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Query: UMLS:C0036341 (schizophrenia)
 60,220 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Music has been an element in medical practice throughout history. There is growing interest in music as a therapeutic tool. Since there is no generally accepted standard for how, when and where music should be applied within a medical framework, this literature study endeavours to present an overview of central areas of application of music in medicine. It further attempts to find tentative conclusions that may be drawn from existing clinical research on the efficacy of music as a medical tool. Traditionally, music has been linked to the treatment of mental illness, and has been used successfully to treat anxiety and depression and improve function in schizophrenia and autism. In clinical medicine several studies have shown analgetic and anxiolytic properties that have been used in intensive care units, both in diagnostic procedures like gastroscopy and in larger operations, in preoperative as well as postoperative phases, reducing the need for medication in several studies. The combination of music with guided imagery and deep relaxation has shown reduction of symptoms and increased well-being in chronic pain syndromes, whether from cancer or rheumatic origin. Music has been used as support in pregnancy and gestation, in internal medicine, oncology, paediatrics and other related fields. The use of music with geriatric patients could prove to be especially fruitful, both in its receptive and its active aspect. Studies have shown that music can improve function and alleviate symptoms in stroke rehabilitation, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia. The role of music in medicine is primarily supportive and palliative. The supportive role of music has a natural field of application in palliative medicine and terminal care. Music is well tolerated, inexpensive, with good compliance and few side effects.
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PMID:[Examples of the use of music in clinical medicine]. 1086 51

Schizophrenia has been associated with altered immunity and reduced occurrence of autoimmune diseases and malignancies. A few studies in schizophrenic patients have assessed natural killer cell activity (NKA), but no consistent findings have emerged. However, NKA was assessed using standard procedures and in the absence of autologous serum and the various cytokines that modulate NKA and appear to be abnormal in schizophrenic patients. In the current study, therefore, the number of NK cells and the activity of the individual NK cell were assessed in whole blood shortly after blood withdrawal, in both the presence and the absence of autologous serum. Twenty-nine schizophrenic patients (11 nonmedicated), 8 nonschizophrenic control patients (bipolar and personality disorders), and 31 age-matched healthy controls were studied. Schizophrenic patients showed higher NKA per NK cell than controls and nonschizophrenic patients. This difference remained significant even when the nonmedicated schizophrenics, who showed the highest levels of NKA, were excluded. However, the increase in NKA was more pronounced in the presence of serum and was reduced to an insignificant level when serum was removed from the same samples. In both schizophrenic patients and controls, smokers and women showed lower NKA. Numbers of NK cells did not differ among groups, although medication affected blood concentration of other leukocytes. These findings indicate that the effects of serum factors, psychiatric medication, gender, and smoking should be considered when assessing NKA in schizophrenic patients. The observed higher NKA may help explain the surprising reports of low incidence of lung cancer and other malignancies in schizophrenic patients, despite their higher rate of smoking.
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PMID:Higher natural killer cell activity in schizophrenic patients: the impact of serum factors, medication, and smoking. 1097 Jun 77

We describe the use of a dataset of statistical medical records, the Oxford Record Linkage Study (ORLS), to identify diseases which occur together more commonly (association), or less commonly (dissociation), than their individual frequencies in the population would predict. We investigated some conditions known or suspected to enhance the subsequent risk of cancer, some conditions thought to be linked with schizophrenia, and some associations between conditions with a known autoimmune component. Diseases may occur in combination more often (or less often) than expected by chance because one predisposes to (or protects against) another or because they share environmental and/or genetic mechanisms in common. The investigation of such associations can yield important information for clinicians interested in potential disease sequelae, for epidemiologists trying to understand disease aetiology, and for geneticists attempting to determine the genetic basis of variation in disease course among individuals. We suggest that, through the use of datasets like the ORLS, it will be possible to 'map' comprehensively the phenomic expression of co-occurring diseases.
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PMID:Use of large medical databases to study associations between diseases. 1102 77

Evidence from nearly a century of epidemiological research indicates that schizophrenia occurs in all populations with a prevalence in the range of 1.4 to 4.6 per 1000 and incidence rates in the range of 0.16-0.42 per 1000 population. Multi-centre studies conducted by the World Health Organization have highlighted important differences between 'Western' and 'Third World' populations as regards the course and outcome of the disorder, with a significantly better prognosis in the developing countries. The factors underlying the better outcome of schizophrenia in developing countries remain essentially unknown but are likely to involve interactions between genetic variation and specific aspects of the environment. These features place schizophrenia, along with diabetes, cancer and hypertension, into the group of genetically complex diseases which are characterised by polygenic transmission, locus heterogeneity and environmental contribution to causation. The emerging pattern of risk factors and antecedents of schizophrenia suggests multiple, mainly quantitative deviations from the average developmental trajectory, primarily in the areas of early neurodevelopment, cognitive ability and social behaviour. These deviations are compatible with the notion of non-specific background factors facilitating the operation of genetically determined causal pathways. Research likely to result in new insights should focus on the population distribution and behavioural effects of potential risk factors and markers suggested by biological and genetic research.
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PMID:Epidemiology of schizophrenia: the global burden of disease and disability. 1115 62

With the completion of the human genome project, micro-array technology offers the potential to open up a whole new vista in assisted reproduction. In the next 10-20 years we will be able to screen each human embryo for all numerical chromosomal abnormalities as well as many genetic diseases. Micro-array analysis may permit the screening of multiple alleles for monogenetic diseases and polygenic diseases, including diabetes, hypertension and schizophrenia. In the near future, it may be possible to assess an individual's genetic predisposition for cardiovascular disease, all types of cancer and infectious diseases. In the distant future, it may even be possible to screen for any genetic trait, e.g. stature, baldness, obesity, hair colour, skin colour or even IQ. Although it is still uncertain what molecular genetic tools may be available, we can be sure that some of these trends will have major consequences on the future of assisted reproduction and society at large.
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PMID:The genetic revolution in artificial reproduction: a view of the future. 1126 33

Lehman's Quality of Life Interview was administered to 22 patients with schizophrenia and their proxies and to 15 patients with cancer and their proxies. The results indicated that there was a discrepancy between responses on global objective and subjective measures for patients with schizophrenia but not for patients with cancer. A discrepancy was also found for the proxies of the patients with schizophrenia but not for the proxies of the patients with cancer. These findings suggest that the discrepancy between subjective and objective indicators of quality of life of patients with schizophrenia signifies a genuine difference rather than an anomaly related to the patient's psychiatric condition.
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PMID:Validity of self-reports about quality of life among patients with schizophrenia. 1127 4

Literature pertaining to the effects of cannabis use and health which has been published during the past 11 years has been reviewed. Many older concerns about adverse effects on health (chromosomal damage, 'cannabinol psychosis', endocrine abnormalities, cardiac events, impaired immunity) no longer seem to elicit much interest. Continuing concerns about the adverse cognitive effects of chronic use indicate that these can be demonstrated by proper testing; some studies suggest that they may be long-lasting. Although cannabis does not produce a specific psychosis, the possibility exists that it may exacerbate schizophrenia in persons predisposed to that disorder. However, evidence from retrospective surveys must always be questioned. Tolerance and dependence have occurred in man, confirming previous findings in many other species. Addiction tends to be mild and is probably less severe than with other social drugs. Driving under the influence of cannabis is impaired acutely; how long such impairments last is still unknown. More exacting tasks, such as flying an airplane, may be impaired for as long as 24 hours. While there is no doubt that marijuana smoke contains carcinogens, an increase in cancer among users has thus far been anecdotal. Because of the long latent period between cancer induction and initiation of cigarette smoking, the full story is yet to be told. Marijuana use during pregnancy is not advised although the consequences are usually not greater than those of smoking cigarettes, and far less than those from alcohol use. Whether smoked marijuana should become a therapeutic agent requires a cost-benefit analysis of the potential benefits versus the adverse effects of such use as we now know them.
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PMID:Health aspects of cannabis: revisited. 1128 47

The effects of three strategies for changing stigmatizing attitudes--education (which replaces myths about mental illness with accurate conceptions), contact (which challenges public attitudes about mental illness through direct interactions with persons who have these disorders), and protest (which seeks to suppress stigmatizing attitudes about mental illness)--were examined on attributions about schizophrenia and other severe mental illnesses. One hundred and fifty-two students at a community college were randomly assigned to one of the three strategies or a control condition. They completed a questionnaire about attributions toward six groups--depression, psychosis, cocaine addiction, mental retardation, cancer, and AIDS--prior to and after completing the assigned condition. As expected, results showed that education had no effect on attributions about physical disabilities but led to improved attributions in all four psychiatric groups. Contact produced positive changes that exceeded education effects in attributions about targeted psychiatric disabilities: depression and psychosis. Protest yielded no significant changes in attributions about any group. This study also examined the effects of these strategies on processing information about mental illness.
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PMID:Three strategies for changing attributions about severe mental illness. 1135 86

The Danish Twin Registry was initiated at the Copenhagen University Institute for Human Genetics in 1954 by professor Tage Kemp and his assistants, Bent Harvald and Mogens Hauge. The project was until 1960 primarily financed by US National Cancer Institutes. Twin pairs both of same and different sex, born 1870-1910 were drawn from the birth registers and followed-up through the national registers until death or present place of living. Later on same sex pairs born 1911-30 were added. Besided cancer a multitude of other disorders were registered. Intensive studies on identical twins grown up apart were undertaken by Niels Juel-Nielsen, on criminal behaviour by Karl O. Christiansen, on smoking habits by Elisabeth Raaschou-Nielsen, on peptic ulcer by Kaj Gotlieb Jensen, on schizophrenia by Margit Fischer. Among early remarkable results should be mentioned the modest influence of genetic versus environmental factors in most cases of cancer, the strong genetic impact in mental and moral qualities, the approximate genetic/environmental ratio of 50/50 for the orgin of criminal behaviour and a corresponding ratio of 25/75 for life expectancy. In 1971 the Danish Twin Registry was moved to Odense Universty.
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PMID:[The early history of the Danish twin registry]. 1163 67

Debrisoquine 4-hydroxylase (CYP2D6) is one of the cytochrome P450 enzyme families that metabolize many compounds. Polymorphic activities of debrisoquine 4-hydroxylase were suggested to be associated with some complex diseases, such as cancer and Parkinson's disease. Schizophrenia is also a complex disorder, and hence we are interested in understanding if the CYP2D6 gene is a susceptibility gene for schizophrenia in Chinese. We determined the genotype and allele frequencies of four molecular variants of CYP2D6 gene (i.e. 188C/T, 1934G/A, 2938C/T and 4268C/G) in 162 Chinese schizophrenic patients and 94 non-psychotic control subjects from Taiwan. No significant differences of allele or genotype frequencies of three polymorphisms (i.e. 188T/C, 2938C/T and 4268C/G) were detected between patients and control subjects. The 1934A allele, which accounts for the majority of poor metabolizers in Caucasians, was not detected in either patients or control subjects, indicating that the 1934A allele is very rare in Chinese. Our data suggest that the CYP2D6 gene may not be a susceptibility gene for schizophrenia in Chinese schizophrenic patients.
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PMID:Debrisoquine 4-hydroxylase (CYP2D6) genetic polymorphisms and susceptibility to schizophrenia in Chinese patients from Taiwan. 1170 57


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