Cognitive deficits constitute an integral part of clinical picture of depression, but often not enough attention has been paid to these deficits, mainly because of the presumption that they are secondary to typical depressive symptoms. It is considered that cognitive impairment is one of the main causes of depressive patients' poor functioning. Cognitive deficits are observed already in the fir...

BACKGROUND Courmon street name for 3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) is ecstasy. This widely abused "recreational" drug causes both an increased release of monoamine neurotransmitters, including serotonine and dopamine, and an increased reuptake inhibition of serotonin. As a consequence, mydriasis and increased intraocular pressure (IOP) in predisposed patients occur. We present herein a...

The aim of the present study was to assess the contribution of endogenous cannabinoids in the protective effect of ischemic preconditioning on the endothelial function in coronary arteries of the rat. Isolated rat hearts were exposed to a 30-min low flow ischemia (1 ml/min) followed by 20-min reperfusion, after which the response to the endothelium-dependent vasodilator, serotonine (5-HT), was ...

As it is the case in other psychiatric disorders, etiopathogenic hypotheses of depression have chiefly been shaped by the fortuitous discovery of antidepressive drugs. Reciprocally, these hypotheses have largely influenced later innovation in therapeutic drugs. In this paper, we aimed to study the development of pharmacological treatments through the different neurobiological and molecular mode...

In earlier studies it was found that glutamatergic transmission within the nucleus accumbens septi is involved in the performance of a learned visual shape discrimination in pigeons. This study examines what effects several kinds of glutamate and dopamine antagonists have on the same task. Pigeons were trained with the relevant discrimination, bilaterally implanted with cannulas into the nucleu...

UNLABELLED Objective. Our aim has been evaluating the influence of an acute dose of cinacalcet on the gastrointestinal hormonal responses to a test meal in uraemic patients with secondary hyperparathyroidism undergoing peritoneal dialysis (PD) or haemodialysis (HD). METHODS Twenty patients (11 PD, 9 HD) on cinacalcet treatment (30-120 mg/day) were studied. Twelve patients (1 PD, 11 HD) who ne...

Reduced cognitive abilities are often characterized by an impairment of flexibility, i.e., the ability to switch from learned rules or categories that were important in certain contexts to different new modalities that rule the task. Drugs targeting the dopamine transporter (DAT) are widely used for their potential to enhance cognitive abilities. However, commercially available drugs are of lim...

Functional dyspepsia includes one or more of four cardinal symptoms: postprandial fullness, early satiety, pain or burning in the epigastrum. According to the Rome III diagnostic criteria for functional dyspepsia, these symptoms must be present for the last 3 months with symptom onset at least 6 months prior to diagnosis. Functional dyspepsia is not the result of an underlying structural abnorm...

OBJECTIVE Estradiol (E2) mediates numerous beneficial effects assigned to estrogens, but whereas mechanisms have been described at the endothelial level, direct effects on vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMC) are poorly documented. As evidence accumulates regarding the role of RhoA in vascular pathophysiology and the benefit of RhoA-Rho associated protein kinase (Rock) pathway inhibition, we ana...