Extraparenchymal neurocysticercosis: Demographic, clinicoradiological, and inflammatory features.

Background: Extraparenchymal neurocysticercosis (ExPNCC), an infection caused by Taenia solium cysticerci that mainly occurs in the ventricular compartment (Ve) or the basal subarachnoid space (SAb), is more severe but less frequent and much less studied than parenchymal neurocysticercosis (ParNCC). Demographic, clinical, radiological, and lumbar cerebrospinal fluid features of patients affected by ExPNCC are herein described and compared with those of ParNCC patients.

Methodology And Principal Findings: 429 patients with a confirmed diagnosis of neurocysticercosis, attending the Instituto Nacional de Neurología y Neurocirugía, a tertiary reference center in Mexico City, from 2000 through 2014, were included.

Performance of POC-CCA® in diagnosis of schistosomiasis mansoni in individuals with low parasite burden.

Introduction: Schistosomiasis, caused by Schistosoma mansoni, is a public health concern in Brazil. However, the most popular diagnostic method, the Kato-Katz technique, exhibits low sensitivity in low-endemicity areas. We aimed to compare the performance of an immunological assay, the point-of-care circulating cathodic antigen (POC-CCA®) test, with that of two parasitological techniques in a low-endemicity population.

Factor structure and psychometric properties of the TFEQ in morbid obese patients, candidates to bariatric surgery.

Background: To analyze the factor structure and psychometric properties of the TFEQ in a morbid obese Spanish sample of bariatric surgery candidates.

Method: Multi-trait/ multi-item analyses and alpha coefficients were conducted to test the convergent /discriminant validity and the internal consistency reliability. Principal components analyses (varimax) were used to explore the factor structure.

Greater clinical and cognitive improvement with clozapine and risperidone associated with a thinner cortex at baseline in first-episode schizophrenia.

Cortical thickness may be useful as a treatment response predictor in first-episode (FE) patients with schizophrenia, although this possibility has been scarcely assessed. In this study we assessed the possible relation between cortical thickness in regions of interest selected because of previously reported structural alterations in schizophrenia and clinical and cognitive changes after two years of treatment with risperidone or clozapine in 31 neuroleptic-naïve FE patients with schizophrenia (16 of them treated with clozapine and 15 with risperidone). Using the last-observation-carried-forward (LOCF), a larger improvement in positive, negative and total symptoms was predicted by the amount of baseline cortical thinning in the right prefrontal cortex (pars orbitalis).

Newly established monoclonal antibody diagnostic assays for Schistosoma mansoni direct detection in areas of low endemicity.

Background: Current available methods for diagnosis of schistosomiasis mansoni lack sufficient sensitivity, which results in underreporting of infectious in areas of low endemicity.

Methodology/principal Findings: We developed three novel diagnostic methodologies for the direct detection of schistosome infection in serum samples. These three new methods were evaluated with positive patients from a low endemicity area in southeast Brazil.

Randomized trial of clozapine vs. risperidone in treatment-naïve first-episode schizophrenia: results after one year.

In first-episode patients with psychosis, clozapine may be potentially valuable as an initial treatment seeking to limit early on clinical and cognitive deterioration. Nevertheless, until recently its restricted use has limited the study of this possibility. Our research group is developing a non-commercial, multicentric and open label study on the differential efficacy between clozapine and risperidone in first-episode schizophrenia.

Immunodiagnostic methods: what is their role in areas of low endemicity?

Worldwide Schistosomiasis mansoni continues to be a serious public health problem. Over the past decades, control programmes have made remarkable progress in reducing S. mansoni infections to a relatively low level in Brazil and African countries.

Coping strategies and quality of life among liver transplantation candidates.

The maintenance of self-reported quality of life (QL) among people on the liver transplantation waiting list is one of the priority objectives of transplantation teams. Although there are different determinant factors of QL, results are not conclusive. In our study, the goal was to evaluate both the influence of cirrhosis etiology (ethylic and non-ethylic) and the coping strategies used concerning QL.

Direct association of socio-economic status with T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukaemia in children.

Lymphoblasts from 186 consecutive untreated children <18 years were analysed by flow cytometry in Brazil. Socio-economic status was defined by family income; undernourishment by height and weight for age standardised z scores below -1.28.