Clinical correlates of response to DST. The Dexamethasone Suppression test in depression: a World Health Organisation collaborative study.

From 9 centres 293 patients took part in the WHO-collaborative study on Dexamethasone-Suppression-Test (DST) in depression to examine the relationship of psychopathological and psychiatric history information to cortisol-levels and suppression/non-suppression status. Differences between the centres were large and significant on nearly all of the measures. The predictor analyses generally suffered from numerically weak correlations with many variables correlating to sex and age. Therefore analyses of the data were adjusted for centre-, sex-, and age-influences. The best predicting features of cortisol were 'fitful, restless sleep', 'change of bodyweight' and 'affective disorders in blood relatives'. The last 2 items together with 'hypersomnia' and 'ideas of insufficiency' were the best predictors of suppression/nonsuppression status. However, statistical evidence did not seem to be strong enough to describe a typical symptom profile of a depressive cortisol suppressor or nonsuppressor.

Level and causes of maternal mortality in Guinea (West Africa).

In order to evaluate the level of maternal mortality at Conakry, capital of Guinea (West Africa), a descriptive epidemiological study was made of all maternal deaths occurring between July 1st, 1989 and June 30th, 1990. To ensure that cases of maternal death were recorded as exhaustively as possible, we conducted this study over 1 year in municipal and hospital maternity units, and 3 months in the urban community. One hundred thirty-nine maternal deaths were registered, representing an annual maternal mortality rate of 559/100,000 live births. The main causes of maternal death were abortion, complications linked with hypertension, and postpartum bleeding.