Comparison of anxiety and depression in patients with acne vulgaris and healthy individuals

Background:

Acne vulgaris is a chronic inflammatory disease of the pilosebaceous units, which chiefly involves face and upper part of the trunk. Its prevalence is highest in adolescence, where the individual counters several psychosocial changes. Depression, suicidal thoughts, and low self esteem are reported in the patients with this disease.

Aim:

The goal of this study is to compare prevalence of anxiety and depression in the patients with acne vulgaris and normal population.

Materials and Methods:

In this cross-sectional study, 82 patients with acne vulgaris and 82 persons without acne who referred to a dermatology clinic and a specialized office for skin diseases in Rasht were studied. Anxiety and depression were evaluated by Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) questionnaire and severity of acne was evaluated by Global Acne Grading System (GAGS). Data were analyzed by SPSS ver. 14.0 software, independent T-test, multi variate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) and chi-square test for comparison the quantitative and ordinal data, respectively; with α=0.05.

Results:

Prevalence of anxiety and mean of anxiety scores were 68.3% and 9.17 ± 3.52, respectively, in patients group and 39.1% and 7.10 ± 3.07, respectively, in control group in which there was a significant difference (P = 0.001). Prevalence of depression and mean of depression scores were 25.6% and 5.34 ± 3.29, respectively, in patients group and 28.1% and 5.01 ± 3.32, respectively, in control group in which there was no significant difference.

Conclusion:

According to high prevalence of anxiety in patients with acne vulgaris, assessment of the screening mental status of the patients by simple questionnaire such as HADS is suggested.     

Dietary patterns and breast cancer risk: results from three cohort studies in the DIETSCAN project

Objective: Only a few consistent findings on individual foods or nutrients that influence breast cancer risk have emerged thus far. Since people do not consume individual foods but certain combinations of them, the analysis of dietary patterns may offer an additional aspect for assessing associations between diet and diseases such as breast cancer. It is also important to examine whether the relationships between dietary patterns and breast cancer risk are consistent across populations.Methods: We examined the risk of breast cancer with two dietary patterns, identified as “Vegetables” (VEG) and “Pork, Processed Meat, Potatoes” (PPP), common to all cohorts of the DIETSCAN project. During 7 to 13 years of follow-up, three of the cohorts – the Netherlands Cohort Study on diet and cancer (NLCS), the Swedish Mammography Cohort (SMC), and the Ormoni e Dieta nella Eziologia dei Tumori (Italy-ORDET) – provided data on 3271 breast cancer cases with complete information on their baseline diet measured by a validated food frequency questionnaire.Results: After adjustment for potential confounders, VEG was not associated with the risk of breast cancer across all cohorts. PPP was also not associated with the risk of breast cancer in SMC and ORDET, but a high PPP score tended to be inversely associated with breast cancer in the NLCS study (RR = 0.69; 95% CI, 0.52–0.92, highest versus lowest quartile). PPP differed in one aspect between the cohorts: butter loaded positively on the pattern in all cohorts except NLCS, in which butter loaded negatively and appeared to be substituted by low-fat margarine loading positively.Conclusion: In general, the dietary patterns showed consistent results across the three cohorts except for the possible protective effect of PPP in the NLCS cohort, which could be explained by a difference in that pattern for NLCS. The results supported the suggestion derived from traditional epidemiology that relatively recent diet may not have an important role in the etiology of breast cancer.     

Reproducibility and validity of major dietary patterns among Swedish women assessed with a food-frequency questionnaire

Defining dietary patterns by factor analysis is an alternative approach to dietary assessment that has been used recently to examine diet-disease relations. However, only 1 study evaluated the reproducibility and validity of this method. Our aim was to assess both the validity and reproducibility of major dietary patterns based on data from a 60-item FFQ. We chose 2 independent random samples among over 60,000 women aged 40-74 y participating in the Swedish Mammography Cohort (SMC). In the validation study, the FFQ was compared with 4 7-d dietary records (DRs) among 129 women. For the reproducibility study, the FFQ was administered twice, 1 y apart in 212 women. By conducting factor analysis, 3 major dietary patterns were identified: healthy (high in vegetables, fruits, fish, poultry, tomato, cereal, and low-fat dairy products), Western (processed meat, meat, refined grains, sweets, and fried potatoes), and drinker (beer, wine and liquor, snacks) pattern. These 3 patterns explained 29-34% of the total variance in these 2 studies. The Spearman correlation coefficients between FFQ1 and FFQ2 (reproducibility) for healthy, Western, and drinker pattern were 0.63, 0.68, and 0.73, respectively (all P < 0.0001). Correlation coefficients between the FFQ and DRs (validity) for these patterns were 0.59, 0.50, and 0.85, respectively (all P < 0.0001). Our results indicate that identification of dietary patterns through factor analysis is a reproducible and valid method. The dietary patterns approach might be used in nutritional epidemiology as an alternative method of dietary assessment.     

Effects of chronic dizocilpine on acute pain and on mRNA expression of neuropeptides and the dopamine and glutamate receptors

The mesocorticolimbic circuitry has been implicated in the pathophysiology of several neuropsychiatric syndromes like chronic pain and addiction. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of dizocilpine (MK-801), a non-competitive N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor antagonist, on sensorimotor behaviors and the consequent changes in the dopamine, glutamate, and opiate systems in rats. Five groups of rats were subjected to acute tests for nociception (hot plate and paw pressure) before and after MK-801 (0.05, 0.1, 0.2 and 0.4 mg/kg, i.p.) or saline. Another two groups received daily i.p. saline or MK-801 (0.4 mg/kg) for 15 days. The nociceptive tests were performed on days 1, 7, and 14. On day 15 the rats received the last injection and were immediately sacrificed. We measured the mRNA expression, by in situ hybridization (ISH), of various dopamine and glutamate receptors, and enkephalin (Enk), dynorphin (Dyn), and substance P (SP) in the striatum, nucleus accumbens (NAC), piriform and cingulate cortex. Acute MK-801, dose-dependently, resulted in hyperalgesia. The chronic effects of 0.4 mg/kg MK-801 showed an extinction of the acute hyperalgesic effects especially with the hot plate test. The ISH studies revealed a decrease in mRNA expression of Enk and SP in the striatum and NAC. Our results indicate that the reversal of acute MK-801-induced hyperalgesia, with repeated exposure to systemic MK-801, is not directly related to changes in dopamine and glutamate receptors and might involve alteration of the striatal neuropeptide system.