Improving stress management, anxiety, and mental well-being in medical students through an online Mindfulness-Based Intervention: a randomized study.

Pressures and responsibilities of medical school put a strain on medical student's personal wellbeing, leading among all to high rates of anxiety, emotional discomfort and stress. In this work we evaluated the effectiveness of a comprehensive Mindfulness-Based Intervention (MBI) in reducing this load. The intervention comprised 10 twice-a-week Integral Meditation classes, dietary advice, and brief yoga sessions. We performed a randomized trial on two cohort of medical students from Italian universities: 239 in cohort 1 (106 treated and 133 controls), and 123 in cohort 2 (68 treated and 55 control) for a total sample of 362 students. Nine questionnaires for evaluating the effectiveness of our intervention on stress (PSS), state anxiety (STAIX-1), well-being (WEMWBS), mind-wandering (MW-S), overall distress (PANAS), emotion regulation (DERS), resilience (RS-14), and attentional control (ACS-C and ACS-D) were collected both pre and post intervention. Linear mixed effect models were run on the whole sample showing that, after multiple testing correction, our intervention was effective in reducing perceived stress (ß = - 2.57 [- 4.02; - 1.12], p = 0.004), improving mental well-being (ß = 2.82 [1.02; 4.63], p = 0.008) and emotional regulation (ß = - 8.24 [- 12.98; - 3.51], p = 0.004), resilience (ß = 3.79 [1.32; 6.26], p = 0.008), reducing the tendency to wander with the mind (ß = - 0.70 [- 0.99; - 0.39], p = 0.0001), ameliorating the ability to maintain attention (AC-S (ß = - 0.23 [- 0.44; - 0.02], p = 0.04) and AC-D (ß = - 0.19 [- 0.36; - 0.01], p = 0.04)), and the overall distress (ß = 1.84 [0.45; 3.23], p = 0.02).

Is Biofeedback for Vertigo Effective in Ordinary Medical Centers? A Controlled Trial in Northern Italy.

The aim of this study was to assess the therapeutic effectiveness of biofeedback, in a medical center's routine for treating vestibular disorders, reducing emotional, functional, and physical disability at three-month follow-up. A total of 197 outpatients were recruited from a medical center to treat vestibular disorders. Patients in the control group received treatment as usual, consisting of one monthly visit with an otolaryngologist and pharmacological treatment specific for vertigo, while the experimental group attended biofeedback training. Patients in the experimental group received pharmacological therapy only in the phase before the start of biofeedback in order to stabilize the acute phase. During the three-month follow-up, the experimental group did not receive any booster sessions of biofeedback. At three-month follow-up there was a statistically significant difference between the groups, both in the mean total score of the dizziness handicap inventory and in the three subscales: physical, emotional, and functional. Moreover, the biofeedback group had reduced psycho-physiological parameters for all average values at three-month follow-up compared to the baseline. This is one of few studies assessing the effectiveness of biofeedback in a naturalistic setting for vestibular disorder treatment. The data confirmed that biofeedback can impact illness course, in terms of self-perceived disability reduction, assessed on emotional, functional, and physical aspects of daily living.

Treatment of disseminated granuloma annulare with allopurinol: case report.

Granuloma annulare (GA) is a rare disease characterized by granulomatous inflammation of the dermis. A variant form of the disease, disseminated granuloma annulare (DGA), can be observed in about 15% of affected patients. Localized GA is likely to resolve spontaneously within months or a few years, whereas DGA can persist for decades. Various therapies have been suggested in these cases, but none of them has been demonstrated to be consistently efficacious. Allopurinol has been successfully used in granulomatous diseases such as sarcoidosis or reactions to polymethylmethacrylate spheres; therefore, we decided to evaluate the possible efficacy of this drug in three patients with long-lasting, therapy-resistant DGA.