9 Nov 2020

Retinal arteriolar and venular diameters are widened in patients with schizophrenia

Cerebrovascular abnormalities have been discussed as pathological mechanisms involved in schizophrenia, particularly in the context of the genetic–inflammatory–vascular hypothesis.¹ The cerebral and retinal microcirculation have similarities with respect to morphology and physiology. It can therefore be tested if retinal vessel changes occur in patients with schizophrenia. Larger diameters of retinal venules have been noted in schizophrenia,^2, 3 while smaller retinal arteriolar diameters were recently shown in psychoses.³ Our study aimed to contribute new information to further test the hypothesis of the ‘eye as a window to the brain’ in the context of schizophrenia.

9 Nov 2020

Toward more accurate data in cardiac cellular electrophysiology

The divergence of published data is a well-recognised problem of experimental sciences including cardiac cellular electrophysiology. Differences in experimental conditions as well as in experimental models are commonly known to be potential reasons for this. Properties of individual cardiac myocytes vary depending on their localisation in the heart muscle, but also differ among species and strains, age and gender groups, housing and health conditions, to name the most often discussed sources of variability. However, limits of accuracy of experimental data arising from sub-optimal measurement and evaluation methods represent another important and often neglected source of data inconsistency.

9 Nov 2020

Structural Alterations in Deep Brain Structures in Type 1 Diabetes

Even though well known in type 2 diabetes, the existence of brain changes in type 1 diabetes (T1D) and both their neuroanatomical and clinical features are less well characterized. To fill the void in the current understanding of this disease, we sought to determine the possible neural correlate in long-duration T1D at several levels, including macrostructural, microstructural cerebral damage, and blood flow alterations. In this cross-sectional study, we compared a cohort of 61 patients with T1D with an average disease duration of 21 years with 54 well-matched control subjects without diabetes in a multimodal MRI protocol providing macrostructural metrics (cortical thickness and structural volumes), microstructural measures (T1-weighted/T2-weighted [T1w/T2w] ratio as a marker of myelin content, inflammation, and edema), and cerebral blood flow.

9 Nov 2020

Voxelwise analysis of diffusion MRI of cervical spinal cord using tract-based spatial statistics

Robust voxelwise analysis using tract-based spatial statistics (TBSS) together with permutation statistical method is standardly used in analyzing diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) of brain. A similar analytical method could be useful when studying DTI of cervical spinal cord. Based on anatomical data of sixty-four healthy volunteers, white (WM) and gray matter (GM) masks were created and subsequently registered into DTI space. Using TBSS, two skeleton types were created (single line and dilated for WM as well as GM).

29 Oct 2020

Microbleeds and the Effect of Anticoagulation in Patients With Embolic Stroke of Undetermined Source: An Exploratory Analysis of the NAVIGATE ESUS Randomized Clinical Trial

Importance: The reported associations of cerebral microbleeds with recurrent stroke and intracerebral hemorrhage have raised concerns regarding antithrombotic treatment in patients with a history of stroke and microbleeds on magnetic resonance imaging.

Objective: To characterize microbleeds in embolic strokes of undetermined source (ESUS) and report interactions between microbleeds and the effects of random assignment to anticoagulant vs antiplatelet therapy.

29 Oct 2020

The Practice of Electroconvulsive Therapy in Children and Adolescents in the Czech Republic

Objectives: The aim of this study was to describe the practice of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) in child and adolescent patients in the Czech Republic.

Methods: We conducted a mail questionnaire survey among Czech facilities associated with the Association of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and university hospitals with inpatient psychiatric wards, focused on the practice of ECT between 2013 and 2017 in patients younger than 18 years.

29 Oct 2020

High frequency oscillations in epileptic and non-epileptic human hippocampus during a cognitive task

Hippocampal high-frequency electrographic activity (HFOs) represents one of the major discoveries not only in epilepsy research but also in cognitive science over the past few decades. A fundamental challenge, however, has been the fact that physiological HFOs associated with normal brain function overlap in frequency with pathological HFOs. We investigated the impact of a cognitive task on HFOs with the aim of improving differentiation between epileptic and non-epileptic hippocampi in humans. Hippocampal activity was recorded with depth electrodes in 15 patients with focal epilepsy during a resting period and subsequently during a cognitive task. HFOs in ripple and fast ripple frequency ranges were evaluated in both conditions, and their rate, spectral entropy, relative amplitude and duration were compared in epileptic and non-epileptic hippocampi.

20 Oct 2020

The Direct Costs of Dravet's Syndrome before and after Diagnosis Assessment

The objective of this study was to estimate the direct cost before and after diagnosis assessment in patients with Dravet's syndrome (DS). The basis of the economic study was to calculate the costs of health care before and after diagnosis of DS. We retrospectively evaluated all SCN1A positive patients with phenotype of DS treated in our hospital. Statistical analyses were performed by IBM SPSS Statistics 24.0 software. After the diagnosis of DS, there was a significant decline of health care costs (-85.6%) an average of €29.4 ± 26.1 monthly per patient. We estimated the monthly costs at €204.5 ± 167 (median: €193.9, range: €35.5-534.4) per patient before DS diagnosis.