Methamphetamine-associated psychosis: links to drug use characteristics and similarity to primary psychosis.

Objectives: Despite the prevalence of methamphetamine-associated psychosis, how characteristics of drug use affect the severity and clinical course, and its optimal treatments have not been established. We addressed these questions, assessing clinical features of methamphetamine-associated psychosis, and compared it with primary psychosis.Methods: Hospitalised patients with methamphetamine-associated (n = 70) or primary schizophrenic psychosis (n = 70) were matched on sex, age and duration of psychosis. Association of drug use variables (age at initiation, duration of methamphetamine use) with the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS) scores and psychosis duration were examined for patients with methamphetamine-associated psychosis, and the groups were compared on the BPRS scores.Results: Methamphetamine use initiation age correlated negatively with the BPRS total score and the Activation subscale score; methamphetamine use duration correlated positively with psychosis duration. Methamphetamine-associated psychosis group scored lower on the Hostility-Suspiciousness and Anergia subscales of the BPRS (adjusted p values < .05).Conclusions: Association of early initiation of methamphetamine with psychosis severity may suggest a lasting effect on brain development. Correlation of drug use and psychosis durations may suggest a cumulative effect of methamphetamine exposure. Less severe paranoia and negative symptoms in the methamphetamine-using group could implicate better social functioning of these patients. Further mechanistic studies are warranted.Key pointsEarly initiation of methamphetamine use is associated with psychosis severity.Methamphetamine use duration associates with psychosis duration.Methamphetamine-associated and primary schizophrenic psychoses were similar in symptoms.Methamphetamine psychosis patients were less severe in paranoia and negative symptoms.

[Refractive Index Insensitive Temperature Sensor Based on Cascading Single Mode Fiber with Few Mode Fiber].

A refractive index insensitive temperature sensor is proposed base on cascading single mode fiber with few mode fiber(FMF). During the sensor preparation, the splicing current is set to 100 mA, and a section of FMF is no core-offset splicing between two single-mode fibers. Therefore, it can motivate the transmission mode preferably and form optical fiber Mach-Zehnder interferometer. The mode phase difference in FMF will be changed according to the outside environment. It will cause interference fringe shift. The parameter to be measured can be achieved by detecting the amount shift of interference spectrum. The FMF can transmit four modes with LP01, LP11, LP21, LP02. The transmission spectrum is also analyzed, which shows that they have two modes of LP01 and LP11 in sensor with the length of 81.5 mm. In the refractive index and temperature sensing experiment, the cascading FMF sensor with the length of 81.5 mm is used. The results show that the transmission spectrum of sensor appears obvious blue shift as temperature is increasing, the temperature sensitivity can be up to -85.9 pm·â„ƒ-1 within the range of 27.6~93.8 ℃ with good linearity. The refractive index sensitivity is 3.697 34 nm·RIU-1 within the range of 1.347 1~1.443 9. There is no obvious shift phenomenon in the transmission spectrum with the feature of refractive index insensitive. Therefore, compared with the traditional cladding mode and multimode interferometric fiber-optic sensor, the proposed sensor based on FMF is easier to control and analyze transmission mode has the advantages of simple structure, easy process and high sensitivity. It can avoid cross-sensitivity between temperature and refractive index measurement. Thus, it can be used for temperature detection of power system, biomedicine, aerospace and other fields.