Correlation analysis of mental health conditions and personality of patients with alcohol addiction.

BACKGROUND: Alcohol addiction, or alcohol dependence, refers to a psychological state of strong craving for alcohol caused by drinking when both the drinking times and alcohol consumption reach a certain level. Alcohol addiction can cause irreversible damage, leading to mental illness or mental disorders, negative changes in their original personality, and a tendency to safety incidents such as committing suicide or violent attacks on others. Significant attention needs to be given to the mental health of alcohol addicts, which could reflect their abnormal personality traits. However, only a few papers on this issue have been reported in China. AIM: To investigate the correlation between mental health and personality in patients with alcohol addiction. METHODS: In this single-center observational study, we selected 80 patients with alcohol addiction as the research subjects, according to the criteria of the K10 scale to evaluate the mental health of patients with alcohol addiction, and divided these patients into four groups based on the evaluation results: Good, average, relatively poor and bad. And then analyzed the correlation between mental health conditions and personality characteristics from these four groups of patients. RESULTS: The average score of the K10 scale (Kessler 10 Simple Psychological Status Assessment Scale) in 80 patients with alcohol addiction was 25.45 points, the median score was 25 points, the highest score was 50 points, and the lowest score was 11 points. Pearson's analysis showed that the K10 score was positively correlated with the scores of these two subscales, such as the P-subscale and the N-subscale (P < 0.05). In contrast, the K10 score had no significant correlation with the scores from the E-subscale and the L-subscale (P > 0.05). CONCLUSION: The mental health conditions of patients with alcohol addiction are positively correlated with their personality characteristics.

[Effects of methadone maintenance treatment on working memory in male heroin dependent patients].

OBJECTIVE: To explore the differences of working memory task performance between male patients with heroin dependence in methadone maintenance treatment (MMT) and healthy controls (HC). METHODS: A total of 42 heroin-dependent patients at Huainan City Psychiatric Hospital from May 2011 to October 2011 were compared with 31 gender- and age-matched HCs on such working memory tests as visual-space, visual-verbal and visual-face. Then the accurate rate and reaction time of the above tasks were between two groups. RESULTS: The participants with anxiety or depression were excluded. All MMT subjects were required to have negative urine toxicology screening tests. The accurate rate of verbal working memory of the patients was worse than that of HCs (83% ± 9% vs 89% ± 10%). And the difference was significant between two groups (t(71) = -2.631, P = 0.010). The accurate rate of visual-object and visual-spatial working memory showed no significant differences between two groups (P > 0.05). The differences in reaction time on these tasks showed no statistical significance between two groups (P > 0.05). In addition, the dose of methadone and the duration of MMT revealed no significant effects on the performance of working memory and executive functions. CONCLUSION: The disproportion impairment of patients on space, verbal and face working memory is probably due to the differential heroin-mediated injuries of encephalic regions. Methadone has no effect on working memory and executive functions in the patients with a history of heroin use during maintenance treatment intervention.

Evidence of a Relationship Between Plasma Leptin, Not Nesfatin-1, and Craving in Male Alcohol-Dependent Patients After Abstinence.

The goal of this study was to determine whether the plasma leptin, nesfatin-1, cortisol, brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), and inflammatory cytokines could be used as potential biomarkers for the degree of craving in the alcohol-dependent patients after 1 month of abstinence. A total of 83 patients with alcohol use disorder (AUD) and 61 healthy subjects were assessed. Patients with AUD were selected from Department of Material Dependence, Anhui Mental Health Center, and subjects in the control group were selected from healthy volunteers. The Alcohol Urge questionnaire Scale (AUQ) was used to evaluate the extent of craving for alcohol, and the Michigan Alcoholism Screening Test (MAST), the Fagerstrom Test for Nicotine Dependence (FTND), the Self-Rating Anxiety Scale (SAS), and the Self-Rating Depression Scale (SDS) were also assessed in patients with AUD. Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA) was used for the measurement of plasma leptin, nesfatin-1, cortisol, BDNF, Interleukin-6 (IL-6), C-reactive protein (CRP), and tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) levels. Compare with healthy controls, the average leptin, leptin/BMI, IL-6, CRP, and TNF-α levels in patients with AUD were significantly increased, while the BDNF levels were significantly decreased. Moreover, the partial correlational analysis showed that the AUQ scores of the alcohol-dependent patients were positively correlated with the plasma leptin levels (r = 0.613, P < 0.001), rather than nesfatin-1 (r = 0.066, P = 0.569) after controlling for age as covariate. Furthermore, plasma nesfatin-1 levels were found to be correlated with the SDS scores (r = 0.366, P = 0.001) in the AUD group. In addition, plasma leptin levels were positively associated with the plasma IL-6 (r = 0.257, P = 0.033), CRP (r = 0.305, P = 0.011), and TNF-α (r = 0.311, P = 0.009) levels, and negatively associated with the BDNF levels (r = -0.245, P = 0.042) in patients with AUD. These results suggest that plasma leptin, but not nesfatin-1, might be a potential biomarker for the degree of craving in alcohol-dependent patients after 1 month of abstinence, the mechanism of which might be related to the dysfunction of the inflammatory cytokines and BDNF levels.

Pharmacologic prevention of postoperative delirium after on-pump cardiac surgery: A meta-analysis of randomized trials.

BACKGROUND: Postoperative delirium is a prevalent and disabling mental disorder in patients undergoing on-pump cardiac surgery. There is some evidence that the use of pharmacological interventions may reduce the risk of developing of postoperative delirium. Therefore, the aim of this meta-analysis was to determine the effect of pharmacologic agents for the prevention postoperative delirium after cardiac surgery. METHODS: Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) were identified through a systematic literature search of electronic databases and article references up to October 2016. End points included incidence of postoperative delirium, severity of postoperative delirium, cognitive disturbances of postoperative delirium, duration of postoperative delirium, length of stay in intensive care unit (ICU) and hospital, and short-term mortality. RESULTS: A total of 14 RCTs with an aggregate of 14,139 patients were included. The results of the present meta-analysis show that pharmacologic agents significantly decrease postoperative delirium [relative risk (RR), 0.83; 95% confidence interval (95% CI), 0.75-0.91, P < .00001] and duration of postoperative delirium (RR = -0.37, 95% CI = -0.47 to -0.27, P < .00001) after on-pump cardiac surgery. In addition, subgroup analysis shows that dexamethasone and dexamethasone were associated with a trend toward a reduction in postoperative delirium (RR, 0.45; 95% CI, 0.30-0.66, P < .0001; RR, 0.80; 95% CI, 0.68-0.93, P = .003, respectively). However, our results fail to support the assumption that pharmacologic prophylaxis is associated with a positively reduction in short-term mortality, length of ICU, or hospital stay. CONCLUSION: This meta-analysis suggests that the perioperative use of pharmacologic agents can prevent postoperative delirium development in patients undergoing cardiac surgery. However, there remain important gaps in the evidence base on a few small studies with multiple limitations. Further large-scale, high-quality RCTs are needed in this area.