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Biomedical subjects

P Hays

Publications and source records attributed to P Hays.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

Multiple sclerosis and delayed mumps.

To test the hypothesis that mumps occurs less frequently and later in patients with multiple sclerosis, histories were taken from patients and matched controls by a single observer at a university hospital in Canada, and in the course of domiciliary visits in England. 63 consecutive patients with multiple sclerosis in two neurological practices, and 63 controls matched for age, sex and childhood domicile, together with 29 sibs of English patients were studied. Patients had mumps at an older age (12.3:8.6, p less than 0.04) and less frequently (33/63 vs 60/92, p = 0.08). Multiple sclerosis patients display a partial immunity to mumps, of which the most obvious explanation is a preceding infection by an antigenically related paramyxovirus, that is, by either the Newcastle Disease virus, or parainfluenza.

Adult

Florid refractory schizophrenias that turn out to be treatable variants of HLA-associated narcolepsy.

Narcolepsy in which the hallucinatory component is unusually prominent may lead to the development of an illness indistinguishable from the schizophrenic syndrome. Psychotic symptoms dominate the symptomatology, so that the primary illness is obscured. Five patients are described for whom conventional antipsychotic drugs were ineffectual, but for whom treatment with stimulants produced substantial improvement. The diagnosis of narcolepsy was confirmed by Human Leukocyte Antigen typing and sleep laboratory testing. These results support the "REM intrusion" hypothesis of the causation of schizophrenia in as many as 7% of a series of schizophrenic patients. Implications for diagnosis and treatment are discussed.

Adult

Age at onset in schizophrenia. A familial perspective.

We examined the impact of familial factors on age at onset in schizophrenia. Results from a literature review and from new analyses of two family studies and one twin study of schizophrenia support the following hypotheses: (1) no strong or consistent relationship exists between age at onset in schizophrenia and recurrence risk for schizophrenia in relatives; (2) age at onset in schizophrenia is not strongly related to the recurrence risk for other psychiatric disorders in relatives; and (3) in systematically ascertained pairs of affected siblings, the age at onset of schizophrenia is modestly correlated, whereas the correlation in age at onset in concordant monozygotic twin pairs is much higher. These results suggest that (1) from a familial perspective, early- and late-onset adult schizophrenia appear to be the same disorder, and (2) given that an individual will develop schizophrenia, familial factors, which may be genetic, influence the age at onset of the condition.

Adult

Alcoholism followed by schizophrenia.

On the basis of findings of earlier workers, and our own unsystematic observations, we put forward the hypothesis that alcohol abuse was an important etiological factor in some schizophrenia-like psychoses. We tested the hypothesis by comparing schizophrenic patients who had abused alcohol with schizophrenic patients who had not. The findings generally support the hypothesis, and indicate that a chronic psychosis distinguishable by a hallucinatory onset and, at its height, by visual hallucinations, may be one of the complications of alcohol abuse.

Adult

Implications of the distinction between organic and functional psychoses.

On the basis of their symptomatology, some psychoses are called organic. The remaining psychoses are called functional. It is generally supposed that symptomatically organic psychoses have organic causes and thus call for medical investigations, while the functional psychoses are not so caused, and call for a dynamic formulation rather than an organic one. The author examines the basis for this distinction, and argues that it is logically unsound. He gives examples of exceptions to the rule, both organic-seeming illnesses that are the consequence of psychological mechanisms, and symptomatologically functional psychoses with organic antecedents. The exceptions prove to be so numerous that a different approach to the investigation of the psychoses, an approach stressing antecedents rather than symptomatology, appears to be called for.

Diagnosis, Differential

Failed suicide attempt by emission gas poisoning.

After prolonged exposure to emission gases from his car, a patient survived, probably because of low carbon monoxide levels in the emission gases of his modern car. The authors anticipate a reduction in fatalities when this method of suicide is used.

Adult

Familial and sporadic schizophrenia: a symptomatic, prognostic, and EEG comparison.

The authors examined the differences between 30 patients with familial schizophrenia (those with a schizophrenic first-degree relative) and 83 patients with sporadic schizophrenia (those with a negative family history for schizophrenia). Although the two groups showed no difference in the intensity of 1) flattened, depressed, or elevated affect, 2) auditory hallucinations, and 3) delusions, more of the familial (56.7%) than the sporadic (18.1%) schizophrenic patients had severe thought disorders. EEGs were performed while the patients were taking neuroleptics; 72.3% of the sporadic schizophrenic patients and 43.3% of the familial patients had an abnormal tracing. The authors conclude that the division of schizophrenia into familial and sporadic forms may represents a valid subclassification.

Adult

Taxonomic map of the schizophrenias, with special reference to puerperal psychosis.

Data collected by a single observer on 147 schizophrenic patients were subjected to clustering analysis. The results produced the hypothesis that schizophrenic illnesses directly after childbirth are a separate disease entity. This hypothesis was not disproved by experimental testing. Several disease entities may be included in the term schizophrenia. If this is so, the methods used in generating and testing the hypothesis that puerperal schizophrenia is a separate disease may provide a systematic method of classifying the various illnesses.

Bipolar Disorder

Electroencephalographic variants and genetic predisposition to schizophrenia.

Schizophrenic patients (249) were divided into those with and those without a family history of major functional psychosis. The same patients were then divided into those with entirely normal electroencephalograms and those whose traces contained some variant of normal. Traces were interpreted without knowledge of the patients' identities, and the question of the presence or absence of positive heredity had been decided without knowledge of the patients' electroencephalographic status, so that the discovery that normal electroencephalograms correlated highly significantly with positive heredity, and vice versa, commands attention. It is considered in the setting of previous work on psychoses and organic and electroencephalographic findings.

Brain

Etiological factors in manic-depressive psychoses.

Fifty consecutive patients with bipolar affective psychosis are reviewed, and the genetic and electroencephalographic findings set against extant hypotheses about inheritance of the disorder and the etiological homogeneity of the syndrome. Inheritance in this sample appears usually not to be X-linked. The syndrome seems etiologically heterogeneous in that some patients have an early onset and prominent genetic determinants, while in others without apparent hereditary predisposition, the illness start later and show electroencephalographic evidence of cerebral dysfunction.

Adult