Dissociative identity disorder and childhood trauma in Japan

A series of 15 cases of dissociative identity disorder (DID) was reviewed using an 85-item checklist. The cases resembled those seen in North America, particularly with respect to clinical symptoms, alter personalities and history of childhood trauma. The authors suggest that DID may be as common in Japan as in North America.     

Depressive disorders in children and adolescents

Depressive disorders in children and adolescents are valid clinical entities which can be identified using adult diagnostic criteria. Recent research has resulted in significant progress in the areas of diagnosis, epidemiology, family pathology, pharmacokinetics and psychopharmacology. Many rating instruments have been developed to screen, diagnose and measure changes of depression in children and adolescents. The prevalence of depressive disorders in prepubertal children is about 2% and in adolescents about 5%. Depressive episodes are usually of long duration, with high rates of relapse. These relapses are usually associated with school, family and social failure. Follow-up studies of depressed adolescents indicated that about half of the patients continue to suffer from mood disturbances and psycho-social adaptational problems. In North America suicidal behaviour in adolescents has increased 300% in the past 30 years. However, its relationship to depression is more complex than in adults. There is a significant excess of affective illness and alcoholism in the families of depressed adolescents. Similarly, there is a high rate of impairment among children of parents with affective disorders. During depressive episodes, prepubertal children show abnormalities of growth hormone and cortisol secretion. However, DST findings are contradictory. Polysomnographic findings in childhood depression appear unremarkable. In adolescent depression these findings are similar to those in depressed adults. Biological manifestations of depressive disorders may be significantly affected by developmental and hormonal changes. Antidepressants have been effective in the therapy of several disorders in childhood. These include enuresis, school phobias, attention deficit, conduct disorders and obsessive-compulsive disorders. Open drug studies suggest that antidepressants are useful in depressed children.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)     

Azidothymidine(AZT)-induced siderosis

Azidothymidine(AZT) interferes with heme synthesis. This should upregulate the synthesis of transferrin receptors and increase the amount of iron taken up by the cell. We found a 50% increase in the iron content of liver and a 20% increase in the iron content of macrophages in AZT-treated mice.     

Fluphenazine treatment in the psychotic child: clinical-evoked potential correlations.

The efficacy of fluphenazine in the treatment of the adult schizophrenic patient is widely acknowledged. It displays a wide safety margin and was found to have an excellent antipsychotic effect, especially in a high dosage range,^{19, 22, 46} without producing toxicity or marked extrapyramidal side effects.^{7, 25} The drug's dual mode of action—there is a stimulatory component, more prevalent in low dosages, and an inhibitory component that is more pronounced in the higher dosage range—widens its therapeutic spectrum.¹³ The introduction of depot forms (fluphenazine enanthate and decanoate) has facilitated the management of the patient to a great extent.^{6, 16–18} Finally, the drug's effect on the central nervous system (CNS) has also been documented extensively by means of visual and computer-analyzed awake EEG studies,^{1, 2, 10, 13, 51} all-night sleep EEG studies,¹⁴ and evoked potential investigations.³⁰ However, in sharp contrast to the ample knowledge we have about the fluphenazine effects on the adult psychotic patient, the information about its action in the psychotic child is rather scarce. While it is often assumed that a drug's mode of action in the adult patient is quite similar to that in children, recent investigations involving amphetamine, for instance, proved otherwise: while in adults amphetamine induces a significant latency decrease in the evoked potential, which is associated with a stimulatory effect in behavior, in hyperkinetic children a significant latency increase can be observed which is accompanied by the well-known clinical “paradoxical” tranquilizing effect.⁴¹ Thus, in order to fill this vacuum of information about the mode of action of fluphenazine on the clinical symptomatology and brain activity in the psychotic child, the present study was carried out with a special interest in the relationship between clinical changes and alterations in the visual evoked potential (VEP) during treatment.