Trends in smoking among secondary school and high school students in Poland, 2009 and 2011.

Objectives: To determine the age and the most common circumstances for smoking initiation along with smoking rates and to evaluate smoking trends for secondary and high school students in Poland during 2009 and 2011.

Material And Methods: In 2009, a pilot study was conducted in districts of Poland on high school students and their parents. For statistical analysis, correctly completed questionnaires from 999 students and 667 parents were qualified for use.

The potential role of high or low birthweight as risk factor for adult schizophrenia.

Objective: Obstetric complications may be an important factor in the development of schizophrenia. The aim of this study is to evaluate the role of these complications in the development of schizophrenia in adult life, with particular attention to the potential role of birth weight.

Method: We carried out a case-control study, comprising schizophrenics and patients with diseases of the schizophrenia spectrum as cases, and their healthy male brothers as controls.

Excess in the spring and deficit in the autumn in birth rates of male schizophrenic patients in Italy: potential role of perinatal risk factors.

Objective: The aim of this study was to evaluate whether there were different seasonal variations of births in an Italian population of patients with schizophrenia, with other psychotic disorders, and with personality disorders than in the general population.

Methods: Birth dates of 1270 patients admitted to one university psychiatric unit in Rome between 1990 and 2003, with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, other psychotic disorder (OPD) and personality disorder/cluster A (PD) were analyzed according to seasonal variation.

Results: A significant excess of births in spring (with a peak in May) and a deficit in autumn (with a trough in October) was found in the sample of male schizophrenics (n = 506).

Brain abnormalities in schizophrenia. A qualitative comparative study of schizophrenic patients and control individuals assessed by magnetic resonance imaging.

The present study examined, by means of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), the qualitative brain abnormalities in a group of 58 schizophrenic patients compared to a group of 58 matched control individuals. The possible relationships between these abnormalities and the demographic and clinical features of the participants in the study were also investigated. Schizophrenic patients presented a higher percentage of bland-moderate enlargement of the periencephalic-subarachnoid spaces (p=0.

Deficit of executive functions in schizophrenia: relationship to neurological soft signs and psychopathology.

Cognitive deficits and neurological soft signs (NSS) have frequently been reported in schizophrenic patients and they both appear related to prominent negative symptoms. The aim of the present study was to examine the relationship between deficit of executive functioning, assessed by the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST), NSS and psychopathological dimensions of schizophrenia in order to address the issue of whether a typology of schizophrenic patients may be identifiable by clinical, neurological and neuropsychological features. A sample of 26 male schizophrenic patients was divided, on the basis of the performance on the WCST, into two subgroups ('good performers' and 'poor performers') that were compared for the prevalence and severity of NSS, assessed by the Neurological Evaluation Scale (NES), and for the psychopathological features, assessed using the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS).

Cannabis and neurological soft signs in schizophrenia: absence of relationship and influence on psychopathology.

Background: Cannabis is a possible risk factor for the onset of schizophrenia and can induce neurocognitive, behavioural and motor co-ordination alterations. The aim of this study was to evaluate the role of cannabis in the occurrence of neurological soft signs (NSS) and, considering that this drug has been related to positive symptoms, whereas NSS have been linked to negative symptoms, we also examined the role of clinical features.

Methods: The study investigated NSS in 25 male cannabis-consuming and 25 male non-consuming schizophrenic patients, using the Neurological Evaluation Scale.

A second trial of clozapine in a case of granulocytopenia.

It is generally believed that agranulocytosis, a major problem with clozapine treatment, will tend to occur dose-dependently once it develops in an individual. Therefore, despite clinical progress obtained, the drug has to be discontinued and treatment shifts to another drug. We report on the case of a 29-year-old woman with DSM-IV undifferentiated schizophrenia who developed agranulocytosis after 5 years of 300 mg/day clozapine treatment.

Frontal hemisphere lateralization and depressive personality traits.

To assess the relationship between hemispheric differences in information processing and interhemispheric asymmetries in terms of brain bioelectrical activity, we correlated scores on the MMPI Depression scale with interhemispheric asymmetry, measured as peak amplitude and latency of the P3 component of somatosensory evoked potentials (SEPs) at the frontocortical region of 14 healthy unselected volunteers (8 men and 6 women) who were about to start a course in autogenic training. The sample was subdivided into two groups on the basis of the median score on the MMPI Depression scale. Subjects scoring above the median showed a right lateralization at the frontocentral region and a significantly shorter P3 latency at the right hemisphere compared to the left.