ABSTRACT
Objective@#The frequency of various disasters has become a 21st century global crisis. The biological-disaster of the coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19) gave rise to a multi-dimensional global impact. The 25 items of Societal Influences Survey Questionnaire (SISQ) was developed to assess various categories of social influence during the pandemic. This study compares the SISQ scores of Taiwan, Republic of Korea (Korea) and Japan. @*Methods@#Persons living in Korea, Japan, and Taiwan were recruited and evaluated through an SISQ online survey. The SISQ is composed of 25 items each with a 4-point Likert scale. The SISQ assesses the following six factors: self-restraint, social impact, government policy, social cost, concern of infection, and awareness of information. A principal factor analysis and reliability (Cronbach’s alpha) were performed to validate the SISQ. The analysis of variance (ANOVA) and post-hoc analysis was conducted to explore the differences between groups. @*Results@#The SISQ had acceptable reliabilities, and accounted for 58.86% of the variance. The significance for ANOVA with post-hoc analysis showed that scores of self-restraints ranked highest in Japan followed by Taiwan and Korea. Taiwanese scored lower than other nations regarding the concern of infection. Koreans scored higher in awareness of information than the other two nations. The effect of age and marital status were also estimated. @*Conclusion@#The SISQ comprehensively evaluate multiple domains of social influence, and it manifests the divergence of social impacts across the three nations.
ABSTRACT
Objective@#To systematically examine the effectiveness and tolerability of psilocybin for treating end-of-life anxiety symptoms. @*Methods@#The Medline, Embase, CENTRAL, and PsycINFO databases were searched up to November 25, 2020. We enrolled clinical trials investigating psilocybin for treating end-of-life anxiety symptoms. Meta-analysis was conducted using random-effects model. @*Results@#Overall, five studies were included, revealing that psilocybin was superior to the placebo in treating state anxiety at 1 day (Hedges’ g, -0.70; 95% confidence interval, -1.01 to -0.39) and 2 weeks (-1.03; -1.47 to -0.60) after treatment. Psilocybin was more effective than placebo in treating trait anxiety at 1 day (-0.71; -1.15 to -0.26), 2 weeks (-1.08; -1.80 to -0.36), and 6 months (-0.84; -1.37 to -0.30) after treatment. Psilocybin was associated with transient elevation in systolic (19.00; 13.58–24.41 mm Hg) and diastolic (8.66; 5.18–12.15 mm Hg) blood pressure compared with placebo. The differences between psilocybin and placebo groups with regard to allcause discontinuation, serious adverse events, and heart rates were nonsignificant. @*Conclusion@#Psilocybin-assisted therapy could ameliorate end-of-life anxiety symptoms without serious adverse events. Because of the small sample sizes of the included studies and high heterogeneity on long-term outcomes, future randomized controlled trials with large sample sizes are needed.
ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVE: Schizophrenia (SZ) has been associated with the inflammatory-related and immunological pathogenesis. This study investigates the aberration of cytokines in patients with SZ. METHODS: Thirty patients with SZ without antipsychotic treatment for at least two weeks participated. We measured the serum levels of fourteen cytokines at hospital admission and after 8-week antipsychotic treatment. Severity was measured by expanded version of 24-items brief psychiatric rating scale (BPRS-E). Repeated measure analyses of variance were conducted. RESULTS: The interleukin-1 receptor antagonist (IL-1ra) was significantly decreased after 8-week antipsychotic treatment than those of before antipsychotic treatment (F=12.15, df=1/30, p=0.002). Neural cell adhesion molecule 1/CD56 (NCAM-1/CD56) was significantly decreased (F=6.61, df=1/30, p=0.016) among those with second-generation antipsychotics but not first-generation antipsychotics treatment. The changes of BPRS-E-manic and BPRS-E-anxiety scores correlated with the baseline IL-1ra (r=-0.393), IL-6 (r=-0.407), and insulin like growth factor binding protein 3 (r=-0.446). Additionally, the changes of BPRS-E and BPRS-E-negative scores correlated with the changes of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (r=0.372) and interferon-gamma (r=0.375). CONCLUSION: Our study supports that IL-1ra and NCAM-1/CD56 may be considered as markers of developing SZ.