Substance abuse treatment for mothers: treatment outcomes and the impact of length of stay

This article examines the treatment outcomes of 305 women enrolled in a comprehensive, residential substance abuse treatment program for pregnant and parenting women and their children. The women were assessed at intake and three times in the year after discharge. Analyses focused on change in client functioning over time, and investigating the impact of length of stay in treatment on client outcomes. Comparisons of clients' functioning before and after treatment suggest significant improvements in a number of domains, including substance use, employment, legal involvement, mental health, parenting attitudes, and risky behaviors. For most outcome domains, results suggest that longer treatment stays are associated with more positive outcomes.     

Preliminary experience with mammography. Reliability of mammography in patients with a palpable tumour of the breast

Radiologists with very limited practical experience in mammography initially achieved a low PVpos (0.50) and a high PVneg (0.95) in blind mammography of 80 patients with 85 excised and histologically examined breast tumours. After having read films from approximately 2500 patients the initial films were blindly reevaluated. PVneg was unchanged, whereas PVpos was elevated significantly (0.80). The intraobserver variation was 11.5 per cent. The actual interobserver variation was 3.2 per cent. These findings indicate that the reliability of blind mammography in patients with palpable tumours of the breast is considerable, also in case of only limited mammographic experience.     

The liver in infectious mononucleosis

Summary 1. Twenty-two patients with infectious mononucleosis were studied by liver biopsy and paper electrophoresis of the serum proteins. The findings were compared with a similar group of 30 patients with infectious hepatitis.2. The essential histologic features of infectious mononucleosis were the presence in the hepatic sinusoids and portal tracts of chronic inflammatory cells resembling small lymphocytes, with essentially no parenchymal cell damage. Admixed with this lymphocytic infiltrate, but in relatively minimal numbers, were a few plasma cells and polymorphonuclear leukocytes. In addition, in infectious mononucleosis there were, with rare exceptions, no lipochrome-containing Kupffer cells. Thus, in the majority of cases, the histologic picture was distinct from that seen in infectious hepatitis. Only in comparing a few of the more severe infectious mononucleosis cases with subsiding infectious hepatitis cases was there any tendency for the two pictures to merge, and the distinction on histologic grounds between the two entities could be made in the great majority of cases.3. The most commonly seen abnormalities in the paper electrophoretic patterns of sera obtained from patients with infectious mononucleosis were decreased albumin, increased gamma globulin, not infrequent but variable changes in alpha₂ globulin, and the presence of abnormal proteins migrating with mobilities intermediate to alpha₂ and beta, and beta and gamma globulins. The abnormalities observed in infectious hepatitis were similar to those of infectious mononucleosis, except that in hepatitis alpha₂ globulin was decreased more consistently, gamma globulin increased less frequently, and beta globulin, which was normal in practically all the cases of infectious mononucleosis, was increased in a considerable number of cases.4. Treatment of patients with infectious mononucleosis need not include prolonged bed rest and restriction of activity in an effort to avoid the development of chronic liver disease.     

Predicting older adults' maintenance in exercise participation using an integrated social psychological model

Little is known about the predictors of maintenance in organized exercise programmes. The aim of this study was to investigate the behavioral predictors of maintenance of exercise participation in older adults, using an integrated social psychological model. To this end, we carried out a prospective cohort study (n = 1,725; age 50 years or older) involving 10 different types of exercise programmes, with measurements at baseline and after 6 months. Predictors of intention to continue participating and the actual maintenance of exercise participation in the exercise programme were assessed using a step-wise logistic regression model. Significant odds ratios (ORs) predicting the intention to continue with the exercise programme were found for female sex, younger age, being married, being a non-smoker, being in paid employment, having a positive attitude towards exercise and having a high self-efficacy at baseline. Significant ORs predicting actual maintenance of exercise participation were short lapses, absence of lapses, high intention at baseline, high perceived quality of the programme, positive attitude at baseline and few risk situations at baseline. In order to promote maintenance of exercise participation for older adults, effort should be taken to prevent lapses, to help people cope with risk situations for lapses, to improve the attitude towards exercise participation and to improve the quality of the programme.     

Neural evidence for dissociable components of task-switching

The ability to retrieve and flexibly switch between task rules is seen as an important component of cognitive control. It is often assumed that lateral prefrontal cortex (latPFC) is important for switching between rules. However, activation associated with rule-switching is less reliably observed in latPFC than in medial PFC (specifically, pre-supplementary motor area). In this study, we tested the hypothesis that medial PFC is important for reconfiguration of task sets, whereas latPFC is important for retrieving, maintaining and implementing relevant rules (i.e. rule representation). Twenty young adults participated in a functional magnetic resonance imaging study in which they determined the correct response to a target stimulus on the basis of an instructional cue. For bivalent targets, the appropriate response depended on the currently relevant rule. In contrast, univalent targets were always associated with the same response. Brain regions of interest were characterized according to their responsiveness to bivalent and univalent targets, on both rule-switch and rule-repetition trials. The data support the hypothesis that rule representation and task-set reconfiguration are separable cognitive processes, associated with dissociable neural activation in latPFC and medial PFC, respectively. Activation profiles of posterior parietal cortex, basal ganglia and rostrolateral PFC are also examined and discussed.     

Permeability of Brain Capillaries to Hexoses and Pentoses in the Rabbit

The initial loss in the rabbit brain of non-electrolytes injected into the carotid artery was measured with ‘Indicator Diffusion’ technique, 3–0–methyl-D-glucose shared with D-glucose the ability to pass into the brain by a mediated transport mechanism. The rate of transport of the following substances could not be distinguished: D-mannose, D-galactose, D-arabinose and 1)-ribose. They all penetrated more slowly than D-glucose. D-mannitol was also lost from the blood during the passage through the brain. This observation, together with the known inability of D-mannitol to pass the blood-brain barrier, suggests that the loss takes place into the endothelial cytoplasma. Thus the basal plasma membrane of the endothrlial cells together with the basal membrane proper may define blood-brain barrier chararteristirs.