The purpose of this study is to verify whether acute pre-treatment with alprazolam (ALP), a benzodiazepine that inhibits HPA secretion in normal subjects, could better characterize patients with subclinical Cushing’s syndrome (SCS) than the 1-mg dexamethasone test (DST). In 22 patients with SCS, 10 with overt Cushing’s syndrome (CS), 11 with non-functioning adrenal incidentalomas (NF) and 14 no...

BACKGROUND Neurocognitive impairments of attention and executive functioning are trait abnormalities in schizophrenia, and these are considered to be endophenotypes. These deficits have been convincingly linked to prefrontal cortical functioning. In this study, we examined the cognitive performance in the domains of attention and executive functioning among first-degree relatives of Indian peop...

The DST combination rule is studied and corresponding rigorous proofs of its properties are given, including two properties, i.e., sequential DST combination rule meets the commutative law and associative law; the sequential DST combination rule and the centralized DST combination rule are equivalent. The two properties show that the fusion result of multiple evidence sources is irrelevant to f...

INTRODUCTION Daylight saving time (DST), implemented as an energy saving policy, impacts many other aspects of life; one is road safety. Based on vehicle crash data in Minnesota from 2001 to 2007, this paper evaluates long- and short-term effects of DST on daily vehicle crashes. METHOD To provide evidence to explain the causes of more/fewer crashes in DST, we examine the impact of DST on cras...

Several authors have suggested that Dexamethasone Suppression Test (DST) non-suppression is related to circadian alternations of hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal function. Two clinical manifestations of altered circadian rhythms in depressed patients are early morning awakening and diurnal variation in mood. To observe whether these clinical symptom patterns were associated with an increased freq...

Signs of microbial life on Mars, if they exist, will probably exist underground. This paper describes a robotics system for handling and sub-sampling cores taken from a robotic drill. The system prepares samples for analysis and life detection experiments. This system has been integrated with a drill and other instruments and tested in the field. This paper presents a description of the system ...

OBJECTIVE A nationwide anti-tuberculosis drug resistance survey for Mycobacterium tuberculosis was conducted by the Tuberculosis Research Committee (Ryoken) in Japan, 2002, to clarify the recent trend of drug resistant M. tuberculosis. The drug susceptibility testing (DST) results by participating laboratories were compared with the test results by the reference laboratory, in order to evaluate...

Ethambutol (EMB) is used as a part of drug regimens for treatment of tuberculosis (TB). Susceptibility of Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex (MTBC) isolates to EMB can be discerned by DNA sequencing to detect mutations in the embB gene associated with resistance. US Public Health Laboratories (PHL) primarily use growth-based drug susceptibility test (DST) methods to determine EMB resistance. Th...

Psychological distress and coping styles have been suggested to relate to altered function in the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, although there remains much to be understood about their relationships. High and low cortisol levels (or reactivity) both represent HPA axis dysfunction, with accumulated evidence suggesting that they are linked to different types of psychopathology. The d...