Evaluation of drug use practices at primary healthcare centers of Kuwait

Purpose  

The aim of this study was to investigate current prescribing and dispensing practices at primary healthcare centers in Kuwait and compare them with those reported in other countries.     

Public knowledge and attitudes toward epilepsy in Kuwait

PURPOSE: The study was conducted to determine the familiarity with, knowledge of, misunderstandings, and attitudes toward epilepsy among the Kuwaiti population. METHODS: A pretested questionnaire was used to collect data from a sample of 784 Kuwaiti individuals, selected from five governorates in Kuwait using a multistage stratified clustered sampling. RESULTS: Seven hundred fifty-five subjects were interviewed, and 97.6% reported their awareness about epilepsy. Of these, 51.8% knew someone who had epilepsy, 56.4% had witnessed an epileptic seizure, 45.9% believed that epilepsy is a hereditary disease, 60.4% reported that "all epileptic fits manifest symptoms of generalized tonic-clonic seizure," 88.3% indicated that putting an object into the patient's mouth to prevent tongue biting during a seizure is appropriate, and 57.1% stated that drug therapy was the only treatment available for epilepsy. Objections to shake hands with, working with, marrying, and employing epileptic patients were reported by 16.0%, 24.8%, 71.6%, and 45.2%, respectively. Childbirth by epileptic women and allowing children to play with an epileptic child were opposed by 56.3% and 27.7%, respectively. A total of 370 (50.2%) agreed that epilepsy is equivalent to psychiatric disorder. DISCUSSION: The present findings have demonstrated that epilepsy is a well-known disease in Kuwait, and that negative attitudes toward epilepsy do prevail in Kuwait. The majority of the negative attitudes were significantly associated with the misunderstanding of epilepsy. Continuing effective educational interventions would be needed in order to improve the appropriate understanding of epilepsy, and to ameliorate the social discrimination and misconceptions against epileptic patients.     

Alcohol histories in hospital: does the age and sex of the patient make a difference?

The Editor welcomes all letters whether they are case reports, preliminary reports of research, discussion or comments on papers published in the journal. Letters commenting on a paper may be sent to the authors of that paper so that their reply may appear in the same issue. There is no rigid limit to length but in general the shorter the letter the better the chance of publication. Authors should follow the same guidelines given for the preparation and submission of articles on the inside back cover of each issue, especially that regarding tables or illustrations. Letters should be signed by all authors.     

Comparing human and mouse salivary glands: A practice guide for salivary researchers

Mice are a widely utilized in vivo model for translational salivary gland research but must be used with caution. Specifically, mouse salivary glands are similar in many ways to human salivary glands (i.e., in terms of their anatomy, histology, and physiology) and are both readily available and relatively easy and affordable to maintain. However, there are some significant differences between the two organisms, and by extension, the salivary glands derived from them must be taken into account for translational studies. The current review details pertinent similarities and differences between human and mouse salivary glands and offers practical guidelines for using both for research purposes.     

Detection of changes in material-specific memory following temporal lobectomy using the Wechsler Memory Scale-Revised.

To determine the utility of the Wechsler Memory Scale-Revised (WMS-R) in measuring material-specific memory changes, within-subject comparisons of the Verbal-Visual Memory Index discrepancy and discrepancy scores using short-term and delayed Logical Memory and Visual Reproduction subtests from the WMS-R were studied prior to and following temporal lobectomy among 30 patients with left temporal lobectomy, 30 with right temporal lobectomy, and 50 epileptic, non-surgical controls. The groups were matched on age, sex, handedness, age at seizure onset, duration of epilepsy, and presurgical Verbal and Performance IQ; the right temporal group had a higher mean educational level (p <.05). All surgical patients were left hemisphere dominant for speech; those who had persistent postoperative seizures were excluded from study. On retesting, left temporal lobectomy was associated with a marked change in short-term and delayed memory discrepancy scores primarily due to a drop in verbal memory. Right temporal lobectomy was not associated with a drop in visual memory, suggesting that the WMS-R appears to reflect decrements in material-specific memory following left but not right temporal lobectomy. The nonsurgical controls showed increases in both short-term and delayed memory discrepancy scores due to increases in short-term and delayed verbal memory. Relative to these controls, the absence of comparable increases in verbal memory among the right temporal patients suggests that right temporal lobectomy may be associated with risk to verbal memory.     

Industry Funding Is Correlated With Publication Productivity of US Academic Radiation Oncologists

Purpose

Industry payments to physicians are financial conflicts of interest and may influence research findings and medical decisions. We aim to (1) characterize industry payments within radiation oncology; and (2) explore the potential correlation between receiving disclosed industry payments and academic productivity.

The neural response to changing semantic and perceptual complexity during language processing

Speech comprehension involves processing at different levels of analysis, such as acoustic, phonetic, and lexical. We investigated neural responses to manipulating the difficulty of processing at two of these levels. Twelve subjects underwent positron emission tomographic scanning while making decisions based upon the semantic relatedness between heard nouns. We manipulated perceptual difficulty by presenting either clear or acoustically degraded speech, and semantic difficulty by varying the degree of semantic relatedness between words. Increasing perceptual difficulty was associated with greater activation of the left superior temporal gyrus, an auditory‐perceptual region involved in speech processing. Increasing semantic difficulty was associated with reduced activity in both superior temporal gyri and increased activity within the left angular gyrus, a heteromodal region involved in accessing word meaning. Comparing across all the conditions, we also observed increased activation within the left inferior prefrontal cortex as the complexity of language processing increased. These results demonstrate a flexible system for language processing, where activity within distinct parts of the network is modulated as processing demands change. Hum Brain Mapp, 2010. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.     

Genital psoriasis: a questionnaire‐based survey on a concealed skin disease in the Netherlands

Background Psoriatic lesions may involve nearly all sites of the body. Involvement of the genital skin is frequently classified as part of intertriginous psoriasis without special awareness and treatment for this presentation of the disease. Gaining knowledge about the frequency of the involvement of genital skin in these patients will improve the overall care for patients with psoriasis. Objectives We studied the prevalence of genital psoriasis in the Netherlands and epidemiological characteristics of this specific presentation of the disease. Furthermore, we studied the relation between flexural and genital psoriasis. Patients/Methods A self‐administered questionnaire was sent to all 5300 members of the Dutch Psoriasis Society. Sociodemographic patient characteristics and disease‐related data (such as localization of psoriatic lesions, involvement of the genitalia, age at onset of genital psoriasis and severity of genital psoriatic lesions) were collected and analysed. Results A response rate of 37% was achieved. Almost 46% of the responding patients with psoriasis, that is 16.5% of all potential responders (n = 5300), report genital involvement at some time during the course of their disease. The genitalia can become affected at any age. Many patients with current genital involvement (38%) do not have the flexural skin affected. Conclusions A large part of patients with psoriasis suffer from genital psoriasis, which was not associated with flexural involvement in at least one third of them. More attention to the genital region is required in the current standard treatment of both male and female psoriatic patients at any age.