Search

The article presents a study of homicide between 1963 and 1966 in western Nigeria which found that 57 percent who were interviewed were mentally ill. The diagnostic categories are schizophrenia with the paranoid type predominating, schizo-affective, depression, acute distress and depression, psychomotor epilepsy, and three of undermined diagnosis. There was no appreciable difference found between the psychiatric cases and the others in their circumstances and in the execution of their crime. There appears to be a positive correlation between homicide and suicide geographically.

Serum copper concentrations were determined by atomic absorption spectrophotometry in 102 schizophrenic patients and 95 healthy control subjects. The serum copper concentrations were significantly higher in the schizophrenic patients than in the normal control subjects. The average serum copper in schizophrenic females was higher than in schizophrenic males, but the difference was not statistically significant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article describes six cases of tropical neuropathy with psychosis. They have recognized psychiatric disorder triggered by frank nutritional deficiency, and observed that it is quite possible for psychiatrics symptoms to be unleashed by nicotinic acid deficiency in the absence of physical signs of pellagra. The similarity between the psychosis associated with tropical neuropathy and puerperal psychosis goes beyond the mixture of organic and functional symptoms. Information about the reason for the clearing up of the psychosis and residual neurological signs of tropical neuropathy is also discussed.

An abstract entitled "The Nyctohemeral Rhythm of Plasma Cortisol in Mental Illness in Nigerians by B. Kwaku Adadevoh and Tolani Asuni is presented. This focuses on the assessment study to clarify conflicting data on adrenocortical function in mental illness, as well as replicate results with plasma cortisol measurements. Findings of the study are posted highlighting that the failures to replicate results was due to differences resulting from adjustments arising in chronic mental illnesses.

Several clinical calculators predict intensive care unit (ICU) mortality, however these are cumbersome and often require 24 h of data to calculate. Retrospective studies have demonstrated the utility of whole blood transcriptomic analysis in predicting mortality. In this study, we tested prospective validation of an 11-gene messenger RNA (mRNA) score in an ICU population. Whole blood mRNA from 70 subjects in the Stanford ICU Biobank with samples collected within 24 h of Emergency Department presentation were used to calculate an 11-gene mRNA score. We found that the 11-gene score was highly associated with 60-day mortality, with an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.68 in all patients, 0.77 in shock patients, and 0.98 in patients whose primary determinant of prognosis was acute illness. Subjects with the highest quartile of mRNA scores were more likely to die in hospital (40% vs 7%, p < 0.01) and within 60 days (40% vs 15%, p = 0.06). The 11-gene score improved prognostication with a categorical Net Reclassification Improvement index of 0.37 (p = 0.03) and an Integrated Discrimination Improvement index of 0.07 (p = 0.02) when combined with Simplified Acute Physiology Score 3 or Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation II score. The test performed poorly in the 95 independent samples collected > 24 h after emergency department presentation. Tests will target a 30-min turnaround time, allowing for rapid results early in admission. Moving forward, this test may provide valuable real-time prognostic information to improve triage decisions and allow for enrichment of clinical trials.

Improved identification of bacterial and viral infections would reduce morbidity from sepsis, reduce antibiotic overuse, and lower healthcare costs. Here, we develop a generalizable host-gene-expression-based classifier for acute bacterial and viral infections. We use training data (N = 1069) from 18 retrospective transcriptomic studies. Using only 29 preselected host mRNAs, we train a neural-network classifier with a bacterial-vs-other area under the receiver-operating characteristic curve (AUROC) 0.92 (95% CI 0.90-0.93) and a viral-vs-other AUROC 0.92 (95% CI 0.90-0.93). We then apply this classifier, inflammatix-bacterial-viral-noninfected-version 1 (IMX-BVN-1), without retraining, to an independent cohort (N = 163). In this cohort, IMX-BVN-1 AUROCs are: bacterial-vs.-other 0.86 (95% CI 0.77-0.93), and viral-vs.-other 0.85 (95% CI 0.76-0.93). In patients enrolled within 36 h of hospital admission (N = 70), IMX-BVN-1 AUROCs are: bacterial-vs.-other 0.92 (95% CI 0.83-0.99), and viral-vs.-other 0.91 (95% CI 0.82-0.98). With further study, IMX-BVN-1 could provide a tool for assessing patients with suspected infection and sepsis at hospital admission.

The chronicity and incurability of sickle cell anaemia reinforce the need to give particular attention to the psychosocial effect of the illness on the family. A 22-item schedule of burden with very high inter-rater reliability and modest validity is constructed and should be useful in the assessment of other similar chronic disorders. The phylogenetic origin of sickle-cell anaemia makes it essential that a psychological understanding of the disorder should be a component of the therapy arsenal of health professionals serving populations of African extraction.

Apart from cannabis abuse in northern and southern Africa and khat chewing in north-eastern Africa, the history of drug abuse in Africa is relatively short. The abuse of drugs in Africa is nevertheless escalating rapidly from cannabis abuse to the more dangerous drugs and from limited groups of drug users to a wider range of people abusing drugs. The most common and available drug of abuse is still cannabis, which is known to be a contributing factor to the occurrence of a schizophrenic-like psychosis. The trafficking in and abuse of cocaine and heroin are the most recent developments in some African countries that had had no previous experience with these drugs. Efforts should be made to design and implement drug abuse assessment programmes to determine the real magnitude and characteristics of the problem and to monitor its trends. A lack of funds and a shortage of adequately trained personnel have made it difficult to implement drug abuse control programmes. In addition to formal drug control involving the implementation of legislation, there is an informal system of drug abuse control operating through the family, church, school, neighbourhood and work environment, as well as healthy recreational activities. It is suggested that efforts in African countries should be directed towards strengthening not only the formal drug control system but also informal control in order to compensate for the insufficient funds and the shortage of personnel trained in implementing formal drug control measures. It is very likely that the drug problems in African countries will worsen in future unless more effective measures are implemented to arrest the current situation.

In a comparative study of a group of experimental and control subjects in Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica, Japan, Jordan, Italy, Malaysia, Singapore and the United States of America (State of New York), and of the results of independent studies conducted in Sweden and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, a rather close association was found to exist between drug abuse, criminal behaviour and social attitudes to such problems. Both drug abuse and the socio-legal systems varied greatly in the countries involved. No correlation was found between the level of foreseen or actual harshness of the socio-legal system and the level of seriousness of drug abuse and its associated criminality, but there was a significant correlation between knowledge of the law and the efficacy of the socio-legal system. In each country informal control systems, such as the family, church, school, neighbourhood and work environment, were active. Approximately one half of the subjects that were interviewed from countries with the most punitive socio-legal systems perceived informal controls as harsh and punitive while in the other countries such controls were generally perceived as positive. The study encouraged the review, testing and implementation of alternative measures to penal sanctions, particularly with a view to creating a genuine therapeutic approach to correcting the deviant behaviour of drug abusers.