No abstract

Schizophrenics have among the highest rates of cigarette smoking. Some studies indicate that cigarette smoking or nicotine may ameliorate some of the cognitive or theoretically related neurophysiological deficits seen in schizophrenic patients. This study investigated the effects of nicotine nasal spray on measures of attention, verbal memory, and visual-spatial memory in schizophrenic patients who were chronic smokers, using a double-blind placebo-controlled pre-post experimental design. Compared to placebo, active nicotine spray significantly decreased reaction time on the Conner's CPT and improved scores on a measure purported to reflect spatial working memory on a dot task. There were trends for the increased number of hits and decreased number of errors in pre-post comparisons on the CPT task in the active nicotine session. There were no effects of active nicotine nasal spray on verbal memory. Our results suggest that nicotine may modestly enhance attention and spatial working memory in schizophrenic patients who are cigarette smokers and have been abstinent overnight.

Although significant improvements have been made in the outcomes of children with cancer, the pace of improvement has slowed in recent years as the limits of therapy intensification may have been reached for many pediatric cancers. Furthermore, with increasing numbers of pediatric cancer survivors, the long-term side effects of treatment have become increasingly apparent. Therefore, attention has shifted to the use of molecularly targeted agents and immunotherapies to improve the outcomes of children who are not cured by traditional cytotoxic chemotherapies and to decrease exposure to cytotoxic chemotherapy and reduce late effects. This review describes the recent progress in the treatment of children with cancer, focusing in particular on diseases in which targeted and immunotherapeutic agents have made an impact.

BackgroundMicrobial communities in our built environments have great influence on human health and disease. A variety of built environments have been characterized using a metagenomics-based approach, including some healthcare settings. However, there has been no study to date that has used this approach in pre-hospital settings, such as ambulances, an important first point-of-contact between patients and hospitals.ResultsWe sequenced 398 samples from 137 ambulances across the USA using shotgun sequencing. We analyzed these data to explore the microbial ecology of ambulances including characterizing microbial community composition, nosocomial pathogens, patterns of diversity, presence of functional pathways and antimicrobial resistance, and potential spatial and environmental factors that may contribute to community composition.We found that the top 10 most abundant species are either common built environment microbes, microbes associated with the human microbiome (e.g., skin), or are species associated with nosocomial infections. We also found widespread evidence of antimicrobial resistance markers (hits ~ 90% samples). We identified six factors that may influence the microbial ecology of ambulances including ambulance surfaces, geographical-related factors (including region, longitude, and latitude), and weather-related factors (including temperature and precipitation).ConclusionsWhile the vast majority of microbial species classified were beneficial, we also found widespread evidence of species associated with nosocomial infections and antimicrobial resistance markers. This study indicates that metagenomics may be useful to characterize the microbial ecology of pre-hospital ambulance settings and that more rigorous testing and cleaning of ambulances may be warranted.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s40168-017-0339-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Histiocytic neoplasms are rare hematologic disorders accounting for less than 1% of cancers of the soft tissue and lymph nodes. Clinical presentation and prognosis of these disorders can be highly variable, leading to challenges for diagnosis and optimal management of these patients. Treatment often consists of systemic therapy, and recent studies support use of targeted therapies for patients with these disorders. Observation (“watch and wait”) may be sufficient for select patients with mild disease. These NCCN Guidelines for Histiocytic Neoplasms include recommendations for diagnosis and treatment of adults with the most common histiocytic disorders: Langerhans cell histiocytosis, Erdheim-Chester disease, and Rosai-Dorfman disease.