Assessing overall functioning with adolescent inpatients.

The current study sought to evaluate the validity and reliability of a brief measure of overall functioning for adolescents. Clinicians were asked to complete the Overall Functioning Scale (OFS) for 72 adolescents consecutively admitted to the adolescent psychiatric inpatient service of a community safety net medical center. The results revealed that this new measure is related to the patients' length of stay, clinician-rated measures of social cognition and object relations, Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF) score at admission, as well as global rating of engagement in individual psychotherapy.

Recent progress in understanding the pathophysiology of post-traumatic stress disorder: implications for targeted pharmacological treatment.

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a common and chronic anxiety disorder that can result after exposure to a traumatic event. Though our understanding of the aetiology of PTSD is incomplete, several neurobiological systems have been implicated in the pathophysiology and vulnerability towards developing PTSD after trauma exposure. We aimed to provide a concise review of benchmark findings in important neurobiological systems related to the aetiology and maintenance of PTSD symptomology.

Ultrastructural changes in the pulmonary arterioles in acute hypoxic pulmonary hypertension in the rat.

This study was planned to obtain ultrastructural details of the early changes in intra-acinar arterioles in acute hypoxic pulmonary hypertension that could lead to understanding the mechanisms in the development of chronic hypoxic hypertension. In the anesthetized rat, using 5-10% normobaric O2, within minutes after hypoxia, there are changes in endothelial cells characteristic of activation: prominence of cell body and protuberance of the nucleus, electron-dense membrane-bound bodies adluminally, increasing pseudopodia of the adluminal cell membrane, edema within (vacuoles) and beneath the endothelial cells with separation of the endothelial cells from the basal lamina. There is activation of platelets and leucocytes in the lumen and accumulation of platelets at the endothelium.

Age related alterations in the response of the pial arterioles to adenosine in the rat.

To evaluate the effects of aging on vasoreactivity of pial arterioles to adenosine and barium chloride, an hydraulically intact cranial window preparation was developed in the rat. The microvasculature of anesthetized 3- and 24-month-old Fischer-344 rats was studied during superfusion with artificial cerebrospinal fluid with and without test agents and results determined by videomicroscopy techniques. In both cohorts, the response of pial arterioles to adenosine was both dose and vessel size dependent: arteriolar dilation increased with increasing concentrations of adenosine and at any given concentration the percent increase in diameter was greater in the smaller vessels.

Acute wound repair in an aged animal: a model for accelerated aging of the microvasculature?

This study of wound repair in the aged rat is based on increased carbohydrate content of various proteins which occurs with aging and is readily seen in the microvasculature (MV). We have used the periodic acid-Schiff (PAS) reaction to identify histochemically the carbohydrate moiety of the glycoproteins found in these blood vessels. In the young rat, as in other young vertebrates, elements of the MV are PAS negative and become increasingly PAS+ beyond the half life span.