AIM: The World Health Organization has defined quality of life as "the perception of an individual, his/her place in life, in the context of the culture and the system of values in which he/she lives and in relation to his/her objectives, expectations, standards and concerns". The quality of life of the schizophrenic patients has been largely studied for the evaluation of their medical, social and therapeutic needs. The impact of neuroleptics, in particular atypical neuroleptics, on the subjective quality of life of these patients remains to be specified. The aim of this study was to compare the subjective quality of life of schizophrenic patients treated with classical neuroleptics (CN) or atypical neuroleptics (AN). METHODS: One hundred patients meeting DSM IV criteria for the diagnosis of schizophrenia (American Psychiatric Association, 1994) were included in the study. Sixty-four schizophrenic patients were treated with CN and thirty-six with AN. The symptomatology of the patients was assessed using the Positive And Negative Syndrome Scale, (PANSS, Kay et al., 1987) and the Schedule for the Deficit Syndrome (SDS, Kirkpatrick et al., 1989). The extra-pyramidal symptoms were assessed using the Extrapyramidal Symptom Rating Scale (Chouinard et al., 1980). The Subjective quality of life was studied using the Lehman Quality of Life Interview (QOLI, Lehman, 1988) translated and validated in France. RESULTS: The patients treated by CN did not differ from the patients treated by AN in terms of severity of the positive and negative symptoms. The patients treated with AN presented significantly less extrapyramidal side effects than the patients treated with CN. No significant difference in terms of quality of life was found between both groups of patients. CONCLUSION: The kind of neuroleptic (CN vs AC) does not seem to influence the quality of subjective life of schizophrenic patients.

Adult↗

PubMedDate not supplied

No evidence for involvement of KCNN3 (hSKCa3) potassium channel gene in familial and isolated cases of schizophrenia.

Several studies have reported in schizophrenia a decrease of age of onset in successive family generations, and this observation is consistent with anticipation. Anticipation is known to result from expansion of CAG repeats in several neurodegenerative disorders. Longer alleles of the KCNN3 gene, which contains a highly polymorphic CAG repeat, and encodes a neuronal small conductance calcium-activated potassium channel, have recently been shown to be over-represented in sporadic cases of schizophrenia. In this report, we tested the hypothesis of an association between longer alleles of CAG repeat in the KCNN3 gene and schizophrenia in 20 families with clinical evidence for anticipation and in 151 unrelated schizophrenic cases. No significant difference in the distributions of allele frequencies was observed between familial cases of schizophrenia and controls, and between unrelated cases and controls. Furthermore, no intergenerational CAG repeat instability was detected in the 20 families. Our results do not support the involvement of the KCNN3 (hSKCa3) gene in the etiology of schizophrenia.

Adult↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Objective and subjective extrapyramidal side effects in schizophrenia: their relationships with negative and depressive symptoms.

The aim of this study was to show that objective extrapyramidal symptoms (O-EPS) were strongly correlated to negative and depressive symptoms while subjective extrapyramidal symptoms (S-EPS) were not. Ninety-one schizophrenic patients were evaluated by the Extrapyramidal Symptoms Rating Scale (ESRS), Montgomery and Asberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS) and Scale for the Assessment of Negative Symptoms (SANS). While significant correlations were found between O-EPS and SANS (r = 0.51; p < 0.001) and between O-EPS and MADRS (r = 0.26; p < 0.01), no significant relationship existed between S-EPS and SANS (r = 0.19) or MADRS (r = 0.19). Similar results regarding the relationships between EPS and SANS were found in stabilized and acute subgroups and in deficit and nondeficit subgroups. A stepwise multiple regression showed that 41% of the variance of the SANS scores was due to facial mask and bradykinesia, and that 17% of the variance of the MADRS scores was due to facial mask and akathisia. This study shows the interest of evaluating subjective parkinsonism symptoms over objective ones since they are less interrelated to other symptoms, in particular to negatives ones.

Adult↗

PubMedDate not supplied

[Current therapeutic orientations for malignant teratomas of the testis with a choriocarcinomatous element. 14 cases (author's transl)].

In teratomas with a choriocarcinomatous element, the association with surgery of sequential chemotherapy lasting at least two years would appear to represent an improvement. Definitive conclusions may only be drawn from the study of large series.

Adolescent↗