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Biomedical subjects

M Bernik

Publications and source records attributed to M Bernik.

3 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2001

A dose-finding and discontinuation study of clomipramine in panic disorder.

Eighty-one panic disorder patients with or without agoraphobia were treated with flexible doses of clomipramine under single-blind conditions. Fifty-seven (70.3%) reached operational criteria for full remission in 16.2 +/- 6.5 weeks, with a mean dose of 89.1 +/- 8.2 mg/day. Fifty-four (81%) of them received a continuous post-remission maintenance treatment at full doses of clomipramine for 4-6 months. No patient relapsed during the clomipramine maintenance phase. Their medication was then tappered and discontinued with placebo substitution under double-blind conditions. Fifty-one (63%) patients were followed-up until relapse or recurrence for up to 3 years, with periodic assessments. Three different outcome groups were identified: the first (n = 19, 19; 37.2%) experienced an early/immediate relapse (5.2 +/- 4.9 weeks after drug discontinuation); the second group (n = 22, 22; 43.1%) experienced recurrence after 42.9 +/- 35 weeks following discontinuation; and the third group (n = 10, 10; 19.6%) remained assymptomatic and functionally well throughout the follow-up. Predictors of early relapse were: (1) higher baseline score in the Beck Depression Inventory; (2) higher global score on the phobic avoidance scale after the full remission criteria; and (3) the need for higher clomipramine doses to reach full remission. The need for long-term or intermittent maintenance for most patients is emphasized.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1995

Encoding, remembering and awareness in lorazepam-induced amnesia.

The effects of lorazepam (1,2 mg) and placebo on encoding, remembering and awareness were assessed in a study with 54 healthy volunteers. All subjects studied stimulus materials in a levels of processing (L-o-p) task. Half the subjects were assessed on an explicit memory task of word recognition and the other half were given an implicit memory task of word-stem completion. Following the implicit task, awareness of retrieval was further investigated by questions and by subjects' recollective experience in recognising the actual words they had completed from stems. L-o-p effects and marked lorazepam-induced impairments were found in the implicit task of word-stem completion although the interaction between L-o-p and drug effects emerged only as a trend in the data. Lorazepam-induced impairments on stem-completion may then be explained at least in part as being due to contamination by explicit retrieval processes, but we cannot rule out the possible role of drug effects on perceptual processes at encoding. Results from responses to "awareness" questions and from analysis of subsequent recollective experience indicated that subjects were not aware of using explicit retrieval during the implicit task. Results also replicated previous findings showing that both lorazepam and L-o-p independently affect performance in an explicit memory task of word recognition. Thus drug-induced deficits at encoding persist regardless of the level at which information is initially processed.

Adult↗