Background: Effect and Safety of Electroconvulsive Therapy plus Usual Care for the Acute Management of Severe Agitation in Dementia (ECT-AD) is a multi-site NIA-funded FDA-regulated pioneering clinical trial to investigate the effectiveness of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) in treating severe and treatment-refractory agitation and aggression among individuals with advanced dementia, a condition that has a profound negative impact on patient quality of life and caregiver burden. Here we present baseline demographics of the patient population in this ongoing trial.
Method: To date we have enrolled 18 participants, with a mean age of 74.
Background: Recent interest in the clinical use of psychedelics has highlighted plant-derived medicines like ayahuasca showing rapid-acting and sustainable therapeutic effects in various psychiatric conditions. This traditional Amazonian plant decoction contains N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT) and β-carboline alkaloids such as harmine. However, its use is often accompanied by distressing effects like nausea, vomiting, and intense hallucinations, possibly due to complex pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic (PK-PD) interactions and lack of dose standardization.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Treatment approaches for endometrial cancer became more personalized in the last decade, mainly due to two key advancements - sentinel lymph node (SLN) mapping and molecular classification. However, their prognostic interaction remains relatively unexplored.
Methods: This retrospective cohort study included patients with endometrial cancer, who underwent surgical treatment including SLN mapping at the Bern University Hospital, Switzerland.
The earliest named stromatolite Cryptozoon Hall, 1884 (Late Cambrian, ca. 490 Ma, eastern New York State), was recently re-interpreted as an interlayered microbial mat and non-spiculate (keratosan) sponge deposit. This "classic stromatolite" is prominent in a fundamental debate concerning the significance or even existence of non-spiculate sponges in carbonate rocks from the Neoproterozoic (Tonian) onwards.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFYouth mental health interventions incorporating trained therapy animals are increasingly popular, but more research is needed to understand the specific interactive behaviors between participants and therapy dogs. Understanding the role of these interactive behaviors is important for supporting both intervention efficacy and animal welfare and well-being. The goal of this study was to develop ethograms to assess interactive behaviors (including both affiliative and stress-related behaviors) of participants and therapy dogs during a social stress task, explore the relationship between human and dog behaviors, and assess how these behaviors may vary between experimental conditions with varying levels of physical contact with the therapy dog.
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