The prevalence and impact of depression in self-referred clients attending an employee assistance program.

Objective: To determine the prevalence and characteristics of clients with depression attending an employee assistance program (EAP).

Methods: Anonymized data were obtained from 10,794 consecutive clients, including 9105 employees, self-referred to PPC Canada, a large, external EAP. Assessment measures included the self-rated nine-item Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9).

Telephone-administered cognitive-behavioral therapy for clients with depressive symptoms in an employee assistance program: a pilot study.

Background: To assess the clinical and work productivity effects of a brief intervention using telephone-administered cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) for clients with depressive symptoms attending an employee assistance program (EAP).

Methods: Self-referred clients attending the PPC Canada EAP with clinically relevant depressive symptoms at initial assessment were offered an 8-session telephone-administered CBT program. Outcomes before and after intervention were assessed with the 9-item Personal Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9), Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF), and clinician ratings of work absence and performance impairment.

Functional exercise for older adults.

Australia's population is aging. Recent figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics indicate that by the year 2013, 3.1 million people will be over the age of 65 as compared with 2.

Construction of an improved baculovirus insecticide containing an insect-specific toxin gene.

Baculoviruses provide alternatives to chemicals for controlling insect pests and can be applied by spraying. Baculoviruses have a limited host range, but work relatively slowly. They are dissolved in the midgut of insect larvae to release infectious virions which enter gut epithelial cells and begin to replicate.

Use of a 2-5A analogue probe for detecting RNA ligase and RNA ligase substrates in mammalian cell extracts.

The compound ppp(A2'p)3A3'[32P]pCp is a commercially available radioactive analogue of the 2',5' oligoadenylate series ppp(A2'p)nA, n greater than or equal to 2, commonly referred to as 2-5A. It is used as a probe for measuring concentrations in competition radiobinding and radioimmune assays. We have found that incubation of the probe with extracts from HeLa, CV1, or neuroblastoma cells results in its covalent attachment to two size classes of RNA: the first includes a major species with a molecular weight of approximately 350,000, the second is much smaller (40 +/- 5 nucleotides in length) and could represent tRNA half-molecules.