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Biomedical subjects

M Laraia

Publications and source records attributed to M Laraia.

5 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1992

A fixed-dose study of alprazolam 2 mg, alprazolam 6 mg, and placebo in panic disorder.

A recently reported multinational, 8-week double-blind, placebo-controlled study assessing the efficacy of alprazolam versus placebo in the treatment of panic disorder indicated significant differences favoring alprazolam. We now report the results of a three-site, 6-week, double-blind, fixed-dose study comparing alprazolam 2 mg, alprazolam 6 mg, and placebo in 94 patients with panic disorder with or without agoraphobia. Both alprazolam treatment groups (6 mg and 2 mg) improved significantly more than did the placebo treatment group on most outcome measures. Only a few statistically significant differences between the 6 mg and 2 mg alprazolam groups were discerned, although the pattern of treatment response across measures suggested a dose effect. Dropouts in the placebo group were primarily due to lack of efficacy and in the alprazolam 6 mg group were due to side effects, which may have contributed to the limited differences between groups at study end. The findings suggest that many patients may require less than 6 mg of alprazolam per day for effective treatment of panic disorder.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1991

Brain MRI in obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) brain scans were performed on 12 patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder and 12 healthy controls. Measurements of the area of the head of the caudate nucleus, cingulate gyrus thickness, intracaudate/frontal horn ratio, and area of the corpus callosum did not differ between the two groups. These limited data do not support the presence of a consistent gross brain structural abnormality in obsessive-compulsive disorder. Further studies using other anatomic measurements and other brain structural imaging techniques are warranted.

Adult↗
PubMed1988

Different rates of improvement of different symptoms in combined pharmacological and behavioral treatment of agoraphobia.

This study was designed to see whether the high vs low serum level of imipramine influenced the outcome of in vivo exposure therapy on patients with agoraphobia. Thirty-six subjects completed the Hopkins Symptom Checklist-90 one week before treatment and weekly throughout treatment. Both groups demonstrated equal improvement. It was noted that the rate of improvement differed for different symptom subscales: (1) Hostility, Paranoia and Psychotic symptom ratings improved over the first three weeks of treatment, (2) Interpersonal Sensitivity, Anxiety and Depression ratings improved throughout the first seven weeks of treatment and (3) Phobic Anxiety, Somatization and Obsessive Compulsure symptom ratings continued to improve throughout the entire 12 week course of treatment. Responsive vs nonresponsive subjects could be significantly differentiated after one week of treatment on the basis of their responses to the Psychoticism subscale.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1983

Processing of emotional properties of stimuli by depressed and normal subjects.

This study investigated whether depressed subjects differ from controls in their ability to appreciate emotional aspects of verbal material, or in their use of emotional qualities of stimuli in learning and remembering. When asked to rate the degree of emotionality of words, depressed subjects did so essentially identically with controls. However, despite apparently similar evaluatory processing, the depressed failed to remember as well as controls. Depressed subjects were more dependent than controls on both high emotionality and high stimulus concreteness for recognition memory, but were less benefited by these properties in free recall. While providing no evidence for deficits specific to emotionality, our results suggest that relatively shallow processing of semantic aspects of stimuli may be an important factor in the memory impairment of depression.

Adult↗