Publications by authors named "Vorontsova N"

History of adversity is associated with subsequent psychosis, and with a spectrum of cognitive alterations in individuals with psychosis. These cognitive features go from neurocognitive aspects as working memory and attention, to complex social cognitive processes as theory of mind and emotional perception. Difficulties in these domains impact patients' social and occupational functioning, which has been shown to be more impaired in those previously exposed to childhood trauma.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Various psychological and biological pathways have been proposed as mediators between childhood adversity (CA) and psychosis. A systematic review of the evidence in this domain is needed. Our aim is to systematically review the evidence on psychological and biological mediators between CA and psychosis across the psychosis spectrum.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Depression occurring alongside psychosis is an important treatment target, both in its own right and as a potential maintenance factor for positive psychotic symptoms. The present paper reports a prospective longitudinal analysis of depression and its predictors over six months in a group of 60 participants experiencing persecutory delusions. We hypothesised that negative schematic beliefs about the self and problem solving difficulties would predict the persistence of depression over time.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Goals motivated by avoidance, rather than approach, and by external, rather than internal, motivations, have been implicated in the persistence of depression. This paper reports the first empirical investigation of the goals and motivations of individuals experiencing persecutory delusions. Participants completed assessments of goals and motivations, depression and paranoia.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Presentation of social situations via immersive virtual reality (VR) has the potential to be an ecologically valid way of assessing psychiatric symptoms. In this study we assess the occurrence of paranoid thinking and of symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in response to a single neutral VR social environment as predictors of later psychiatric symptoms assessed by standard methods. One hundred six people entered an immersive VR social environment (a train ride), presented via a head-mounted display, 4 weeks after having attended hospital because of a physical assault.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Depression is common in people with schizophrenia, but how it might directly contribute to the persistence of psychotic symptoms has rarely been tested. The key aim of the present study was to test whether depression and associated cognitive processes predict the maintenance of persecutory delusions. Three groups of participants were tested at baseline: 60 patients with persecutory delusions in the context of a schizophrenia spectrum diagnosis, 30 patients with depression, and 30 nonclinical controls.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Being physically assaulted is known to increase the risk of the occurrence of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms but it may also skew judgements about the intentions of other people. The objectives of the study were to assess paranoia and PTSD after an assault and to test whether theory-derived cognitive factors predicted the persistence of these problems.

Method: At 4 weeks after hospital attendance due to an assault, 106 people were assessed on multiple symptom measures (including virtual reality) and cognitive factors from models of paranoia and PTSD.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Cyanobacteria developed efficient carbon concentrating mechanisms which significantly improve the photosynthetic performance and survival of cells under limiting CO(2) conditions. Dynamic changes of the Synechocystis proteome to CO(2) limitation were investigated using shotgun LC-MS/MS approach with isobaric tag for relative and absolute quantification (iTRAQ) technique. Synechocystis cells grown at high (3%) CO(2) were shifted to air-level CO(2) followed by protein extraction after 6, 24, and 72 h.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The efficacy of the breast milk fortifier Friso versus breastfeeding only was studied in premature very low birthweight babies without congenital malformations. Product tolerability, blood biochemical parameters, physical developmental indices, and the length of respiratory support and intensive care unit (ICU) stay were estimated. Twenty-seven infants at 36 weeks post-conception age were followed up.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

A key problem in studying a hypothesized spectrum of severity of delusional ideation is determining that ideas are unfounded. The first objective was to use virtual reality to validate groups of individuals with low, moderate, and high levels of unfounded persecutory ideation. The second objective was to investigate, drawing upon a cognitive model of persecutory delusions, whether clinical and nonclinical paranoia are associated with similar causal factors.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Insomnia is a potential cause of anxiety, depression, and anomalies of experience; separate research has shown that anxiety, depression and anomalies of experience are predictors of paranoia. Thus insomnia may contribute to the formation and maintenance of persecutory ideation. The aim was to examine for the first time the association of insomnia symptoms and paranoia in the general population and the extent of insomnia in individuals with persecutory delusions attending psychiatric services.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The possible number of chiral and achiral tetrasubstituted [2.2]paracyclophanes possessing different types of symmetry (C(2), C(i), C(s), C(2v), C(2h)) is evaluated and a unified independent trivial naming descriptor system is introduced. The reactivity and regioselectivity of the electrophilic substitution of the chiral pseudo-meta- and achiral pseudo-para-disubstituted [2.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Cyanobacteria possess a complex CO(2)-concentrating mechanism (CCM), which is induced by low inorganic carbon conditions. To investigate the involvement of proteases in the processes of induction and degradation of the CCM complexes, we studied the FtsH2 (DeltaSlr0228) and Deg-G (DeltaSlr1204/DeltaSll1679/DeltaSll1427) protease mutants of Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

In murine mammary carcinoma cells Shionogi 115 (S115) testosterone induces phenotypical transformation which is largely due to expression of fibroblast growth factor (FGF) 8b. Concomitantly, the expression of the cell surface heparan sulfate proteoglycan syndecan-1 is down-regulated. However, if syndecan-1 expression is maintained by transfection with a testosterone-driven syndecan-1 construct, transformation does not occur.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The aim of the study was examination of lipid peroxidation (LPO) and antioxidant system (AOS) in patients with acute coronary syndrome (ACS); evaluation of the effect of dalteparin therapy on LPO and ACS. Fifty one patients (mean age 57.5 +/- 1.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The tumor consists of two types of cells: small with abundant processes cells capable of dividing and probably being neuroblasts, and the big melanocytes forming bands and glandular-like structures. Tumor cells (mainly melanocytes) express pancytokeratins, S-100 protein, neuron-specific enolase, synaptophysin and melanin antigen. These data are the additional indication that melanotic neuroectodermal tumor is the derivative of the neural crest.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Astrocytic changes were followed up in the brain of infants who had died of herpetic encephalitis. Neuro-morphological examinations revealed astrocytic structural changes directed to reinforcement of the blood-brain barrier, localization of the infection and, possibly, to inactivation of the virus.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

12 autopsy cases of congenital immunodeficiency in children who died from various infectious complications at the age of from 2 months to 4 years 1 month are studied. Infection was in all cases combined (viral-bacterial, sometimes even viral-mycoplasmic-bacterial-mycotic). Morphological changes of the thymus, spleen, tonsilla, lymph nodes and lungs are described.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Efficiency of transformation by a number of vectors with the different selective markers of a set of cell lines has been studied for three different methods based on using calcium phosphate, polybrene, or electroporation. Electroporation is shown to be the most efficient one. Using this method with the system rat2k-cells-pAGO vector we have obtained the frequencies of transformation up to 2-3.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The diploid culture of Pullularia pullulans 1125(4)(13) synthesizes pullulan from different carbon sources. The activity is highest on a mineral medium with melassa (23.18 g/L).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF