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Biomedical subjects

C Soares

Publications and source records attributed to C Soares.

13 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2001

An open trial of mirtazapine in menopausal women with depression unresponsive to estrogen replacement therapy.

Treatment of major depression in menopausal women is controversial. Estrogen replacement therapy (ERT) treats mild depression but may not treat more severe depression in this population. Antidepressants are recommended as treatment for major depression in menopausal women, but the specific efficacy of antidepressants has not been examined in menopause-associated depression. Twenty-two perimenopausal and postmenopausal women aged 40-61 taking stable doses of ERT who met Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV (SCID-IV) criteria for major depression were accessioned into an open-label clinical trial of mirtazapine. Subjects were treated with 30-45 mg/day mirtazapine for 8 weeks and were assessed every 2 weeks with the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale-17 (HDRS-17), Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), and Clinical Global Impression (CGI) Scale. Remission of depression was defined as an HDRS-17 score < or =7 at the week 8 study visit. Sixteen (73%) of the enrolled subjects completed the 8-week study. The median HDRS-17 score declined from 20.5 (range 12-37) at baseline to 2 (range 0-9) at week 8 (Wilcoxon signed-rank test, p < 0.001). Remission of depression was achieved by 14 of 16 (87.5%) study completers. Subjects responded well to mirtazapine regardless of whether their depression preceded ERT use or developed after ERT was initiated. Therapeutic response also appeared independent of menopausal status (perimenopausal vs. postmenopausal), ERT preparation, and concomitant use of medroxyprogesterone. Mirtazapine is an effective treatment for major depression in perimenopausal and postmenopausal women whose depression precedes ERT use and does not respond to ERT or whose depression develops after ERT is initiated.

Adult↗
PubMed2001

Second-order temporal modulation transfer functions.

Detection thresholds were measured for a sinusoidal modulation applied to the modulation depth of a sinusoidally amplitude-modulated (SAM) white noise carrier as a function of the frequency of the modulation applied to the modulation depth (referred to as f'm). The SAM noise acted therefore as a "carrier" stimulus of frequency fm, and sinusoidal modulation of the SAM-noise modulation depth generated two additional components in the modulation spectrum: fm-f'm and fm+f'm. The tracking variable was the modulation depth of the sinusoidal variation applied to the "carrier" modulation depth. The resulting "second-order" temporal modulation transfer functions (TMTFs) measured on four listeners for "carrier" modulation frequencies fm of 16, 64, and 256 Hz display a low-pass segment followed by a plateau. This indicates that sensitivity to fluctuations in the strength of amplitude modulation is best for fluctuation rates f'm below about 2-4 Hz when using broadband noise carriers. Measurements of masked modulation detection thresholds for the lower and upper modulation sideband suggest that this capacity is possibly related to the detection of a beat in the sound's temporal envelope. The results appear qualitatively consistent with the predictions of an envelope detector model consisting of a low-pass filtering stage followed by a decision stage. Unlike listeners' performance, a modulation filterbank model using Q values > or = 2 should predict that second-order modulation detection thresholds should decrease at high values of f'm due to the spectral resolution of the modulation sidebands (in the modulation domain). This suggests that, if such modulation filters do exist, their selectivity is poor. In the latter case, the Q value of modulation filters would have to be less than 2. This estimate of modulation filter selectivity is consistent with the results of a previous study using a modulation-masking paradigm [S. D. Ewert and T. Dau, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 108, 1181-1196 (2000)].

Adult↗
PubMed1999

Intravascular brachytherapy physics: report of the AAPM Radiation Therapy Committee Task Group no. 60. American Association of Physicists in Medicine.

Recent preclinical and clinical studies indicate that irradiation using ionizing radiation in the dose range of 15 to 30 Gy may reduce the occurrence of restenosis in patients who have undergone an angioplasty. Several delivery systems of intravascular brachytherapy have been developed to deliver radiation doses in this range with minimal normal tissue toxicity. In late 1995 the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM) formed a task group to investigate these issues and to report the current state of the art of intravascular brachytherapy physics. The report of this task group is presented here.

Angioplasty, Balloon, Coronary↗
PubMed1984

Left-hemisphere language lateralization in bilinguals: use of the concurrent activities paradigm.

Previous visual and auditory lateralization studies have demonstrated that the languages of bilinguals are lateralized to the left hemisphere to the same extent as in monolingual controls (C. Soares & F. Grosjean, 1981, Perception and Psychophysics, 29, 599-604; C. Soares, 1982, Neuropsychologia, 20, 653-659). The present study tested the same group of Portuguese-English bilinguals and a group of English-speaking monolinguals on a series of concurrent activity, or time-sharing, tasks. Greater levels of disruption in finger tapping with the right hand than with the left hand occurred during the performance of those tasks which required overt speech production, and this for both bilinguals and monolinguals. As in the previous studies, there were no lateralization differences across the bilinguals' two languages or between bilinguals and monolinguals. Thus, further evidence for equal levels of left-hemisphere dominance for language in bilinguals and monolinguals was provided by the use of the concurrent activities paradigm.

Adult↗
PubMed1983

The influence of inter- and intra-speaker tempo on fundamental frequency and palatalization.

A study was conducted to examine the influence of speaking rate and emphatic stress on patterns of fundamental frequency (F0) and palatalization across word boundaries. Two groups of speakers, exhibiting characteristically fast versus slow speech, uttered preselected sentences at normal, fast, and slow rates. Acoustic analysis of F0 showed somewhat higher F0 peaks for characteristically fast speakers and for fast rates of speech. Emphatic stress was accompanied by a typical heightening of F0 on the emphasized word and by a lowering of F0 on a neighboring word. Palatalization across word boundaries was more frequent among characteristically fast speakers and at fast rates of speech. In addition, palatalization was more frequent in the absence of emphatic stress at the key site. The results for F0 were discussed in terms of the influence of vocal fold tension, while the results for palatalization were discussed in terms of the incompatibility of phonological processes of lengthening versus shortening as well as possible look-ahead restrictions.

Female↗
PubMed1982

Converging evidence for left hemisphere language lateralization in bilinguals.

A previous study [1] demonstrated that when subject and experimental variables are controlled, similar levels of left hemisphere language lateralization are obtained in bilinguals and monolinguals. The present study used the same group of bilinguals (adult, late acquirers of their second language) in an auditory lateralization task. A similar degree of left hemisphere asymmetry was again obtained for the bilinguals' two languages and for the monolinguals. Furthermore, the individual performances of the bilinguals--within the present task and across visual and auditory tasks--paralleled those of monolinguals. Thus, converging evidence is provided for equal levels of left hemisphere language dominance in bilinguals and monolinguals.

Adult↗
PubMedDate not supplied

[Predictive factors of hospital and 6-month morbidity and mortality in hospitalized elderly patients].

This article presents the results of a prospective multivariable study of elderly patients aged over 70 years, hospitalized in an Internal Medicine Department of a Central Lisbon Hospital. The study aimed to identify, at the beginning of hospital admission (HA), predictive factors of hospital mortality (HM) and mortality at 6 months, of duration of HA, of admission to a nursing home at the time of discharge and during a period of 6 months thereafter and of hospital readmission during the 6 months following discharge. The study included 158 patients with a mean hospital stay of 15 days and a hospital mortality of 12%. The main pathologies responsible for hospital admission were cerebrovascular accident (22%), heart failure (20%) and pneumonia (16%). Mortality at 6 months was 29% and hospital readmission in the 6 months thereafter was 24%. When the patient was cared for by the spouse there was a statistically significant correlation with a shorter duration of admission (p = 0.006). Mean hospital stay was not significantly associated with any other variable. A subjective medical evaluation (SME) at the start of HA (p = 0.001), a low Barthel score prior to and at the time of HA, low serum albumin (p = 0.001) and a high leucocyte count (p = 0.005) were correlated with a higher HM. Nursing home admission was only positively correlated with cerebrovascular pathology. Mortality at 6 months was significantly correlated with the SME (p = 0.001), a low Barthel score prior to admission (p < 0.008) and at the time of HA (p < 0.001), nursing home residency (p < 0.005) and a low mental test score (p < 0.01). Hospital readmission at 6 months was influenced by the SME (p < 0.04) and by the reduction in the Barthel score caused by the illness and HA (p = 0.004). These correlations enabled the development of mathematical models that predict HM and mortality at 6 months and admission to a nursing home at the time of discharge and during a period of 6 months thereafter. They could be important in identifying elderly patients' needs early in the hospital admission and in the improvement of the strategy necessary for a successful and dignified hospital discharge.

Aged↗
PubMedDate not supplied

[Idiopathic proctocolitis. Follow-up (1-13 years) of 71 patients].

Follow-up was possible in 71 of 74 patients with idiopathic proctocolitis diagnosed and/or assisted at the Department of Gastroenterology of the Centro Policínico de Almada, between 1973 and 1985. The aim of the present study was to verify the natural history of the disease and if there were statistically significant differences depending on the extension of the disease (proctitis versus colitis). Complications were present in 22 patients (31%): peri-anal (10%), local or intestinal (24%) and extra-intestinal (28%). Fifteen patients (21% of the cases) had hospital admission at least once, and 2 of them (3%) were submitted to surgery. No cases of cancer of the colon and rectum were detected and mortality was nil. Forty-one patients (58%) were assymptomatic at the last observation (45% with colitis and 75% with proctitis). There were statistically significant differences between the group of patients with ulcerative colitis and that of proctitis concerning the total number of complications (p less than 0.001), local complications (p less than 0.01), extra-intestinal complications (p less than 0.05), need for hospital admission (p less than 0.001) and absence of symptoms at the time of last observation (p less than 0.05), thus confirming a better prognosis of the disease when only the rectum is involved.

Adult↗