Genome-wide analyses reveal novel opioid use disorder loci and genetic overlap with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depression.

Opioid use disorder (OUD) and mental disorders are often comorbid, with increased morbidity and mortality. The causes underlying this relationship are poorly understood. Although these conditions are highly heritable, their shared genetic vulnerabilities remain unaccounted for. We applied the conditional/conjunctional false discovery rate (cond/conjFDR) approach to analyse summary statistics from independent genome wide association studies of OUD, schizophrenia (SCZ), bipolar disorder (BD) and major depression (MD) of European ancestry. Next, we characterized the identified shared loci using biological annotation resources. OUD data were obtained from the Million Veteran Program, Yale-Penn and Study of Addiction: Genetics and Environment (SAGE) (15 756 cases, 99 039 controls). SCZ (53 386 cases, 77 258 controls), BD (41 917 cases, 371 549 controls) and MD (170 756 cases, 329 443 controls) data were provided by the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium. We discovered genetic enrichment for OUD conditional on associations with SCZ, BD, MD and vice versa, indicating polygenic overlap with identification of 14 novel OUD loci at condFDR < 0.05 and 7 unique loci shared between OUD and SCZ (n = 2), BD (n = 2) and MD (n = 7) at conjFDR < 0.05 with concordant effect directions, in line with estimated positive genetic correlations. Two loci were novel for OUD, one for BD and one for MD. Three OUD risk loci were shared with more than one psychiatric disorder, at DRD2 on chromosome 11 (BD and MD), at FURIN on chromosome 15 (SCZ, BD and MD) and at the major histocompatibility complex region (SCZ and MD). Our findings provide new insights into the shared genetic architecture between OUD and SCZ, BD and MD, indicating a complex genetic relationship, suggesting overlapping neurobiological pathways.

Systemic and Dermatologic Impact of Mpox: An Overview of Guideline-Based Management for Nigerian Healthcare Workers.

Monkeypox/Mpox is an Orthopoxvirus infection of the skin and mucous membranes in the same family as smallpox virus. Infection mainly affects the skin, but the eyes, lungs, brain, gastrointestinal tract, and other organs may also be involved to varying degrees. This narrative review on the systematic and dermatologic impact of Mpox is meant for healthcare workers, providers of social services, community leaders, religious leaders, staff of schools, influencers, and institutions. This is in a bid to bring them up to date with the clinical protocol involved in the diagnosis, management, and prevention of the spread of Mpox. Data and other pieces of information used in this review were accessed from PubMed, Google Scholar, and situation reports from the website of the Nigerian Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), the World Health Organization (WHO), and the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The search date was from 1980 to May 2022. Prompt recognition and diagnosis were found to be predicated on a high index of clinical suspicion while diagnosis can be confirmed through viral DNA polymerase chain reaction tests. The management of Mpox involves a multidisciplinary approach with Dermatologists playing a central role alongside other specialists and experts as it affects diagnosis, management, and follow-up. The Government should provide an enabling environment for surveillance, notification, and research of this global infection. Since the clinical presentation of Mpox is regularly changing, a regular review of the available guidelines is recommended.

Immunophenotyping of lymphocytes and monocytes and the status of cytokines in the clinical course of Covid-19 patients.

Lymphopenia, T cell subgroup changes, and cytokine level differences are important in the early diagnosis and treatment of Covid-19 cases and similar pandemics. We aimed to investigate the T cell, monocyte subgroups, and cytokine differences according to disease severity. A total of 46 volunteers were included in the study. According to disease status, there were three groups (control, mild, and severe). The age, gender, smoking status, temperature, heart rate and oxygen saturation, complete blood count, C-reactive protein (CRP) was noted, and flow cytometric analyses were performed for T cell and monocyte subgroups, and cytokine levels. Temperature, heart rate, SPO2 , white blood cell (WBC), lympocyte count, trombocyte count, neutrophil/lymphocyte ratio, D-dimer and CRP levels, lymphocyte %, lymphocyte/monocyte rate, monocyte subtypes (%), CD3+ , CD4+ , CD8+ cell counts, interleukin (IL)-1ß, TNF-alpha, monocyte chemoattractant protein (MCP)-1, IL-6, IL-8, IL-10, IL-18, IL-23 were significantly different between groups. CRP, IL-8, neutrophil/lymphocyte ratio, NK cells (%) have positive correlation and negative correlation was observed at lymphocyte (count), lymphocyte (%), lymphocyte/monocyte, classical monocyte (%), lymphocyte (count), CD3+ (count), CD4+ (count). As conclusion, lymphocyte (%), Lymphocyte (count), CRP levels, CD3+ and CD4+ cell counts strongly correlate with disease severity are valuable parameters for determining the prognoses of Covid-19.

A randomised controlled study of mindfulness meditation versus relaxation therapy in the management of tinnitus.

OBJECTIVE: Psychotherapeutic interventions have been adopted effectively in the management of tinnitus for a long time. This study compared mindfulness meditation and relaxation therapy for management of tinnitus. METHODS: In this randomised controlled trial, patients were recruited for five sessions of mindfulness meditation or five sessions of relaxation therapy. Patients' responses were evaluated using the Tinnitus Reaction Questionnaire as a primary outcome measure, and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, visual analogue scale and a health status indicator as secondary outcome measures. RESULTS: A total of 86 patients were recruited. Thirty-four patients completed mindfulness meditation and 27 patients completed relaxation therapy. Statistically significant improvement was seen in all outcome measures except the health status indicator in both treatment groups. The change in treatment scores was greater in the mindfulness meditation group than in the relaxation therapy group. CONCLUSION: This study suggests that although both mindfulness meditation and relaxation therapy are effective in the management of tinnitus, mindfulness meditation is superior to relaxation therapy.

A review for usefulness of atypical antipsychotics and cholinesterase inhibitors in delirium.

Although the information from Gover et al (2011) is comprehensive it does not include vital information for management of delirium from key studies in this area of research. This paper has summarised information as lists and tables without systematic critical appraisal. Therefore, in the absence of a robust methodology for literature search and critical appraisal of past and current literature, it has limited implications to help future management or research in the field of delirium.

Frequent high expression of bax pro-apoptotic protein in non-small cell lung cancer.

Bax, bcl-2 and their homologues regulate a distal step in an evolutionary very well conserved pathway of apoptotic cell death. It plays a crucial role in the balance between proliferation rate and cell viability. Thus in the last years the attention of the scientific community towards these proteins has remarkably increased, in particular in the oncologic field. We developed an immunohistochemical assay allowing us to evaluate the bax expression in formalin fixed and paraffin embedded lung cancer tissues to investigate bax expression in a cohort of 55 patients affected by non-small cell lung cancer. We detected high expression of bax in 72.7% of our patients. When we statistically analyzed our data we did not find any correlation between bax expression and any clinicopathologic parameters (sex, age, TNM status, tumor grade, histological type). In conclusion, our study shows the frequent overexpression of bax, and this highlights the "apoptotic tendency" of cells during the neoplastic proliferation. But, the role of bax in non-small cell lung cancer pathogenesis still remains unclear and further studies of large numbers of patients, including different stage groups, are needed to better define the involvement of this protein in the complex mechanism of lung carcinogenesis.