1,720,964 research outputs found
Drugs with anticholinergic properties as a risk factor for psychosis in patients affected by Alzheimer's disease
No full textEmerging evidence suggests that psychosis in persons with Alzheimer's disease (AD) may be linked to the cholinergic deficit associated with the disease. This study sought to evaluate whether anticholinergic (ACH) drugs could be a risk factor for psychosis onset. A total of 230 patients affected with probable AD were recruited. Data on behavioral and psychological symptoms were collected using the Neuropsychiatric Inventory, and diagnosis of psychosis was performed. Patients were divided into those who used ACH drugs and those who used non-ACH drugs. Those using ACH drugs (18.3%) were more likely to have psychosis than those using non-ACH drugs (odds ratio (OR)=2.52; 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.27-5.00); this association remained significant even after adjusting for potential confounding variables (OR=2.13; 95% CI, 1.03-4.43). Our data suggest that patients with AD are frequently treated with ACH drugs and that ACH drug intake should be regarded as a potential risk factor for psychosi
Hemifacial spasm due to a tentorial paramedian meningioma: a case report.
No full textHemifacial spasm (HFS) is a movement disorder characterised by involuntary paroxysmal facial movements that usually involve the orbicularis oculi and then spread to the other facial muscles. A microvascular compression and demyelination of the seventh nerve at its exit from the brain stem is considered to be the main aetiology of HFS. In addition to rare idiopathic (cryptogenetic) cases, others causes of HFS exist: tumours or vascular malformations have been described, of both the ipsilateral and contralateral cerebellopontine angle (CPA). However, space-occupying lesions in locations other than CPA are usually not thought to be responsible for HFS. Here we describe the case of a 45-year-old woman suffering from HFS, who dramatically improved after surgical removal of a tentorial paramedian meningioma
Hypnic headache secondary to a growth hormone-secreting pituitary tumour
Full text linkHypnic headache (HH) is a rare, benign, chronic
headache disorder, usually affecting aged people
and characterized by a close relation to sleep. It was
first described by Raskin in 1988 (1). Diagnostic
criteria for HH have been established, and HH is
included in the recent International Headache
Society (IHS) classification as a primary form of
headache (IHS classification 4.5) (2).
At the time of writing, > 100 cases have been
reported in the literature (for review see (3)). Furthermore,
several patients with this disorder have
been described in Italy (4–12). The pathophysiology
of HH remains unclear (13). In most instances,
even extensive neurological and neuroradiological
examinations will be normal (14). However, symptomatic
HH has been reported in relation to
obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome (15), arterial
hypertension (3), pontine stroke (16) and posterior
fossa meningioma (17). We report a case of HH in
an acromegalic patient with an intrasellar pituitary
adenoma
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Migraine in Adolescents: Validation of a Screening Questionnaire
No full textBACKGROUND: Few studies in adolescents deal with the level of agreement between questionnaire and interview information in relation to headache symptoms.
OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the validity of a self-administered questionnaire on headache for use in epidemiological studies of Italian high school students.
METHODS: The questionnaire incorporated all items required for diagnosing migraine according to the criteria from the 2004 International Classification of Headache Disorders. The migraine diagnoses obtained from questionnaires were validated against the gold standard diagnoses by a headache specialist.
RESULTS: Out of 104 students answering the questionnaires, 93 (89.4%) participated in extensive semi-structured interviews by a neurologist. The chance-corrected agreement rate (kappa) was 0.66, which is considered good. The questionnaire-based migraine diagnosis had a sensitivity of 67.3%, specificity of 100%, positive predictive value of 100%, and negative predictive value of 73.3%.
CONCLUSIONS: The results indicate that our self-administered questionnaire may be an acceptable instrument in determining the prevalence of migraine sufferers in the northeast Italy adolescent population, useful in identifying subjects with "definite" migraine
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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