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Biomedical subjects

L W Thompson

Publications and source records attributed to L W Thompson.

14 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1992

Atenolol compared with nifedipine: effect on cognitive function and mood in elderly hypertensive patients.

OBJECTIVE: To compare the effects of atenolol and nifedipine on mood and cognitive function in elderly hypertensive patients. DESIGN: Randomized, double-blind, crossover trial. PATIENTS: Thirty-one elderly volunteers (7 women and 4 men) 60 to 81 years of age with mild to moderate hypertension were recruited from the general community and a Veterans Affairs hospital hypertension clinic. Six volunteers withdrew at early phases of the study for reasons unrelated to adverse drug effects. INTERVENTIONS: Participants had 2 weeks of placebo, to 6 weeks of titration with atenolol or nifedipine, and weeks of treatment followed by similar periods with the other drug. MEASUREMENTS: Psychometric tests designed to assess mood and cognitive function. RESULTS: In the group first treated with nifedipine, the summed recall score on the Buschke selective reminding test (a test of verbal learning and memory) decreased by 9.3 words (95% CI, 2.8 to 15.6 words), or 0%, during nifedipine treatment compared with placebo (P = 0.031). The group first treated with atenolol showed no improvement in summed recall scores when results seen during atenolol therapy and placebo administration were compared (P = 0.10); however, this group had an improvement of 16.1 words (CI, 5.6 to 26.5 words), or of 16%, when the atenolol score was compared with the nifedipine score (P = 0.026). In the group first treated with nifedipine, 6 of 11 patients 55%) showed a decrease of 5 words or more during nifedipine therapy compared with placebo, whereas only 1 of the 14 patients (7%) in the group first treated with atenolol showed a similar decrease (P less than 0.01). On the digit symbol test (a psychomotor test), patients treated first with atenolol tended to improve, whereas patients treated first with nifedipine tended to decline. The difference between nifedipine and atenolol, in terms of the change from the score seen during placebo, was 4.3 codings (CI, 0.7 to 7.9 codings) or 10% (P = 0.043). No statistically significant differences were seen between nifedipine and atenolol therapy regarding the other measures of psychomotor ability, sustained attention, motor performance, verbal fluency, or abstract reasoning, and no effects of either drug on mood or psychopathologic symptoms were noted. CONCLUSIONS: Although atenolol and nifedipine are generally free of gross effects on cognition or mood, nifedipine may subtly impair learning and memory in some elderly hypertensive patients.

Affect↗
PubMed1992

Endogenous depression in the elderly: prevalence and agreement among measures.

This article describes agreement among diagnoses made according to five definitions of endogenous depression in a sample of 99 depressed elders and discusses the relationship among these systems and selected demographic and clinical characteristics. Poor to fair agreement was generally demonstrated, except for Research Diagnostic Criteria (Spitzer, Endicott, & Robins, 1978) and Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 3rd ed., rev. (American Psychiatric Association, 1987), which demonstrated excellent agreement. Mostly, demographic and clinical variables (e.g., severity of depression) were unrelated to endogeneity diagnoses. The conclusion was reached that these criteria are not all measuring the same construct in older adults and that the relationship between depression severity and endogeneity should be discussed in terms of specific definitions rather than general terms.

Aged↗
PubMed1991

Interaction of depression and bereavement on mental health in the elderly.

Three hundred ninety-three elderly adults aged 55 and older were divided into 1 of 9 subgroups in a 3 (bereavement group: survivors of spouses who died by natural death or by suicide and nonbereaved control Ss) x 3 (depression group: none, mild, and moderate-severe) design over 4 times of measurement--1 month, 6 months, 1 year, and 2.5 years after death of spouse. Significant Bereavement x Depression Group effects were obtained on Brief Symptom Inventory scores. The moderate-severe depression/suicide subgroup had the greatest psychiatric complications with bereavement. Results indicated that elderly persons with significant clinical depression at the time of a spouse's death were at significant risk for psychological complications during the bereavement process, and survivors of spouses who had committed suicide were even more at risk within the greatest depression group.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1991

The effects of late-life spousal bereavement over a 30-month interval.

Self-report measures of grief, depression, and general psychopathology were studied in widows and widowers over a 2.5-year period following death of their partner. A comparison sample of men and women was also followed for the same period. Differences in severity of depression and psychopathology previously reported at 2 months postloss (Gallagher, Breckenridge, Thompson, & Peterson, 1983) diminished to nonsignificant levels at 12 and 30 months. However, significant differences between bereaved and comparison subjects on measures of grief were still apparent 30 months after spousal loss. A main effect of gender for depression and psychopathology (but not for grief) was found at 2 and 12 months: Women reported more distress than men regardless of bereavement status. Results indicate that the experience of grief persists for at least 30 months in both older men and women who have lost their spouse.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1978

Orienting task effects on EDR and free recall in three age groups.

The present investigation was designed to examine the effects of orienting task-controlled processing on electrodermal response and free recall at two delay intervals for 94 young, 49 young-old (age 55 to 70), and 61 old-old (age 71 to 85) individuals. Subjects were presented with a list of 25 words and performed one of the following tasks: semantic, nonsemantic, or passive listening, presented in an incidental memory paradigm, or intentional memorization. Recall was obtained 2 min or 48 hours after list presentation. At the 2-min delay, the pattern of recall across tasks for the young-old and old-old subjects was similar to that of college students. Overall, the old-old recalled fewer words than the young and young-old, while the young-old recalled as many words as the young. After 48 hours, the task-related recall pattern was observed only in the young group. The skin conductance data indicated that task effects were similar across the three age groups and that response magnitude was lower in the old-old than the two younger groups. No differences in skin conductance were found between the young and young-old. Age differences in memory processing suggest that difficulties in delayed retrieval of semantically encoded words may increase during late adult years. Differences in electrodermal responses in the old-old compared to the young and young-old suggest that the range of autonomic responsivitiy to task demands may become restricted in advanced age.

Aged↗
PubMed1978

Age differences in visual sensory memory.

Age differences in visual sensory memory were studied using the direct measure procedure of Haber and Standing (1969) -- the longest interstimulus interval at which subjects reported a single stimulus as continuous was measured. The visual storage of the young (mean age 24 years) was found to persist for 289 msec compared to 248 for the old (mean age 67 years). Similar estimates of sensory memory duration were obtained when either monoptic or dichoptic stimulus presentations were employed, supporting the idea that visual storage is centrally mediated for both age groups. The relevance of these findings for age differences in the registration of information into primary and secondary memory and their implications for the stimulus persistence hypothesis are considered. The appropriateness and validity of the persistence of form task for studies of sensory memory and aging are also discussed.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1978

Type A behavior pattern and coronary atherosclerosis.

Previous research has demonstrated an increased rate of clinical coronary heart disease (CHD) events among people who exhibit a "coronary prone" (Type A) behavior pattern. This study was undertaken to determine whether the association between behavior pattern Type A and CHD might be extended beyond clinical CHD events to include also the coronary atherosclerotic process. In addition to usual clinical evaluation, 156 consecutive patients referred for diagnostic coronary angiography were independently assessed on the basis of a structured interview and assigned a rating of Type A, Type B, or Type X (indeterminate). Traditional physiologic factors--age, sex, cholesterol and cigarette smoking--were found to correlate with atherosclerotic disease. Type A patients were found in increasing proportions among groups of patients with coronary occlusions of moderate to severe degree compared with patients with only mild occlusions. This increasing proportion of Type A patients with increasing disease severity remained significant, even when age, sex, blood pressure, serum cholesterol level and cigarette smoking history were all simultaneously covaried. These findings suggest that, independently of traditional risk factors, behavior pattern Type A may contribute to the risk of clinical CHD events via effects on the atherosclerotic process.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1978

Intraoral field block anesthesia for extraoral lesions.

Intraoral field block anesthesia for extraoral surgical procedures provides a technique which is both extremely safe and easy to administer. As with all local anesthetics, injected volumes should be monitored at all times. Hemostasis may be augmented, if necessary, with topical epinephrine solution. When vasoconstrictors are contraindicated, mepivacaine, Carbocaine, may be substituted for its inherent properties.

Cheek↗
PubMed1976

Relationship between central and autonomic nervous system activity: correlates of psychomotor performance in elderly men.

The relationship between heart rate deceleration (HRD) and the contingent negative variation (CNV) was evaluated in 12 healthy, elderly men during performance of a signaled reaction time task. While amplitude of the CNV and HRD did parallel RT, CNV alone was found to be predictive of individual differences in speed of response indicating that phasic concordance of these physiological responses is probably not an important factor in age changes in RT. The results indicate the probable importance of central physiological indices such as the CNV over peripheral events such as HRD in the evaluation of RT performance in elderly individuals.

Aged↗
PubMed1976

Effects of hyperbaric oxygen on behavioral and physiological measures in elderly demented patients.

This study tested the effects of repeated exposures to hyperbaric oxygen (HBO) on psychological, electroencephalographic, and cerebral blood flow measures in 8 patients with cerebrovascular disease and 13 patients with cortical atrophy. Patients were exposed to 100% oxygen at 2.5 atmospheres absolute twice daily for 90 min. for 15 days. No significant changes were observed in any of the measures in either group. Level of initial functioning was not associated with change due to treatment. Results suggest that HBO has no therapeutic effect in patients with moderate to severe dementia.

Aged↗