Biomedical subjects

D Guthrie

Publications and source records attributed to D Guthrie.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

PubMed1996

Screening by the prostate-specific antigen test: what do the patients know?

BACKGROUND: Prostate cancer is the most common malignancy in men, and prostate cancer screening is recommended for all men over the age of 50. The use of the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test for cancer screening is controversial. METHODS: At two different Veterans Administration facilities, outpatients completed a 15-item questionnaire about their knowledge of the PSA test two weeks after receiving a screening test. RESULTS: Demographic characteristics of the patients are described and examined in relation to the results of the PSA-test-knowledge questions. Over 50% of men had not heard of the PSA test and were unaware of receiving the test. Higher education level was the only predictor of PSA-test knowledge. CONCLUSIONS: Either patients forget information about the PSA test or providers do not tell patients they are being screened for cancer. Further research and interventions are needed to improve patient knowledge and understanding about this prostate cancer screening test.

Adult↗

PubMed1996

Conversational repair in schizophrenic and normal children.

OBJECTIVE: Children acquire the skills to monitor the adequacy of their spoken message and to self-initiate repair strategies that modify the message during early, middle, and late childhood. To characterize further the communication deficits of childhood-onset schizophrenia, this study compared self-initiated repair strategies in schizophrenic and normal children and their relationship with formal thought disorder, discourse deficits, and distractibility. METHOD: Measures of self-initiated repair, formal thought disorder, and cohesion were coded in 32 schizophrenic and 47 normal children, aged 5.6 to 12.4 years, from speech samples elicited with the Story Game. RESULTS: The schizophrenic children used some repair strategies (false starts, fillers, referential revision) more infrequently than the normal children. Within the schizophrenic group, the children who were receiving neuroleptic medication underutilized repair and had more discourse deficits than the unmedicated patients. Loose associations and distractibility were associated with increased use of false starts but not fillers. CONCLUSIONS: In addition to formal thought disorder and discourse deficits, schizophrenic children underutilize self-initiated repair when presenting their thoughts to the listener, particularly if they are being treated with neuroleptics, a potential sign of increased clinical morbidity. Impoverished communication skills might reflect negative signs in childhood-onset schizophrenia.

Attention↗

PubMed1996

Effect sizes and p values: what should be reported and what should be replicated?

Despite publication of many well-argued critiques of null hypothesis testing (NHT), behavioral science researchers continue to rely heavily on this set of practices. Although we agree with most critics' catalogs of NHT's flaws, this article also takes the unusual stance of identifying virtues that may explain why NHT continues to be so extensively used. These virtues include providing results in the form of a dichotomous (yes/no) hypothesis evaluation and providing an index (p value) that has a justifiable mapping onto confidence in repeatability of a null hypothesis rejection. The most-criticized flaws of NHT can be avoided when the importance of a hypothesis, rather than the p value of its test, is used to determine that a finding is worthy of report, and when p approximately equal to .05 is treated as insufficient basis for confidence in the replicability of an isolated non-null finding. Together with many recent critics of NHT, we also urge reporting of important hypothesis tests in enough descriptive detail to permit secondary uses such as meta-analysis.

Psychophysiology↗

PubMed1996

First record of Aedes albopictus from New Jersey.

In early August 1995, Aedes albopictus was detected in a light trap collection at a coastal location of Monmouth County, NJ. Larval surveillance indicated the species was breeding in a variety of containers over an area of at least 1.0 km2. This New Jersey record currently represents the northernmost breeding population of Ae. albopictus on the eastern seaboard. The collection site is very close to the 0 degree C daily mean January isotherm that has been used as a conservative estimate for the northern limit of this mosquito's overwintering range.

Aedes↗

PubMed1996

Family responses to children with early developmental delays. II: Accommodation intensity and activity in early and middle childhood.

Families were interviewed about functional accommodations made to sustain daily routines for a child with disabilities. Accommodation intensities were unchanged from ages 3 to 7 and declined from 7 to 11. However, number of accommodation types increased dramatically from 3 to 11. By late childhood, on average, families broadened the scope of their accommodations but reduced the intensity with which they made them. Accommodations are a continuing feature of family adaptation to developmental disabilities in late childhood rather than a feature of certain developmental periods. They are most consistently associated with child characteristics that directly impact the daily routine.

Activities of Daily Living↗

PubMed1995

Exploring the concept of health among adolescents with diabetes using photography.

The purpose of this study was to explore and describe the concept of health among adolescents with diabetes. Photography was used to facilitate communication. Participants were given Polaroid cameras with instructions to take pictures illustrating health. They were then asked to explain in writing how their pictures demonstrated the concept. The participants produced 46 pictures and 53 descriptive expressions, which were analyzed for content. Health was described as energy, positive feelings, absence of illness, strength, activity, fitness, mental ability, and relationships. There were also descriptions of what one does to be healthy, which included eating nutritious food, exercising, engaging in diabetes-related care, sleeping, studying, relaxing, maintaining hygiene, and obtaining shelter.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1995

Programmed cell death enhances uniformity in rat cerebral hemispheres.

Programmed cell death (apoptosis) in rat cerebral hemispheres (CH) reportedly occurs around postnatal day 7 and kills 15-75% of all cells whose continuing presence would be of disadvantage for the organism: neurons erroneously connected, or supranumerary neurons that do not find targets and are not protected by neurotrophins. In the present paper we report that apoptosis (or a concomitant phenomenon) reduces also variability (coefficient of variation, CV) of CH parameters: weight, DNA content and protein content (presented here as a percent of the mean of each of these parameters). Postapoptotic brains have significantly lower CV of these parameters than the preapoptotic brains. Presumably, this trend toward uniformity offers selective advantages (for rat) and established itself during evolution. The mechanisms and the control of this phenomenon are at present largely unknown.

Animals↗

PubMed1995

Office abortion services for women: private physician providers.

Research suggests that private physician providers of office abortions and the women who seek their services are not included in nationwide surveys of abortion statistics. This study describes the demographic characteristics of private physicians and the prevalence of abortions performed in their offices in Los Angeles County, California, a state in which office abortions are prohibited by law. Factors that influence physicians' decisions to provide the service, as well as the age and ethnicity of the office abortion recipients, are examined. Of 1,004 California Medical Association members who practiced obstetrics and gynecology in Los Angeles County during 1990, 49% returned anonymous, confidential surveys. Seventy percent of physicians had performed at least one abortion in California, and 29% were currently providing this service in their offices. Physician gender, age, ethnicity, and religion were associated with performing abortions. The average abortion patient was not young and ethnic, but White, middle-class, and in her mid- to late twenties. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Abortion, Legal↗

PubMed1994

Continuous-processing related ERPS in schizophrenic and normal children.

The continuous performance task (CPT) has proven to be sensitive to schizophrenic impairments. Multichannel event-related potential (ERP) data were recorded from schizophrenic and normal children during performance of easy and hard versions of the CPT. Schizophrenics produced fewer hits, more false alarms, and prolonged reaction times. Poor performance in schizophrenics was associated with four ERP abnormalities: (1) Schizophrenics did not exhibit the normal increase in amplitude of an early-onset, processing-related negativity from nontarget to target stimuli, suggesting a failure to appropriately allocate attentional resources to discriminative processing. (2) Although P3 amplitude to targets was not significantly smaller in schizophrenic children, the distribution of P3 amplitude between target and nontarget responses in the easy and hard versions of the CPT was abnormal, suggesting that schizophrenics differed in the strategic allocation of resources in later stages of CPT processing. (3) In all task conditions schizophrenics showed a parietal negative component with a latency of 400 msec seen in younger, but not older normal children, suggestive of maturational lag. (4) ERP data demonstrated absence of right-lateralized P1/N1 amplitude in schizophrenic children. Taken together these data indicate that at several stages of information processing, schizophrenics are deficient in the control and strategic allocation of processing resources.

Attention↗

PubMed1994

Blink rate in childhood schizophrenia spectrum disorder.

Spontaneous blink rate, a putative measure of dopamine function, was measured in schizophrenic, schizotypal, and normal children, aged 5.6-13.2 years during three different cognitive tasks. Unlike that of schizophrenic adults, the blink rate of the schizophrenic children who were not on neuroleptics was significantly lower than that of the normal children. There were no statistically significant differences, however, in the blink rates of the neuroleptic-treated schizophrenic children and the normal children. The schizophrenic and schizotypal children had similar spontaneous blink rates. Within each diagnostic group, the blink rate was lowest for listening, intermediate for conversation, and highest for verbal recall. These findings highlight the need to examine the relationship between age, blink rate, and dopamine function in childhood-onset schizophrenia spectrum disorder.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1994

Influence of language structure on brain-behavior development.

Lack of exposure to specific sensory patterns during critical periods of development can result in a lack of responsiveness to those stimuli in adulthood. The present study extends these observations to native speakers of Japanese, a language which does not contain the contrastive /r/ and /l/ sounds present in English. Both electrophysiological (P3 event-related evoked potential) and behavioral results indicate deficient or absent discrimination of /r/ versus /l/ sounds in Japanese adults compared to native speakers of English. Thus, language structure appears to provide a subtle yet measurable effect on specific aspects of brain development and function.

Adult↗

PubMed1994

Family-expressed emotion, childhood-onset depression, and childhood-onset schizophrenia spectrum disorders: is expressed emotion a nonspecific correlate of child psychopathology or a specific risk factor for depression?

Expressed emotion (EE) was examined, using the brief Five Minute Speech Sample measure, in families of (1) children with depressive disorders, (2) children with schizophrenia spectrum disorders, and (3) normal controls screened for the absence of psychiatric disorder. Consistent with the hypothesis of some specificity in the association between EE and the form of child disorder, rates of EE were significantly higher among families of depressed children compared to families of normal controls and families of children with schizophrenia spectrum disorders. Within the depressed group, the presence of a comorbid disruptive behavior disorder was associated with high levels of critical EE, underscoring the need to attend to comorbid patterns and subtypes of EE in future research.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1994

Information-processing deficits across childhood- and adult-onset schizophrenia.

Event-related potentials were recorded for childhood- and adult-onset schizophrenia subjects performing the span of apprehension (Span) task, which is sensitive to vulnerability factors in schizophrenia. Subjects responded to the onset of the Span arrays in a reaction time condition and then responded differentially to the presence of one of two target letters in the Span condition. While neither the childhood- nor the adult-onset group exhibited abnormalities in preparatory contingent negative variation activity, both groups produced significantly less endogenous negative activity between 100 and 300 ms after Span stimulus onset than age-matched normals. This endogenous negative activity reflects attentional effort associated with serial search and stimulus identification. These results support the position that schizophrenia subjects are impaired in their ability to allocate adequate attentional resources for processing Span stimuli. Moreover, the similarity of this information-processing deficit in the two groups suggests that childhood- and adult-onset schizophrenia lie on a continuum in this regard.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1994

Reduced attention-related negative potentials in schizophrenic adults.

Event-related potentials were recorded from outpatient adult schizophrenics receiving maintenance doses of neuroleptics and from normal control subjects during performance of a reaction time task and a complex visual discrimination task, the Span of Apprehension. Difference potentials were computed to isolate endogenous activity associated with the processing demands of the Span task. Schizophrenics produce significantly less early endogenous negative activity than do normal subjects. This processing-related negativity reflects pattern matching activity to an attentional trace during the serial scan of the visual icon. We previously reported an identical reduction in processing-related negativity in childhood-onset schizophrenia, suggesting that this deficit is age independent. Both frontal contingent negative variation and an early frontal P3 were larger in the schizophrenics than in normal subjects, suggesting an inappropriate mobilization of nonspecific attentional resources. A later posterior P3 was significantly smaller in schizophrenics than in normal subjects.

Adult↗

PubMed1994

The detection, quantification and partial characterisation of cathepsin B-like activity in human pathological synovial fluids.

In this study, the levels of the cysteine proteinase--cathepsin B were measured in diseased synovial fluids using a steady state fluorometric assay. Cathepsin B-like activity was shown to be present in all the samples analysed, with the rheumatoid arthritic synovial fluids possessing significantly higher concentrations (mean value ca. 416 mg/l) than the osteoarthritic fluids (mean value ca. 142.4 mg/l). In addition, upon treatment with pepsin, all of the rheumatoid arthritis samples were shown to possess additional cathepsin B-like activity, suggesting the presence of a reservoir of latent precursor molecules. By utilising a recently developed biotinylated affinity label for cathepsin B-like proteinases and sheep anti-(human cathepsin B) antibodies, used in combination with SDS-PAGE and Western blotting, the rheumatoid arthritic synovial cathepsin B was shown to exist in two forms with apparent molecular masses of M(r) 29,000 and 42,000. We propose that the former is a functionally active proteinase, whereas the latter is a pepsin activatable proform which, when cleaved by this aspartyl proteinase, is converted into a catalytically competent species of M(r) 20,000.

Affinity Labels↗

PubMed1993

Malignant melanoma. Effects of an early structured psychiatric intervention, coping, and affective state on recurrence and survival 6 years later.

OBJECTIVES: We evaluated recurrence and survival for 68 patients with malignant melanoma who participated in a 6-week structured psychiatric group intervention 5 to 6 years earlier, shortly after their diagnosis and initial surgical treatment. We also explored the role of several factors as possible predictors of outcome. DESIGN: This was a randomized controlled experimental study. The Cox proportion hazards regression model was used to quantify the relationship between treatment and the outcomes adjusted by the covariates (age, sex, Breslow depth, tumor site, baseline Profile of Mood States Total Mood Disturbance, baseline active-behavioral coping, baseline natural killer cell activity, and treatment [ie, group intervention]). The stepwise procedure was used for covariate selection. RESULTS: For control patients, there was a trend for recurrence (13/34) and a statistically significant greater rate of death (10/34) than for experimental patients (7/34 and 3/34, respectively). We found that being male and having a greater Breslow depth predicted greater recurrence and poorer survival. Analysis of multiple covariates found that only Breslow depth and treatment (ie, group intervention) were significant. Adjusting for Breslow depth, treatment effect remained significant. Finally, baseline affective distress and baseline coping were significant psychobehavioral predictors for recurrence and survival. Surprisingly, higher levels of baseline distress as well as baseline coping and enhancement of active-behavioral coping over time were predictive of lower rates of recurrence and death. CONCLUSION: Psychiatric interventions that enhance effective coping and reduce affective distress appear to have beneficial effects on survival but are not proposed as an alternative or independent treatment for cancer or any other illness or disease. However, the exact nature of this relationship warrants further investigation.

Adaptation, Psychological↗

PubMed1993

Event-related potentials in high-functioning adult autistics: linguistic and nonlinguistic visual information processing tasks.

Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from high-functioning adult autistics and age- and IQ-matched normal controls during performance of two non-linguistic information processing tasks, the Continuous Performance Task (CPT) and Span of Apprehension (SPAN), and an Idiom Recognition Task (IRT) involving idiomatic, literal and nonsense phrases. The autistics exhibited behavioral deficits only when attempting to identify idiomatic phrases. The ERP correlate of that deficit was greatly reduced N400 to idioms. In addition, autistics produced larger N1 amplitudes in all tasks, and larger P3s in the IRT and CPT.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1993

Communication deficits in children undergoing temporal lobectomy.

OBJECTIVE: To examine formal thought disorder and discourse (cohesive) devices that make speech coherent prospectively in seven children, aged 5.7 to 16.7 years, before and after temporal lobectomy for intractable cut points determined from sensitivity and specificity analyses of formal thought disorder and discourse measures in 22 children with complex partial seizure disorder and 45 normal children. RESULTS: Before surgery, the mean illogical thinking and discourse scores of the surgical candidates were in the pathological range. After a mean postoperative follow-up period of 15.1 months, their illogical thinking (but not their discourse scores) decreased significantly to the normal range. CONCLUSIONS: These preliminary findings are discussed in terms of the possible role of postsurgical changes in seizure control, behavior, antiepileptic drugs, cognition, and prefrontal function.

Adolescent↗