BACKGROUND In Japan and Asia, few studies have been done of physical and sexual abuse. This study was aimed to determine whether a history of childhood physical abuse is associated with anxiety, depression and self-injurious behavior in outpatients with psychosomatic symptoms. METHODS We divided 564 consecutive new outpatients at the Department of Psychosomatic Medicine of Kyushu University H...

We report here a simple method involving urine creatine measurements for testing authenticity and reducing false-negative results in urine testing for drugs of abuse. Urinary creatinine in consecutive patient samples (n = 176) ranged between 0.1 and 31.9 mmol/L (mean 9.8 +/- SD 6.2) and the osmolality in these urines ranged between 49 and 1183 mOsm/kg (mean 595 +/- SD 276). With other consecuti...

The interaction of drugs with biologic targets is a critical area of research, particularly for the development of medications to treat substance use disorders. In addition to understanding these drug-target interactions, however, there is a need to understand more fully the psychosocial influences that moderate these interactions. The first section of this review introduces some examples from ...

One of the most intriguing functions of the brain is the ability to store information provided by experience and to retrieve much of it at will. Learning is the name given to the process by which new information is acquired by the nervous system and is observable through changes in behavior. Memory refers to the encoding, storage, and retrieval of learned information. There are at least three d...

A retrospective record survey was performed using all child clients aged less than 7 years seen at a community mental health center during the period 1982-1984. The total number of 202 children fell into three groups: sexually abused (n = 37), physically abused (n = 35), and nonabused clinical children (n = 130). These groups were compared in order to learn more about sexual abuse in young chil...

Kinetic methodology was applied to the direct determination of abused drugs (amphetamines, cocaine, and cannabinoids) in urine by stopped-flow fluorescence polarization immunoassay (SF-FPIA). This technique provides analytical data within a few seconds by measuring the variation of polarized fluorescence with time during development of immunochemical reactions. Methods based on this principle a...

A solid phase extraction (SPE) method has been developed and applied in conjunction with a previously reported liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS-MS) procedure for the determination of illicit drugs and abused pharmaceuticals in treated wastewater and surface water samples at the ng L(-1) level. A full method validation was also performed and determined levels of analytical s...

The present paper describes the methodological optimisation and validation of a capillary zone electrophoresis method for the determination of morphine, cocaine and 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) in hair, with injection based on field-amplified sample stacking. Diode array UV absorption detection was used to improve analytical selectivity and identification power. Analytical condition...

Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) is an amphetamine analogue that preferentially stimulates the release of serotonin (5HT) and results in relatively small increases synaptic dopamine (DA). The ratio drug-stimulated DA, relative to 5HT, predicts abuse liability; drugs with higher DA:5HT ratios are more likely be abused. Nonetheless, MDMA a drug misused. Clinical preclinical studies have sugge...

background: as a social destructive phenomenon, substance abuse causes destruction of family structure and, most importantly, behavioural problems and psychological stress for children. therefore this study has been conducted to compare parental communication patterns and self-esteem between adolescents with substance-abused parents with control group.  materials and methods: in this descriptiv...