Meta-analysis of the adoption of omalizumab in the treatment of pediatric allergic diseases.

Introduction: Allergic diseases are common chronic conditions in children, omalizumab has a wide range of adoptions in various diseases. A meta-analysis was implemented to demonstrate the efficacy of omalizumab in the therapy of pediatric allergic diseases. Materials and methods: English databases were searched. The search terms included "Omalizumab", "Children", "Allergic asthma", and "Atopic dermatitis". The literature was screened regarding inclusion and exclusion criteria, and data were extracted and analyzed using RevMan5.3. Results: a total of six suitable studies, comprising 2761 patients, were selected for inclusion. The meta-analysis results implied that at 24 weeks, OR for worsening of symptoms in children was 0.10 (95 % confidence interval [CI] 0.03-0.41), Z = 3.24, P = 0.001 (P < 0.05); at 52 weeks, OR was 0.27 (95 % CI 0.09-0.83), Z = 2.28, P = 0.02 (P < 0.05); and during treatment, OR for adverse events in children was 0.87 (95 % CI 0.60-1.29), Z = 0.68, P = 0.49 (P > 0.05). Conclusion: the study comprised six investigations that examined the effectiveness of omalizumab in treating pediatric allergic diseases. The findings demonstrated that, in comparison to standard treatment, omalizumab can greatly alleviate allergy-related clinical symptoms in children, slow down disease progression, and has a higher safety profile with fewer adverse reactions. These results have practical implications and highlight the potential value of omalizumab in pediatric allergy treatment.

Sex differences of hemispheric lateralization for faces and Chinese characters in early perceptual processing.

Previous event-related potential studies showed that the N170 response is left-lateralized for words and right-lateralized for faces. Using a one-back repetition task, this study aimed to clarify sex differences in hemispheric specialization for both faces and words in early visual processing. We found that the N170 amplitude elicited by faces in males was right-lateralized, while in females it was bilateral. Interestingly, the N170 amplitude elicited by Chinese characters in males was bilateral, whereas in females it was left-lateralized. The N170 latency for faces was shorter in females than in males, whereas the N170 latency for Chinese characters was similar in females and males. The degree of lateralization of faces was significantly related to the degree of lateralization of Chinese characters in both the female and male groups. Therefore, sex differences in N170 hemispheric lateralization for faces are different from those for Chinese characters, and there are some links between the two categories of objects of expertise in early perceptual processing.

The effect of low versus high approach-motivated positive affect on the balance between maintenance and flexibility.

Successful goal-directed behavior in a constantly changing environment requires a balance between maintenance and flexibility. Although some studies have found that positive affect influences this balance differently than neutral affect, one recent study found that motivational intensity of positive affective states influences this balance in a cognitive set-shifting paradigm. However, working memory updating and set shifting are interrelated but distinct components of cognitive control. The present study examined the effect of low versus high approach-motivated positive affect on the balance between maintenance and flexibility in working memory. A simple cuing paradigm (the AX Continuous Performance Task) was employed, and neutral affect and high and low approach-motivated positive affect were induced using affective pictures. The results revealed that, relative to neutral affect, low approach-motivated positive affect attenuated maintenance and increased flexibility, whereas high approach-motivated positive affect promoted maintenance and decreased flexibility. These findings offer further evidence that the effects of positive affect on cognitive control are modulated by approach motivational intensity.

The Effect of Fearful Expressions on Multiple Face Tracking.

How does the visual system realize dynamic tracking? This topic has become popular within cognitive science in recent years. The classical theory argues that multiple object tracking is accomplished via pre-attention visual indexes as part of a cognitively impenetrable low-level visual system. The present research aimed to investigate whether and how tracking processes are influenced by facial expressions that convey abundant social information about one's mental state and situated environment. The results showed that participants tracked fearful faces more effectively than neutral faces. However, this advantage was only present under the low-attentional load condition, and distractor face emotion did not impact tracking performance. These findings imply that visual tracking is not driven entirely by low-level vision and encapsulated by high-level representations; rather, that facial expressions, a kind of social information, are able to influence dynamic tracking. Furthermore, the effect of fearful expressions on multiple face tracking is mediated by the availability of attentional resources.

Design, synthesis, and biological evaluation of deuterated C-aryl glycoside as a potent and long-acting renal sodium-dependent glucose cotransporter 2 inhibitor for the treatment of type 2 diabetes.

SGLT2 inhibitors deuterated at sites susceptible to oxidative metabolism were found to have a slightly longer tmax and half-life (t1/2), dose-dependent increase in urinary glucose excretion (UGE) in rats, and slightly superior effects on UGE in dogs while retaining similar in vitro inhibitory activities against hSGLT2. In particular, deuterated compound 41 has the potential to be a robust long-acting antidiabetic agent.

Social cognition and interaction training for patients with stable schizophrenia in Chinese community settings.

Accumulated evidence suggests that Social Cognition and Interaction Training (SCIT) is associated with improved performance in social cognition and social skills in patients diagnosed with psychotic disorders. The current study examined the clinical utility of SCIT in patients with schizophrenia in Chinese community settings. Adults with stable schizophrenia were recruited from local community health institutions, and were randomly assigned to SCIT group (n = 22) or a waiting-list control group (n = 17). The SCIT group received the SCIT intervention plus treatment-as-usual, whereas the waiting-list group received only treatment-as-usual during the period of the study. All patients were administered the Chinese versions of the Personal and Social Performance Scale (PSP), Face Emotion Identification Task (FEIT), Eyes task, and Attributional Style Questionnaire (ASQ) at baseline of the SCIT treatment period and at follow-up, 6 months after completion of the 20-week treatment period. Patients in SCIT group showed a significant improvement in the domains of emotion perception, theory of mind, attributional style, and social functioning compared to those in waiting-list group. Findings indicate that SCIT is a feasible and promising method for improving social cognition and social functioning among Chinese outpatients with stable schizophrenia.

Dissociation of understanding from applying others' false beliefs in remitted schizophrenia: evidence from a computerized referential communication task.

BACKGROUND: In research on theory of mind (ToM), false belief paradigms are commonly used. Previous studies have reported that there is heterogeneity in the magnitude of impairment on false belief tasks. Moreover, intact ability to attribute others' false beliefs has been widely reported in patients with remitted schizophrenia. Increasingly, evidence suggests that there may be different cognitive mechanisms underlying the understanding others' false beliefs versus applying one's knowledge of others' false beliefs. Since the role of psychotic symptoms in ToM impairments is an important issue in the study of ToM deficits in schizophrenia, we examined both remitted schizophrenia and non-remitted schizophrenia, with the aim to investigate whether psychotic symptoms in schizophrenia are associated with deficits in understanding others' mental states or difficulties in applying this understanding. METHODS: The present study investigated 29 patients with non-remitted schizophrenia, 19 patients with remitted schizophrenia, and 22 healthy controls with a revised computerized referential communication task. The ability to understand others' false beliefs and the ability to apply others' false beliefs were measured separately. RESULTS: Patients with non-remitted schizophrenia performed significantly worse than patients with remitted schizophrenia and healthy controls on a task of understanding others' false beliefs, whereas no significant difference was found between the patients with remitted schizophrenia and healthy controls. Both the patients with non-remitted schizophrenia and patients with remitted schizophrenia performed significantly worse than healthy controls on a task of applying others' false beliefs. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggested a dissociation of understanding others' false beliefs from applying others' false beliefs in remitted schizophrenia. We preliminarily conclude that deficits in the ToM ability of applying knowledge of others' mental states might be state-dependent.

[Natural outcome and risk-prediction model of late-life depression].

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the prevalence and natural outcome of late-life depression in the community and to analyze the risk-prediction models. METHODS: A community in Hang Zhou was selected as a trial. A total of 1 275 persons aged 60 or more in this community were screened by PHQ-9 questionnaire; SCID was used for interviewer to diagnostic interview the people whose PHQ-9 was more than 10 points, 50 % of those whose PHQ-9 was from 5 to 9 points and 5 % of those whose PHQ-9 was less than 5 points, then all those who accepted diagnostically interview were interviewed by PHQ-9 every 3 months in one year, and were diagnostic interviewed by SCID in the last month. Logistic regression analysis was used to explore depressive risk factors in 12 months. RESULTS: There were 141 (11.1%) persons whose PHQ-9 score was more than 10 points, 298 (23.4%) whose PHQ-9 score were 5-9 points, and 836 (65.5%) whose PHQ-9 score were 0 to 4 points in the preliminary survey, 93 were major depressive disorder (MDD). The prevalence of late-life depression was 7.3%. Compared with the PHQ-9 score in one year, 17.6% of those with no depressive symptoms emerged depression; 50% of those who had depressive symptoms declined, 9% developed to significant depressive symptoms, and 41% did not change; 12% of those with significant depressive symptoms were found no depression, 24% reduced, and 64% still had depression. The significant predictors were the accumulation of disease, social support, educational level, daily capacity and baseline of depression. CONCLUSION: The prevalence of late-life depression was high. The rates of recognition, diagnosis and treatment were low. The natural outcome after a year did not relieve apparently. Specialist-community health partnership management model is one of the important ways to prevent and treat late-life depression.

Different efficiencies of attentional orienting in different wandering minds.

This study examined the relations between properties of attentional networks and Mind Wandering (MW) across individuals. For the attentional networks, we measured three components of attention, known as alerting, orienting, and executive control, using the Attention Network Test (ANT). To investigate MW, we measured thought probes embedded in the Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART). Moreover, four performance characteristics of the SART were calculated as behavioral indices of MW. Three of them showed significant associations with probed MW. Most research regarding MW focused on its relation to executive functions, while the present study revealed that MW, as indexed by self-reports and RT variability, was negatively correlated with orienting, specifically the exogenous orienting system. Furthermore, there was a positive association between RT variability and executive control. Our results suggest that individuals with higher tendency of MW are less sensitive to irrelevant external stimuli, supporting the decoupling hypothesis of MW.

C-aryl glucosides substituted at the 4'-position as potent and selective renal sodium-dependent glucose co-transporter 2 (SGLT2) inhibitors for the treatment of type 2 diabetes.

A series of C-aryl glucosides with various substituents at the 4'-position of the distal aryl ring have been synthesized and evaluated for inhibition of hSGLT1 and hSGLT2. Introduction of alkyl or alkoxy substituents at the 4'-position was found to improve SGLT2 potency, whereas introduction of a hydrophilic group at this position was deleterious. Compounds with alkoxy-, cycloalkoxy- or cycloalkenyloxy-ethoxy scaffolds exhibited good inhibitory activity and high selectivity toward SGLT2. Selected compounds were investigated for in vivo efficacy.

Depression care management for late-life depression in China primary care: protocol for a randomized controlled trial.

BACKGROUND: As a major public health issue in China and worldwide, late-life depression is associated with physical limitations, greater functional impairment, increased utilization and cost of health care, and suicide. Like other chronic diseases in elders such as hypertension and diabetes, depression is a chronic disease that the new National Health Policy of China indicates should be managed in primary care settings. Collaborative care, linking primary and mental health specialty care, has been shown to be effective for the treatment of late-life depression in primary care settings in Western countries. The primary aim of this project is to implement a depression care management (DCM) intervention, and examine its effectiveness on the depressive symptoms of older patients in Chinese primary care settings. METHODS/DESIGN: The trial is a multi-site, primary clinic based randomized controlled trial design in Hangzhou, China. Sixteen primary care clinics will be enrolled in and randomly assigned to deliver either DCM or care as usual (CAU) (8 clinics each) to 320 patients (aged ≥ 60 years) with major depression (20/clinic; n = 160 in each treatment condition). In the DCM arm, primary care physicians (PCPs) will prescribe 16 weeks of antidepressant medication according to the treatment guideline protocol. Care managers monitor the progress of treatment and side effects, educate patients/family, and facilitate communication between providers; psychiatrists will provide weekly group psychiatric consultation and CM supervision. Patients in both DCM and CAU arms will be assessed by clinical research coordinators at baseline, 4, 8, 12, 18, and 24 months. Depressive symptoms, functional status, treatment stigma and clients' satisfaction will be used to assess patients' outcomes; and clinic practices, attitudes/knowledge, and satisfaction will be providers' outcomes. DISCUSSION: This will be the first trial of the effectiveness of a collaborative care intervention aiming to the management of late-life depression in China primary care. If effective, its finding will have relevance to policy makers who wish to scale up DCM treatments for late-life depression in national wide primary care across China. STUDY REGISTRATION: The DCM project is registered through the National Institutes of Health sponsored by clinical trials registry and has been assigned the identifier: NCT01287494.

Is quarantine related to immediate negative psychological consequences during the 2009 H1N1 epidemic?

OBJECTIVE: To investigate whether being quarantined to contain H1N1 flu transmission is related to immediate negative psychological consequences or not. METHODS: Immediate psychological consequences were evaluated with the 20-item Self-Report Questionnaire (SRQ-20) and the Impact of Event Scale-Revised (IES-R) among 419 undergraduate students (176 being quarantined and 243 being nonquarantined). RESULTS: No significant difference was found between the quarantined group and the nonquarantined group for IES-R screening-positive rate or SRQ-20 screening-positive rate. Multinomial logistic regression analyses indicated that dissatisfaction with control measures was the significant predictor of both SRQ-20 positive screening (OR=2.22) and IES-R positive screening (OR=2.22). CONCLUSION: These results are consistent with the conclusion that quarantine does not have negative psychological effects under these circumstances.

ortho-Substituted C-aryl glucosides as highly potent and selective renal sodium-dependent glucose co-transporter 2 (SGLT2) inhibitors.

A series of 2-substituted C-aryl glucosides have been synthesized and evaluated for inhibition of hSGLT1 and hSGLT2. Introduction of an appropriate ortho substituent at the proximal phenyl ring adjacent to the glycosidic bond was found to improve SGLT2 inhibitory activity and dramatically increase selectivity for hSGLT2 over hSGLT1. Selected compounds were investigated for in vivo efficacy.

Player-spectator discrepancies on risk preference during decision making.

Risk preference during decision making depends not only on the potential risk and profits but also on the roles taken in the current task. Those who perform tasks are more risk-seeking than those who only watch. Given the prominent effect of experiencing the task, the player-spectator discrepancies are supposed to arise in the experiencing phase instead of the choosing phase. In the present study, the authors separated the experiencing role and the choosing role through a stylus maze task in which participants first performed in pairs-one as the player and the other as the spectator-and then chose from two rewarding options for themselves or their partners. The findings show that the experience as players induced a risk-seeking tendency in decision making, which suggests that it was the experiencing role, rather than the choosing role, that caused the difference of risk preference, at least for financially motivated groups and under similar task conditions.

Reliability and validity of the PHQ-9 for screening late-life depression in Chinese primary care.

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to examine the reliability and validation of the 9-item Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) for late-life depression in Chinese primary care. METHODS: In the primary care clinics (PCCs) of Hangzhou city, we recruited 364 older patients (aged ≥ 60) for the PHQ-9 screening. Then 77 of them were further interviewed with Structured Clinical Interview for DSM Disorders (SCID) for the diagnosis of major depression in late life. Statistic strategies for the feasibility, reliability, validity, and receiver operating characteristic curve were performed. RESULTS: The mean administration time was 7.5 min, and the Cronbach's α was 0.91. The optimal cut-off score of PHQ-9 ≥ 9 revealed a sensitivity of 0.86, specificity of 0.77, and positive likelihood ratio of 5.73. The area under the curve (AUC) in this study was 0.92 (SD = 0.02, 95% CI 0.88-0.96). The PHQ-2 also revealed good sensitivity (0.84) and specificity (0.90) at the cut-off point ≥ 3. CONCLUSIONS: The PHQ-9 performs well and has acceptable psychometric properties for screening of patients with late-life depression in Chinese primary care settings.

Exploration of O-spiroketal C-arylglucosides as novel and selective renal sodium-dependent glucose co-transporter 2 (SGLT2) inhibitors.

A series of novel O-spiroketal C-arylglucosides have been prepared and evaluated in cell-based functional assays for activity against human sodium-dependent glucose co-transporters 1 and 2 (SGLT1 and 2). The core spiro[isobenzofuran-1,2'-pyran] structure proved to be an effective scaffold for diversification and a number of compounds with single digit nanomolar potency and high selectivity have been synthesized. Compound 5a promoted glucosuria when administered in vivo in rats and produced a significant blood glucose reduction effect.

O-Spiro C-aryl glucosides as novel sodium-dependent glucose co-transporter 2 (SGLT2) inhibitors.

Two series of O-spiro C-aryl glucosides were synthesized and tested for inhibition of hSGLT1 and hSGLT2. 6'-O-Spiro C-aryl glucosides exhibited potent in vitro hSGLT2 inhibitory activity but 2'-O-spiro C-aryl glucosides showed no in vitro hSGLT2 inhibitory activity at a screening concentration of 1microM.

Insular cortex involvement in declarative memory deficits in patients with post-traumatic stress disorder.

BACKGROUND: Neuroimaging studies have proved that hippocampus relate to the deficient of memory in patients with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Many studies in healthy subjects also shown that insular cortex (IC) be involved in the declarative memory. This study was designed to investigate whether insular cortex is involved in declarative memory deficits in patients with PTSD. METHODS: Twelve subjects with PTSD and 12 subjects without PTSD victims underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging and magnetic resonance imaging. All subjects performed encoding and retrieval memory tasks during the fMRI session. Voxel-based morphometry method was used to analyze gray-matter volume, and the Statistical Parametric Mapping (SPM2) was used to analyze activated brain areas when performing tasks. RESULTS: Grey matter volume was significantly reduced bilaterally in the insular cortex of PTSD subjects than non-PTSD. PTSD group also had lower level of activation in insular cortex when performing word encoding and retrieval tasks than non-PTSD group. CONCLUSION: The study provides evidence on structural and function abnormalities of the insular cortex in patients with PTSD. Reduced grey-matter volume in insular cortex may be associated with declarative memory deficits in patients with PTSD.

Dimension-based working memory-driven capture of visual selection.

We studied attentional capture by dimensional cueing of visual objects. Participants received two dimension cues, one relevant for a memory test and the other relevant for an attention test. Performance in the attention task was impaired on incongruent trials (i.e., when the relevant dimensions for memory and attention did not match) relative to congruent trials. Dimensional cueing effects were enhanced when the cued dimension was held "online" in working memory through the trial, compared to when the cued dimension did not have to be held in memory. The findings demonstrate that dimensional cueing of visual selection can occur in a largely automatic manner, with working memory exerting a strong modulatory influence. We discuss the implications of these findings for understanding the interaction between memory and attention.