Temporal persistence of anomalous self-experience: A 5years follow-up.

BACKGROUND: The concept of self-disorders in schizophrenia has gained substantial interest and it has now been established empirically that self-disorders aggregate in schizophrenia-spectrum disorders but not in other mental disorders or in healthy controls. Yet, the issue of temporal persistence has not been addressed. AIM: The aim of this study is to examine the temporal persistence of self-disorders. METHODS: 96 first admission patients were thoroughly assessed for psychopathology including SD at baseline and again 5years later. We created a 25-item self-disorder scale which was used both at baseline and follow-up to assess self-disorders. The scale was a pre-cursor of the later published EASE-scale. Additionally, we examined the development of positive and negative syndromes and of the Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF). RESULTS: There was a high correlation between self-disorders at baseline and at follow-up, and the majority of the items in self-disorders scale showed equal proportions between baseline and follow-up. CONCLUSION: Self-disturbances showed a high level of persistence at 5-year follow-up.

Anomalies of subjective experience in schizophrenia and psychotic bipolar illness.

OBJECTIVE: Contemporary psychopathology, as a result of behaviourally dominated epistemological stance, downplays anomalies of the patient's subjectivity. This neglect has probably deleterious consequences for research in the causes and the boundaries of the schizophrenia spectrum conditions. The purpose of this study is to explore frequency of qualitative, not-yet-psychotic, anomalies of subjective experience in patients with residual schizophrenia and psychotic bipolar illness in remission. METHOD: The patients were examined with the Danish version of the Bonn Scale for the Assessment of Basic Symptoms (BSABS). Anomalies of experience were condensed into rational scales with good internal consistencies. RESULTS: Diagnosis of schizophrenia was associated with elevated scores on the scales measuring perplexity (loss of immediate meaning), disorders of perception, disorders of self-awareness, and marginally so, disorders of cognition. CONCLUSION: These findings, in conjunction with those from other, methodologically similar studies, suggest that certain anomalies of subjective experience aggregate significantly in schizophrenia. These experiential anomalies appear to be relevant for early differential diagnosis and therefore potentially useful in the preonset detection of the schizophrenia spectrum illness.

[Aspiration pneumonia caused by an alternative drug]. / Aspirationspneumoni forårsaget af naturmedicin.

A case of aspiration pneumonia caused by an alternative drug in a 86-year old women is presented. Complications in the form of acute myocardial infarction with pulmonary oedema and left bundle branch block led to the death of the patient.

A sensitive solid-phase immunosorbent assay for tissue-type plasminogen activator activity in plasma using trinitrobenzoylated poly-D-lysine as a stimulator for plasminogen activation.

A sensitive, specific and precise immunosorbent assay for tissue-type plasminogen activator (t-PA) activity in plasma was developed. It measured the single-chain and the two-chain forms of t-PA with equal sensitivity. The assay involved (I) coating of wells in microtiter plates with a monoclonal antibody directed towards an epitope on t-PA apart from the catalytic active site, (II) binding of t-PA to the solid-phase antibody, (III) activation of plasminogen by antibody-bound t-PA in the presence of a new potent stimulator, trinitrobenzyl alkylated poly-D-lysine (TNB-poly-D-lysine) and measurement of plasmin activity with D-Val-Leu-Lys-pNA. Plasma samples were acid-treated and diluted 80 times in order to minimize the inhibitory effect of plasma on the assays. The assay could be performed within one working day with precoated microtiter plates. The sensitivity of the assay for t-PA in plasma was 1 pM (approximately 70 ng/l). The recoveries of single-chain and two-chain t-PA added to plasma was 97-104%. The intraassay coefficient of variation was 3.4-5.1% and the interassay coefficient of variation was 7.8-18%. Resting values of t-PA in plasma for 42 healthy subjects ranged between 0 and 30 pM (median: 4.1 pM). The values after 10 min venous occlusion ranged between 1.2 and 520 pM (median: 100 pM). The t-PA concentrations determined by the immunosorbent assay correlated well with euglobulin clot lysis time measurements (r = 0.940).