7beta-hydroxycholesterol induces apoptosis and regulates cyclooxygenase 2 in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma.

Objective: To determine whether treatment with 7beta-hydroxycholesterol (7beta-HC) would trigger cell death in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) cell lines in a dose-dependent fashion.

Design: In vitro study.

Subjects: The study included HNSCC cell lines SCC9, SCC25, CAL27, and FaDu.

Down-regulation of Mcl-1 with antisense technology alters the effect of various cytotoxic agents used in treatment of squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck.

Antisense oligonucleotides have recently been identified as new anticancer agents. Since human head and neck cancer cells highly express the antiapoptotic protein myeloid cell leukemia-1 (Mcl-1), the aim of this study was to explore the efficacy of the Mcl-1 suppression in combination with various cytotoxic agents in the head and neck cancer cell line SCC9. After oligonucleotide transfection and/or treatment with cisplatin, 5-fluorouracil (5-FU), gemcitabine, paclitaxel or cetuximab, proliferation assays were performed to determine cell viability.

Recovery from psychotic illness: a 15- and 25-year international follow-up study.

Background: Poorly defined cohorts and weak study designs have hampered cross-cultural comparisons of course and outcome in schizophrenia.

Aims: To describe long-term outcome in 18 diverse treated incidence and prevalence cohorts. To compare mortality, 15- and 25-year illness trajectory and the predictive strength of selected baseline and short-term course variables.

[Undetected psychiatric disorders in primary health care. A need for psychotherapy].

In joint collaboration of both Institutes the Leipzig-south survey of need of psychotherapy was replicated in a representative sample (N = 1708) of patients waiting one year to be examined and/or treated in out-patient departments of general practitioners and other specialists (gynaecology, orthopaedic surgery and internal medicine) in one district of Prague City (N = 1461) and a rural district in Kromĕríz (N = 247). In a preceding pilot study (N = 207) the zero hypothesis of unspecificity of the Leipzig methodology was rejected. Roughly corresponding proportions of three classes of the need of psychotherapy (defined by means of cluster analysis) were found in the geographic areas, compared in waiting rooms of all out-patient departments except the evidently lower need of psychotherapy found in the rural GP's waiting rooms.

[An international study of the course and outcome of schizophrenia coordinated by the World Health Organization].

Psychiatry Demography Unit of Psychiatric Center Prague is one of the participating sites in the transcultural study on Long-term Course and Outcome of Schizophrenia coordinated by World Health Organization (WHO). The aim of the project is to learn more about factors predicting the long-term course and outcome and to investigate socio-cultural differences in schizophrenic patients. The present research builds upon the earlier WHO coordinated studies: International Pilot Study of Schizophrenia (IPSS) carried out in 1968-1969 in 13 centers including Czechoslovakia (N = 1202) and Study on Determinants of Outcome of Severe Mental Disorder (DOSMed) taken place between 1978-1980.

[Characteristics of favorable and poor development of health services and social conditions for the aged].

Two stage probability samples were selected to represent the populations resident in one metropolitan (Prague-1 n = 484) and one country (Opava n = 538) geographical and administrative district. The index cases were contacted and surveyed in a field study. Data were collected by means of standardized interviews by nurses and social workers and complemented from GP's case notes, if available.

[Catamnesis of neuroses after 11 years of treatment with 3 different therapeutic programs].

A total of 266 of 331 neurotics included to controlled comparison of further course and outcome of three therapeutic and preventive programmes of different duration of the contact with therapeutic environment (full inpatient, day center and walk-in clinic treatment) was reexamined 11 years after inclusion to the core (N = 239) and verification (N = 92) study. Results of multivariate analysis of relations between the characteristic of the episode of inclusion and seven criteria of further course and outcome follow-up confirmed the previous (6 and 12 months' follow-up) statements of no relationship neither between the type of the programme, the patient has been randomly assigned to, nor between the duration of the contacts with the therapeutic environment and with further course and outcome of the neurosis. Personality characteristics seem to be more important that the actual neurotic symptomatology and potential predictor of course and outcome.

[Reliability of the psychiatric section in the 10th revision of the International Classification of Diseases].

In collaboration with WHO the authors participated in sessions on the reliability of the Vth chapter of mental disease of the 10th revision of the International Classification of Diseases. The object was to evaluate the comprehensibility and utility of the diagnosis of mental disorders, evaluate to what extent the new classification describes adequately disorders of different types of psychiatric patients and to provide information on the extent and type of diagnostic agreement and disagreement. The evaluation was done by four psychiatrists; a total of 38 written case-histories were evaluated (30 patients of the Psychiatric Research Institute and 8 case-histories from other centres).

[Utilization of psychiatric care].

The paper is an introduction to a series of articles summarizing hitherto assembled results in the research task P 12-335-806 DU 05 "Reflection of the biopsychosocial background of mental disorders on the consumption of health care" and deals with the first stage 01 "Improvement of the psychiatric information system". It gives an outline of the development of the psychiatric information system in Czechoslovakia, an account of the shortcomings of its present state and proposals for its improvement based on an automated psychiatric case register.

[Pathways to care].

The main objective of the study designed by the World Health Organization is to obtain information on provision of care for mental disturbances in various countries. The main pathways to mental health care based on the first results of an analysis obtained from two out-patient psychiatric departments of District Institutes of National Health in Benesov and Kromĕríz in Czechoslovakia are described. The delays at different points, the problem and care provided are reviewed both as regards mental health care and previous other than mental health care.

The molecular mechanisms of two common polymorphisms of drug oxidation--evidence for functional changes in cytochrome P-450 isozymes catalysing bufuralol and mephenytoin oxidation.

Using the stereospecific metabolism of (+)- and (-)-bufuralol and (+)- and (-)-metoprolol as model reactions, we have characterized the enzymic deficiency of the debrisoquine/sparteine-type polymorphism by comparing kinetic data of subjects in vivo with their microsomal activities in vitro and with reconstituted activities of cytochrome P-450 isozymes purified from human liver. The metabolism of bufuralol in liver microsomes of in vivo phenotyped 'poor metabolizers' of debrisoquine and/or sparteine is characterized by a marked increase in Km, a decrease in Vmax and a virtual loss of the stereoselectivity of the reaction. These parameters apparently allow the 'phenotyping' of microsomes in vitro.