Cerebrospinal fluid biomarkers in Parkinson's disease with freezing of gait: an exploratory analysis.

We explore the association between three Alzheimer's disease-related and ten inflammation-related CSF markers and freezing of gait (FOG) in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD). The study population includes PD patients with FOG (PD-FOG, N = 12), without FOG (PD-NoFOG, N = 19), and healthy controls (HC, N = 12). Age and PD duration are not significantly different between groups. After adjusting for covariates and multiple comparisons, the anti-inflammatory marker, fractalkine, is significantly decreased in the PD groups compared to HC (P = 0.002), and further decreased in PD-FOG compared to PD-NoFOG (P = 0.007). The Alzheimer's disease-related protein, Aß42, is increased in PD-FOG compared to PD-NoFOG and HC (P = 0.001). Group differences obtained in individual biomarker analyses are confirmed with multivariate discriminant partial least squares regression (P < 0.001). High levels of Aß42 in PD-FOG patients supports an increase over time from early to advanced state. Low levels of fractalkine might suggest anti-inflammatory effect. These findings warrant replication.

Randomised, placebo-controlled, double-blind, split-face study on the clinical efficacy of Tricutan on skin firmness.

Tricutan is a combination product of herbal extracts traditionally used for treatment of skin conditions, together with dimethylaminoethanol. The effectiveness of Tricutan in improving skin firmness and elasticity in photoaged facial skin was examined in a randomised, placebo-controlled, double-blind, split-face study in 28 women, 34-67 years old. Treatment with Tricutan and placebo was given for 4 weeks. Skin firmness and elasticity was evaluated using the speed of propagation of ultrasound shear waves in the skin as end point (Reviscometer RVM 600). The study was completed by 25 women. The Tricutan treatment resulted in a significantly reduced propagation speed indicating increased firmness. There was no immediate effect by Tricutan application on propagation speed. At self evaluation the women evaluated the treatment effect of Tricutan to be significantly better than the treatment effect of placebo. The clinical evaluation also showed Tricutan to give a significantly better treatment result than placebo. Tolerance to Tricutan was generally good. However, three women did not complete the study because of mild irritative contact dermatitis. The results show that Tricutan can increase skin firmness both objectively and subjectively. Further studies are warranted, especially to investigate if Tricutan can delay the need for surgical face-lift procedures.

Rumination and cigarette smoking: a bad combination for depressive outcomes?

Ruminative coping has been shown to heighten the risk and severity of depression. The authors hypothesized that ruminators who smoke would experience greater depressive symptoms than ruminators who do not. The rationale is that, by heightening attentional focus, nicotine may increase ruminators' ability to focus on negative thoughts, augmenting depressed mood. Participants (N = 145) self-reported smoking status, rumination, and current and lifetime depressive symptoms, including depressed mood. Results showed that rumination accounted for a larger amount of variance in current and past depressed mood and severity of lifetime depressive symptoms among smokers than nonsmokers. Noncorrelational, experimental research should directly test whether nicotine worsens depressed mood among ruminative smokers. Such evidence would be surprising because it would contradict the assumption that nicotine dispels negative moods.

A rose by any other name: Maintaining the name and highlighting the uniqueness of psychology as a health care profession.

In this article, we reply to the comments made by Holden and Levant (preceding articles). While we agree with their goals of expanding the scope of practice of psychology, standardizing training, and educating the public and other health care professionals about the field of clinical psychology, we do not agree that changing the discipline's name to "psychological physician" is a necessary or sufficient means to these ends. We outline the bases for our disagreement with the name change proposal and provide other proposals for reaching the goals set forth by Holden and Levant.