[Psychosocial status of Hungarian cancer patients. A descriptive study]. / Magyar daganatos betegek pszichoszociális állapota.

INTRODUCTION: Psychosocial status of cancer patients is still understudied in Hungary. AIM: The aim of the authors was to obtain current information on the mental and social status of this patient group. METHOD: Altogether, 1070 cancer patients with a wide range of cancer types were included in the study (30.0% male; age: 55.9 ± 11.0 years). RESULTS: A large part of the patients had serious financial difficulties and 41.3% of them were struggling with at least one more comorbid chronic disease. Further, 52.2% of the patients reported at least moderate anxiety or depression, while the occurrence of suicidal thoughts was almost three times higher among them than in the Hungarian normal population (13.0% vs. 4.6%). Level of perceived social support was also lower than the population standards and 61.6% of the patients reported willingness to benefit from professional psychological support. Quality of social life of the patients deteriorated with time after cancer diagnosis. A positive phenomenon, however, was that the primary coping style reported was active problem solving. CONCLUSIONS: The authors conclude that it is necessary to screen cancer patients for psychosocial difficulties and to establish conditions for their adequate mental and social care in Hungary.

[Changes in cognitive function in patients with diabetes mellitus]. / A kognitív funkciók változásai cukorbetegségben.

Patients with diabetes are approximately 1.5 times more likely to experience cognitive decline than individuals without diabetes mellitus. Most of the data suggest that patients with diabetes have reduced performance in numerous domains of cognitive function. In patients with type 1 diabetes, specific and global deficits involving speed of psychomotor efficiency, information processing, mental flexibility, attention, and visual perception seem to be present, while in patients with type 2 diabetes an increase in memory deficits, a reduction in psychomotor speed, and reduced frontal lobe (executive) functions have been found. The complex pathophysiology of changes in the central nervous system in diabetes has not yet been fully elucidated. It is important to consider the patient's age at the onset of diabetes, the glycemic control status, and the presence of diabetic complications. Neurological consequences of diabetes appear parallel to those observed in the aging brain. Neuroimaging studies highlight several structural cerebral changes, cortical and subcortical atrophy, beside increased leukoaraiosis that occurs in association with diabetes. There is supporting evidence from many hypotheses to explain the pathophysiology of cognitive decline associated with diabetes. The main hypotheses pointing to the potential, implied mechanisms involve hyperglycemia, hypoglycemia, microvascular disease, insulin resistance, hyperinsulinism, hyperphosphorylation of tau protein, and amyloid-ß deposition.

[Effect of dopaminergic and serotonergic gene variants on cognitive performance]. / Dopaminerg és szerotonerg génvariánsok hatása a kognitív teljesítményre.

UNLABELLED: According to twin studies heritability of cognitive skills is substantial, however, little is known about the gene variants responsible for coding individual variability. Results of candidate gene studies implicate an important role of the dopaminergic system in coding individual differences in reaction time performance, and the possible role of the function of the serotonergic system has also emerged. GOALS: The aim of our study was to carry out association analyses between performance on the Stroop-task and selected gene polymorphisms of the dopaminergic and serotonergic system. RESULTS: In this study we examined 179 young adult's Stroop-performance measuring the attentional inhibition. The number of mistakes showed remarkable individual variability which can be related to the polymorphisms of the dopamine D4 receptor gene according to several previous studies. The short and long variations of the variable number tandem repeat polymorphism in the promoter region of the serotonin transporter gene was also studied based on the hypothesis of dopamine-serotonin balance. CONCLUSION: Our results demonstrate that the performance in the Stroop task is related to the genetic variants of the dopaminergic, as well as the serotonergic system.