Memory in sub-clinical obsessive-compulsive checkers

In a series of experiments we extended the research on possible memory deficits in subclinical obsessive-compulsive Ss who reported excessive checking. Using a variety of memory tests we compared 20 subclinical checkers to 20 Ss without obsessive-compulsive symptomatology. Contrary to hypothesis, checkers remembered self-generated words better than read words just as much as did normals, but they were more likely than normals to report thinking they had studied words that, in fact, had not been on the study list. Further, they more often confused whether they read or generated the words at study. Checkers did not appear to perseverate on already-recalled words on repeated free recall tests any more than did normals. However, checkers remembered fewer actions overall and more often misremembered whether they had performed, observed, or written these actions. Such memory deficits may contribute to the development of excessive checking.     

Marital interaction of agoraphobic women: A controlled, behavioral observation study.

Married couples with a female agoraphobic spouse (n = 22) were compared with demographically similar community control couples (n = 21) on self-report and observational measures of marital interaction. Consistent with hypotheses, husbands of agoraphobic women were more critical of their wives than were control husbands, and clinical couples were less likely to engage in positive problem solution than control couples. Contrary to hypothesis, clinical husbands were not less supportive than control husbands. Where general measures of marital distress were concerned, clinical couples, relative to control couples, evinced more distress by self-report, by their higher rate of negative nonverbal behavior, and by their longer sequences of negative exchanges. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Canadian professional psychology and empirically supported treatments": Commentary.

The impact on Canadian professional psychological treatment practices of the American Psychological Association's Division 12 (Clinical Psychology) Task Force's development of criteria and listings for empirically supported psychological treatments, along with other industrial efforts to standardize the identification of treatments with established efficacy is described in the article by J. Hunsley et al (see record 1999-01869-001). D. L. Chambless comments on the importance of having empirically supported treatments (ESTs) because many clients will not have the specific problems for which ESTs have been developed. In such cases, clinicians need to decide whether they are warranted in generalizing from the samples on which an EST is based, or whether they need to devise a novel approach. Also of importance is the therapeutic relationship or working alliance: a focus on ESTs should not be taken to mean that foundational issues such as the alliance can be forgotten. Training therapists should first learn basic therapeutic skills before learning more specialized ESTs. Other comments concern traditional training in Canada and a US trend of rejecting ESTs until more efficacy studies are completed of research-to-treatment generalizability. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Population versus clinical view of case fatality from acute coronary heart disease: results from the WHO MONICA Project 1985-1990. Multinational MONItoring of Trends and Determinants in CArdiovascular Disease

BACKGROUND: The clinical view of case fatality (CF) from acute myocardial infarction (AMI) in those reaching the hospital alive is different from the population view. Registration of both hospitalized AMI cases and out-of-hospital coronary heart disease (CHD) deaths in the WHO MONICA Project allows both views to be reconciled. The WHO MONICA Project provides the largest data set worldwide to explore the relationship between CHD CF and age, sex, coronary event rate, and first versus recurrent event. METHODS AND RESULTS: All 79,669 events of definite AMI or possible coronary death, occurring from 1985 to 90 among 5,725,762 people, 35 to 64 years of age, in 29 MONICA populations are the basis for CF calculations. Age-adjusted CF (percentage of CHD events that were fatal) was calculated across populations, stratified for different time periods, and related to age, sex, and CHD event rate. Median 28-day population CF was 49% (range, 35% to 60%) in men and 51% (range, 34% to 70%) in women and was particularly higher in women than men in populations in which CHD event rates were low. Median 28-day CF for hospitalized events was much lower: in men 22% (range, 15% to 36%) and in women 27% (range, 19% to 46%). Among hospitalized events CF was twice as high for recurrent as for first events. CONCLUSIONS: Overall 28-day CF is halved for hospitalized events compared with all events and again nearly halved for hospitalized 24-hour survivors. Because approximately two thirds of 28-day CHD deaths in men and women occurred before reaching the hospital, opportunities for reducing CF through improved care in the acute event are limited. Major emphasis should be on primary and secondary prevention.     

Defining empirically supported therapies.

A scheme is proposed for determining when a psychological treatment for a specific problem or disorder may be considered to be established in efficacy or to be possibly efficacious. The importance of independent replication before a treatment is established in efficacy is emphasized, and a number of factors are elaborated that should be weighed in evaluating whether studies supporting a treatment's efficacy are sound. It is suggested that, in evaluating the benefits of a given treatment, the greatest weight should be given to efficacy trials but that these trials should be followed by research on effectiveness in clinical settings and with various populations and by cost-effectiveness research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Association of coronary heart disease incidence with carotid arterial wall thickness and major risk factors: the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) Study, 1987-1993

Few studies have determined whether greater carotid artery intima-media thickness (IMT) in asymptomatic individuals is associated prospectively with increased risk of coronary heart disease (CHD). In the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities Study, carotid IMT, an index of generalized atherosclerosis, was defined as the mean of IMT measurements at six sites of the carotid arteries using B-mode ultrasound. The authors assessed its relation to CHD incidence over 4-7 years of follow-up (1987-1993) in four US communities (Forsyth County, North Carolina; Jackson, Mississippi; Minneapolis, Minnesota; and Washington County, Maryland) from samples of 7,289 women and 5,552 men aged 45-64 years who were free of clinical CHD at baseline. There were 96 incident events for women and 194 for men. In sex-specific Cox proportional hazards models adjusted only for age, race, and center, the hazard rate ratio comparing extreme mean IMT (> or = 1 mm) to not extreme (< 1 mm) was 5.07 for women (95% confidence interval 3.08-8.36) and 1.85 for men (95% confidence interval 1.28-2.69). The relation was graded (monotonic), and models with cubic splines indicated significant nonlinearity. The strength of the association was reduced by including major CHD risk factors, but remained elevated at higher IMT. Up to 1 mm mean IMT, women had lower adjusted annual event rates than did men, but above 1 mm their event rate was closer to that of men. Thus, mean carotid IMT is a noninvasive predictor of future CHD incidence.     

Assessment of fear of fear in agoraphobics: The Body Sensations Questionnaire and the Agoraphobic Cognitions Questionnaire.

Describes the development of the Agoraphobic Cognitions Questionnaire and the Body Sensations Questionnaire, companion measures for assessing aspects of fear of fear (panic attacks) in agoraphobics. The instruments were administered to 175 agoraphobics (mean age 37.64 yrs) and 43 controls (mean age 36.13 yrs) who were similar in sex and marital status to experimental Ss. Results show that the instruments were reliable and fared well on tests of discriminant and construct validity. It is concluded that these questionnaires are useful, inexpensive, and easily scored measures for clinical and research applications and fill a need for valid assessment of this dimension of agoraphobia. (22 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Expressed emotion and familial interaction: A study with agoraphobic and obsessive-compulsive patients and their relatives.

Patients with panic disorder with agoraphobia (n = 40) or obsessive- compulsive disorder (n = 61) participated in a 10-min problem-solving interaction with their primary relative. Relatives were categorized as hostile or nonhostile toward the patient on the basis of a measure of expressed emotion (EE). Observed interactions between patients and their hostile relatives, relative to those of dyads with a nonhostile relative, were marked by higher rates of relatives' criticism and of patients' negativity but not by higher rates of negative reciprocity. Analyses of sequences indicated that the dyads with a hostile relative had a higher rate of sequences in which the relative was first critical and the patient then negative than was the case for dyads with nonhostile relatives. Moreover, hostile relatives were more frequently critical than nonhostile relatives whether patients' preceding behavior was positive, negative, or neutral. The findings are consistent with the stress-vulnerability model of the effect of EE on mental health, in that patients living with a high EE relative appear to be exposed to higher levels of interpersonal stress. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Up-regulation of neutral endopeptidase (CALLA) in human neutrophils by granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor

Neutral endopeptidase 24.11 (NEP/CALLA/CD10), an enzyme expressed on early lymphoid progenitors, neutrophils, and various other cell types, inactivates many biologically active peptides, including the bacterial chemotactic peptide N-formylmethionyl-leucyl-phenylalanine (fMLP). Inhibition of CD10/NEP on the surface of human neutrophils (PMNs) in vitro inhibits migration toward this chemotaxin, suggesting that enzymatic inactivation by NEP regulates the neutrophil response to fMLP. Because PMNs in inflammatory sites are exposed to various cytokines, we evaluated the effects of selected cytokines on CD10/NEP activity in vitro. Of five cytokines tested--interleukin-1 (IL-1), IL-6, and IL-8, granulocyte colony-stimulating factor, and granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF)--GM-CSF provided the most consistent increase in surface NEP activity. Low concentrations (10(-9)-10(-7) M) of GM-CSF increased NEP activity in a time- and concentration-dependent manner to more than 225% that of control (phosphate-buffered saline-treated) cells. Cytofluorometry of cells stained with a fluorescent antibody to CD10 indicated that GM-CSF increased expression of surface CD10/NEP antigen in a similar manner. The effect of GM-CSF on NEP activity was enhanced still further by simultaneous exposure to IL-1, suggesting that combinations of cytokines may direct and regulate the neutrophil response within an inflammatory site. Rapid upregulation of CD10/NEP underscores the importance of this enzyme for control of peptide mediators of inflammation.     

More Information From Fewer Questions: The Factor Structure and Item Properties of the Original and Brief Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale.

Statistical methods designed for categorical data were used to perform confirmatory factor analyses and item response theory (IRT) analyses of the Fear of Negative Evaluation scale (FNE; D. Watson & R. Friend, 1969) and the Brief FNE (BFNE; M. R. Leary, 1983). Results suggested that a 2-factor model fit the data better for both the FNE and the BFNE, although the evidence was less strong for the FNE. The IRT analyses indicated that although both measures had items with good discrimination, the FNE items discriminated only at lower levels of the underlying construct, whereas the BFNE items discriminated across a wider range. Convergent validity analyses indicated that the straightforwardly-worded items on each scale had significantly stronger relationships with theoretically related measures than did the reverse-worded items. On the basis of all analyses, usage of the straightforwardly-worded BFNE factor is recommended for the assessment of fear of negative evaluation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)