The mental health of young people attending a Youth Offending Team: a descriptive study

This study documents the health needs of young offenders aged 10-17 attending a community Youth Offending Team (YOT). All young people known to a YOT on a selected date were identified. Health information was collected via semi-structured interviews and standardized questionnaires. Potential mental health problems that required further specialist assessment were identified in 56% of those assessed. Alcohol was consumed more than twice per week by 68%, with 47% having recently smoked cannabis, and, 11% recently using heroin, methadone or crack cocaine. Use of secondary health-care services was common although contact with primary-care services was less frequent with almost half having no contact with a GP in the past year. The process of meeting the physical and mental health needs of young offenders in the community is discussed.     

The G protein-coupled receptor repertoires of human and mouse

Diverse members of the G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) superfamily participate in a variety of physiological functions and are major targets of pharmaceutical drugs. Here we report that the repertoire of GPCRs for endogenous ligands consists of 367 receptors in humans and 392 in mice. Included here are 26 human and 83 mouse GPCRs not previously identified. A direct comparison of GPCRs in the two species reveals an unexpected level of orthology. The evolutionary preservation of these molecules argues against functional redundancy among highly related receptors. Phylogenetic analyses cluster 60% of GPCRs according to ligand preference, allowing prediction of ligand types for dozens of orphan receptors. Expression profiling of 100 GPCRs demonstrates that most are expressed in multiple tissues and that individual tissues express multiple GPCRs. Over 90% of GPCRs are expressed in the brain. Strikingly, however, the profiles of most GPCRs are unique, yielding thousands of tissue- and cell-specific receptor combinations for the modulation of physiological processes.