Schizophrenia patients are impaired in empathic accuracy.

BACKGROUND: Empathy is crucial for successful social relationships. Despite its importance for social interactions, little is known about empathy in schizophrenia. This study investigated the degree to which schizophrenia patients can accurately infer the affective state of another person (i.e. empathic accuracy). METHOD: A group of 30 schizophrenia patients and 22 healthy controls performed an empathic accuracy task on which they continuously rated the affective state of another person shown in a video (referred to as the 'target'). These ratings were compared with the target's own continuous self-rating of affective state; empathic accuracy was defined as the correlation between participants' ratings and the targets' self-ratings. A separate line-tracking task was administered to measure motoric/attentional factors that could account for group differences in performance. Participants' self-rated empathy was measured using the Interpersonal Reactivity Index, and targets' self-rated emotional expressivity was measured using the Berkeley Expressivity Questionnaire. RESULTS: Compared with controls, schizophrenia patients showed lower empathic accuracy although they performed the motoric tracking task at high accuracy. There was a significant group×target expressivity interaction such that patients showed a smaller increase in empathic accuracy with higher levels of emotional expressivity by the target, compared with controls. Patients' empathic accuracy was uncorrelated with self-reported empathy or clinical symptoms. CONCLUSIONS: Schizophrenia patients showed lower empathic accuracy than controls, and their empathic accuracy was less influenced by the emotional expressivity of the target. These findings suggest that schizophrenia patients benefit less from social cues of another person when making an empathic judgement.

Infectivity, predilection sites, and freeze tolerance of Trichinella spp. in experimentally infected sheep.

A total of 36 sheep in groups of 4 were inoculated with 9 isolates of Trichinella and euthanized after 10 weeks. Thereafter, numbers of muscle larvae were determined in 13 different muscles/muscle groups. Muscle larvae were found in high numbers in all four sheep inoculated with T. spiralis, in lower numbers in two sheep inoculated with T. pseudospiralis (USA isolate), and in very low numbers in one sheep inoculated with T. pseudospiralis (USSR isolate) and one inoculated with T. britovi. In infections of high and moderate larval intensity, predilection sites of T. spiralis were the masseter muscles, the tongue, and the diaphragm and those of T. pseudospiralis were the masseter muscle and the neck. In low-intensity infections, muscle larvae were detected only in the diaphragm or in pooled muscle samples. For evaluation of the freeze tolerance of the different Trichinella species in sheep-muscle tissue, samples taken from the filet were stored at +5 degrees, -5 degrees, and -18 degrees C, respectively. After exposure for 1 and 4 weeks the tissue was digested and the released larvae were inoculated into mice for determination of the reproductive capacity index (RCI). Larvae of both T. spiralis and T. pseudospiralis survived freezing at -5 degrees and -18 degrees C for 4 weeks.

Urolithiasis in the Sudan. Studies on a stone-prone and a stone-free population.

Biochemical studies were performed on 80 adult males with renal stones and 24 controls from Northern Sudan. Similar studies were performed on 44 controls from Southern Sudan, where urinary stones rarely occur. No significant differences between stone formers and controls from Northern Sudan were found regarding serum uric acid, phosphate, alkaline phosphatase, total protein, albumen, daily urine calcium or uric acid. Similarly, no significant difference was found between 2 groups in the incidence of hypercalciuria, hyperuricaemia of hyperuricosuria. The serum calcium was significantly higher in stone formers. The mean serum and daily urine calcium were significantly lower, and the mean serum and daily urine uric acid were significantly higher in controls from Southern Sudan compared to either stone formers or controls from Northern Sudan. The mean daily urine volume was significantly higher in Southern controls compared to Northern controls. The increased prevalence of stone formers in Northern Sudan appears to result from the higher calcium output in the urine and the lower urine volume in the North compared with the South.