The Journal of clinical psychiatry
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Randomized Controlled Trial Multicenter Study
Memantine for agitation/aggression and psychosis in moderately severe to severe Alzheimer's disease: a pooled analysis of 3 studies.
Long-standing evidence indicates that Alzheimer's disease patients with behavioral symptoms have a worse prognosis and a more rapid disease progression. The current retrospective analysis evaluated the efficacy and safety of memantine in a subpopulation of patients with Alzheimer's disease exhibiting behavioral symptoms of agitation/aggression or psychosis at baseline. ⋯ This post hoc analysis provides important evidence from placebo-controlled trials that memantine may be a safe and effective treatment in Alzheimer's disease patients with agitation/aggression or psychosis, who are otherwise prone to rapid progression. Memantine treatment provided benefits in cognitive, functional, and global outcomes in these patients and for their agitation/aggression.
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To describe trends in anxiety-related mental health visits to U.S. emergency departments, an expanding portal of access for mental health care. ⋯ During the decade, there was an expansion of anxiety-related visits to U.S. emergency departments, reflecting an increase in anxiety-related emergency department care-seeking, an increase in anxiety awareness among patients and practitioners, or both.
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Multicenter Study Clinical Trial
A 1-year pilot study of vagus nerve stimulation in treatment-resistant rapid-cycling bipolar disorder.
Vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) appears to be an effective treatment option for patients with treatment-resistant unipolar and bipolar depression. The aim of the present study was to investigate the efficacy of VNS in a group of patients with treatment-resistant rapid-cycling bipolar disorder (RCBD) who were excluded from previous trials. ⋯ These data suggest that VNS may be an efficacious and well-tolerated treatment option for patients with treatment-resistant RCBD. Currently, no comparison is available in the literature. Larger randomized trials are needed to verify these findings.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Cortical stimulation of the prefrontal cortex with transcranial direct current stimulation reduces cue-provoked smoking craving: a randomized, sham-controlled study.
Because neuroimaging studies have shown that cue-provoked smoking craving is associated with changes in the activity of the bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), we aimed to investigate whether a powerful technique of noninvasive brain stimulation, transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), reduces cue-provoked smoking craving as indexed by a visual analog scale. ⋯ Our findings extend the results of a previous study on the use of brain stimulation to reduce craving, showing that cortical stimulation with tDCS is beneficial for reducing cue-provoked craving, and thus support the further exploration of this technique for smoking cessation.