalization, medication usage, laboratory findings and disability.

Design: A validation of the CIRS using self- and physician-report surveys, with archival data drawn from medical charts and facility records.

Setting: Long-term care facility with skilled nursing and congregate apartments.

Aerosol deposition as a function of airway disease: cystic fibrosis.

A mathematical model of aerosol deposition has been developed for drug delivery protocols and used successfully to simulate inhalation exposure tests with human subjects. Therefore, we have used the validated model to address the delivery of inhaled pharmaceuticals as a function of disease-induced changes in airway structure. Clinical data from the literature had suggested that progressive lung disease associated with cystic fibrosis (CF) could compromise the successful administration of pharmacologic drugs used in its treatment, hence it was studied.

Changes in body composition, resting energy expenditure, and thermic effect of food in short children on growth hormone therapy.

The effect of growth hormone (GH) treatment on body composition, resting energy expenditure (REE), and the thermic effect of food (TEF) was studied in 10 prepubertal boys (aged 6.2 to 9.5 years, with subnormal spontaneous GH secretion during the first 6 months of treatment [0.

Detection of cholesterol associated with calcium mineral using confocal fluorescence microscopy.

Background: Cholesterol and calcium are prominant components within human atherosclerotic lesions. Both accumulate predominantly within the central core region of lesions. Because of similarities in some crystallographic faces of cholesterol monohydrate and calcium apatite, it has been previously proposed that deposition of one may nucleate the deposition of the other.