[Report of a patient with behavioral disturbance and personality change due to herpetic encephalitis]

Herpetic encephalitis is associated with neurocognitive dysfunctions. Personality change and behavioral disturbances have been reported in 40 to 60 percents of patients with herpetic encephalitis. The present article reports a case with remitted encephalitis that manifests some behavioral changes and neuropsychological defects. A 17 year old boy became impulsive, aggressive, and restless and manifested stereotypical behavior after recovery from herpetic encephalitis. His symptoms lead to loss of function and several admissions in psychiatric wards due to his uncontrollable aggression. Brain imaging by MRI showed frontotemporal atrophy. There are some epileptiform discharge in patient's Electroencephalogram and patient showed learning disability and intellectual functions. The patient showed encephalitis associated personality change, behavioral disturbances and intellectual disabilities. Follow up studies with greater sample size can give more information about post encephalitis neuropsychiatric complications

Assessment of risk full decision making in patients with antisocial and borderline personality disorders

Risk full decision making [RDM] is a kind of cognitive process in which people choose the best option among unsafe and probably disadvantageous choices. Gambling task [GT] and delayed discounting task [DDT] are designed to objectively assess impulsivity and RDM. In this analytic cross sectional research, we compared the performance of patients with antisocial personality disorder and borderline personality disorder on GT and DDT with normal population. Number of 24 males with antisocial personality disorder and 28 patients with borderline personality disorder [20 males, 8 females] were chosen by at hand sampling from patients referred to Roozbeh Hospital or a counseling center for ex-prisoners [2006-7] in Tehran. The participants were structurally interviewed in comparison with 25 normal samples from our data pool; this was based on the criteria of diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, forth edition, text revised [DSM-IV-TR; SCID-II]. Mean score of GT was calculated by the differences of choices from advantageous and disadvantageous cards. The hyperbolic delay discounting model was employed. The K parameter, representing rates of delay discounting, served as a parametric value operationalizing impulsivity. One way ANOVA was used to compare the three groups. Personality disorder patients had significantly greater K parameter in delay discounting process in comparison with normal population. People with personality disorders chose more from disadvantageous cards in GT but no significant difference was found between groups. Choosing more from disadvantageous cards in persons with antisocial personality disorder is related to impaired risk full decision-making and may represent the dysfunction of ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Higher values of K parameter indicate that this group of patients can not tolerate the delayed rewards and they prefer more recent smaller ones

Assessment of the immune system activity in Iranian patients with major depression disorder [MDD]

Major Depression Disorder [MDD] is a common disorder with prevalence of 15% among men and up to 25% among women. In recent years the association of immune system alterations and MDD has been investigated. Assessments of immunologic and inflammatory responses in these patients enhance our knowledge of the etiology and pathogenesis of this disease. To investigate the changes in immunoglobulin and cytokine serum levels and lymphocyte subsets in patients with MDD. We studied 37 adult patients with MDD, diagnosed based on DSM-IV diagnostic criteria, and 15 healthy controls matched with the patients. Plasma concentration of interleukin-4 [IL-4], IL-10, TNF alpha, and IFN gamma were measured by ELISA and serum immunoglobulins by SRID. Total number of NK cells [CD16 and CD56], B cells [CD19], and T cells [CD8, CD4, and CD3] were determined by flow cytometry. We found no significant differences in plasma concentration of IL-4, IL-10, TNF-alpha, IFN-gamma, and immunoglobulins as well as total number of NK cells, B cells, and T cells between major depressed patients and healthy control subjects. We conclude that in our patients, there were no significant differences in immune system activity between MDD patients and controls