Acne vulgaris has a significant effect on the quality of life. Our results highlight the importance of recognizing psychiatric comorbidity in acne patients.

Chronic hepatitis C (HCV) infection is associated with cognitive impairments which might be mediated through a secondary inflammatory cascade. Egypt has an unusually high prevalence of HCV monoinfections and is an ideal site for the study of the isolated effects of HCV infection. Therefore, in a hospital-based cross-sectional study based in Egypt, this study compared cognitive functioning and serum markers of inflammation in 11 HCV positive cases and 14 HCV negative controls. The Wisconsin Card Sorting Test was used to assess cognitive flexibility and the Brief Visuospatial Memory Test-Revised was used to assess learning and memory. Circulating levels of soluble tumor necrosis factor receptor II (sTNFR-II), monocyte chemotactic protein-1 (MCP-1/CCL2), and soluble CD14 (sCD14) were determined as indices of inflammation. HCV positive cases had higher levels of sTNFR-II (t = -3.5, P = 0.002). HCV positive cases also had significantly worse cognitive flexibility with higher number of total errors (t = -2.18, P = 0.04), and preservative responses (t = -2.12, P = 0.05), and lower number of conceptual level responses (t = 1.32, P = 0.04) on the Wisconsin Card Sorting test. In conclusion, results from this pilot study indicate that HCV+ patients have worse cognitive performance and somewhat greater inflammatory activity as compared to controls. The increased inflammation may be associated with the cognitive impairments observed in these HCV+ patients.

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Background: Several studies using event-related potential (ERP) methods have reported a relationship between the cognitive dysfunction of patients with psychosis and P300 latency and amplitude. P300 follow-up studies in patients with schizophrenia receiving antipsychotic treatment revealed that the P300 amplitudes were increased while other studies showed limited changes in the P300 amplitude even after antipsychotics use. Results: We found that at the first presentation, all patients' groups have significantly lower amplitude and more prolonged latency of P300 than controls. All the first-episode psychosis patients showed a significant improvement of P300 amplitude mean scores after 1 year, but with no significant change in the P300 latency. There was an inverse correlation between the patients' PANSS scores and their P300 latency and amplitude values. Conclusion: P300 amplitude and latency might be of clinical value in the evaluation of cognitive functions in the first-episode psychosis patients. The abnormalities in P300 may be improved with continuous control of psychotic symptoms with psychotropic medications.

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