Factors associated with emotional distress and suicide ideation among international college students.

Objective: To identify risk and protective factors associated with greater emotional distress and suicide ideation among international college students. Participants: International students (n = 435) from two Midwestern and two Southeastern universities in the US. Methods: Online surveys were administered that measured emotional distress, past-year suicide ideation, entrapment, cultural stress, family conflict, perfectionism, ethnic discrimination, interpersonal needs, ethnic identity, and cultural sanctions against suicide. Results: In final linear regression analyses, higher levels of entrapment, unmet interpersonal needs, and ethnic discrimination were significantly associated with increased emotional distress. Only unmet interpersonal needs remained significantly associated with greater past-year suicide ideation in a multivariate regression analysis. Conclusions: Clinicians working with international students and prevention programmers targeting this population should address students' perceptions of entrapment, ethnic discrimination, and especially unmet interpersonal needs in efforts to decrease or prevent students' feelings of emotional distress and suicide ideation.

Antral follicle size in the downregulated cycle and its relation to in vitro fertilization outcome.

AIM: In this study, we have attempted to relate the antral follicle size on day 3 of downregulation to the in vitro fertilization (IVF) outcome and hence test its predictive value for IVF outcome. SETTINGS AND DESIGN: Teaching hospital, prospective double-blinded cohort study. The sonographer was blinded toward the patient profile whereas the follicular size on day 3 was concealed from the clinicians. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Two hundred and twenty-eight patients undergoing the long protocol programme for IVF/intracytoplasmic sperm injection at the Institution are included in this study. The antral follicle size on day 3 of the downregulated cycle was measured for all patients and, based on the size, they were divided into three groups: Group I (0-3 mm), Group II (3-6 mm), and Group III (6-9 mm), Various outcome measures taken into account were amount and number of days of gonadotropin required, basal estradiol and follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) level, zooming of follicles, and quality of oocytes. STATISTICAL ANALYSIS USED: Data were analyzed using the Graphpad software with a microsoft excel spread sheet. A P-value < 0.05 (Fisher exact test) was taken to be significant. Multinomial regression tests were used as appropriate. RESULTS: A significant number of follicles were in the 3-6 mm group whereas the population below 35 years constituted the majority. There was no significant difference in basal estradiol and FSH levels among the three groups. Accelerated growth of follicles (zooming) was significantly associated with bigger antral follicles ( P < 0.001) whereas poor quality oocytes were significantly higher in Group 1. CONCLUSION: The significant number of poor quality of oocytes produced by such follicles whereas zooming of follicles among the bigger antral follicle group suggest their accelerated development potential and hence the dose of gonadotropin should be adjusted accordingly, indicating evidence of intrinsic abnormality of folliculogenesis in very small follicles.

Pregnancy in a patient with hypopituitarism following surgery and radiation for a pituitary adenoma.

This is a case of partial hypopituitarism resulting from surgery and radiation for a non- functioning pituitary macroadenoma. The patient had amenorrhea which was secondary to hypogonadotrophic hypogonadism and had been on L-thyroxine for central hypothyroidism. For pregnancy, ovulation was induced by gonadotrophins and this was followed by an intrauterine insemination. The antenatal period was uneventful and a Caesarean section was done at 33 weeks when the patient presented with preterm labour. Both infant and mother are well, eight months after delivery.

Characterization and use of a recombinant retroviral system for the analysis of drug resistant HIV.

A recombinant retroviral system was used for the analysis of early HIV breakthrough infection in the presence of antiviral drugs. The use of replication-defective HIV allowed a quantitative analysis of a single cycle of infection. This report characterizes this recombinant HIV system and demonstrates it's validity in comparison to standard assays. It is demonstrated that the protease inhibitor XM323 inhibits both early and late events in the HIV life-cycle, while dextran sulphate inhibits only early events. In addition, it is shown that this system can be used for detecting and quantitating drug resistant HIV. Thus, the use of this system may provide both novel information about the stage of the viral life-cycle inhibited and a preliminary assessment of the mechanism(s) responsible for breakthrough infection in the presence of antiretroviral drugs.