Anti–Trypanosoma cruzi effect of the photodynamic antiparasitic chemotherapy using phenothiazine derivatives as photosensitizers

Lasers in Medical Science - Chagas disease is endemic in Latin America and increasingly found in non-endemic countries. Its treatment is limited due to the variable efficacy and several side...     

Reliability and Validity of the Korean Version of Disruptive Behavior Disorders Rating Scale,DSM-5 Version-Parent Form

Objective Disruptive behavior disorder (DBD) adversely impacts children and adolescents. However, a comprehensive and cost-effective scale to assess DBD is lacking in Korea. Therefore, this study translated the Disruptive Behavior Disorders Rating Scale (DBDRS) into Korean and analyzed its psychometric properties. Methods Parents and primary caregivers of non-clinical (n=429) and clinical (n=28) children and adolescents aged 6–15 years were included in the analysis. Confirmatory factor analysis was conducted; further, concurrent validity and internal consistency were investigated using correlation analysis and Cronbach’s alpha, respectively. Furthermore, discriminative capacity was estimated using receiver operating characteristic curve analysis. Results The four-factor model of K-DBDRS showed good model fit indices and factor loadings, which supported the construct validity of the scale. Strong correlations between K-DBDRS and related measurements were observed, and a robust level of Cronbach’s alpha was confirmed (0.891–0.933). The discriminative capacity of the scale was good, based on the area under the curve values (0.933–0.953). Conclusion This study indicated that the K-DBDRS is an appropriate screening tool for Korean children and adolescents. Thus, this scale can be applied in clinical and community settings to identify children and adolescents with disruptive behavior disorders.     

Decreased P3 amplitudes elicited by negative facial emotion in manic patients: Selective deficits in emotional processing

Manic patients have impairments in recognizing negative emotional stimuli. However, there have been few studies on manic patients’ neurophysiological responses to facial emotions. We measured the P3 event-related potentials using facial emotional stimuli to investigate whether the impairment in recognition of negative emotions is greater in maniac patients. We recruited twenty manic patients and twenty controls. A visual oddball paradigm was used with facial pictures: happy, neutral, sad, fear, and disgust emotions. While P3 amplitudes of emotional stimuli were significantly larger than those of neutral stimuli in controls, the amplitudes were not significantly different from those for neutral pictures in manic patients. Repeated-measures analysis of variance on P3 amplitudes revealed significant interaction effects of paired emotions as sad-neutral, disgust-neutral, fear-neutral, but not in the happy-neutral emotion pairs. These differential P3 responses suggest that manic patients may have abnormal neurophysiological activity when evaluating negative facial emotions. Thus, these findings may give the evidence for reduced negative emotion recognition of manic patients.     

Relationship between human immunodeficiency virus (HIV-1) infection and chronic periodontitis

Introduction: Current studies show that, even in the era of antiretroviral therapies, HIV-1 infection is associated with more severe and frequent refractory chronic periodontitis.

Areas covered: This review, based on a systematic analysis of the literature, intends to provide an update on factors that may be involved in the pathogenesis of periodontal disease in HIV-1-infected patients, including local immunosuppression, oral microbial factors, systemic inflammation, salivary markers, and the role of gingival tissue as a possible reservoir of HIV-1.

Expert commentary: The therapeutic revolution of ART made HIV-1 infection a chronic controllable disease, reduced HIV-1 mortality rate, restored at least partially the immune response and dramatically increased life expectancy of HIV-1-infected patients. Despite all these positive aspects, chronic periodontitis assumes an important role in the HIV-1 infection status for activating systemic inflammation favoring viral replication and influencing HIV-1 status, and also acting as a possible reservoir of HIV-1. All these issues still need to be clarified and validated, but have important clinical implications that certainly will benefit the diagnosis and management of chronic periodontitis in HIV-1-infected patients, and also contributes to HIV-1 eradication.