Hikaru Seto — Page 3 | PubMed Health

PubMed2002

Proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy of the inferior frontal gyrus and thalamus and its relationship to verbal learning task performance in patients with schizophrenia: a preliminary report.

Previous research has found frontal lobe involvement in memory impairment in schizophrenia. In the present study, proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy was performed in 13 young patients with schizophrenia and 13 normal control subjects. Spectra were obtained from a voxel of 2 x 2 x 1.5 cm(3) in the bilateral inferior frontal gyrus and thalamus. Subjects were given a verbal learning task and stimulus category repetition (SCR) was calculated from the performance of the task. Significantly reduced N-acetylaspartate (NAA)/choline-containing compounds ratios were found in the left inferior frontal cortex of patients compared with controls. The total number of words recalled by patients was significantly lower than that recalled by controls. In all subjects, SCR scores were positively correlated with NAA/phosphocreatine ratios of the left inferior frontal cortex, which showed a trend towards a decrease in patients. These results support the notion of metabolic abnormalities in the left inferior frontal region related to verbal memory deficits in patients with schizophrenia.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2002

Dobutamine stress radionuclide ventriculography reveals silent myocardial dysfunction in Kawasaki disease.

Dobutamine (DOB) stress radionuclide ventriculography (RVG) is proposed for evaluating left ventricular performance in patients with Kawasaki disease (KD). Dobutamine stress RVG, up to 15 microg x kg(-1) x min(-1), was performed in 40 patients with a history of KD, some of whom had a perfusion defect (PD group) on dipyridamole stress thallium-201 myocardial imaging, some of whom had no perfusion defects (NPD group), and some of whom had no coronary artery lesions (C group). No significant differences in either systolic or diastolic indices of the left ventricle at rest were observed between the 3 groups. Although hemodynamic responses were similar in all patients after DOB stress, early diastolic index of the first third filling fraction decreased only in the PD group and was significantly lower in this group compared with the C group (p<0.01). The asynchrony index increased significantly in those patients with coronary stenosis after DOB stress (p<0.05). No serious side-effects were observed during the study. Even late after onset, patients with myocardial ischemia as a result of KD still had impaired early diastolic filling and asynchronous relaxation of the left ventricle. As an alternative to exercise testing, DOB stress RVG is a safe and promising means for serially evaluating left ventricular performance in patients with KD.

Adolescent↗