Background: Traditional healers are considered one of the important stages in the pathway to care of schizophrenia patients because of the confidence in the system, affordability and accessibility of the service, exposing patients to hazardous management, delay in seeking psychiatric help and bad prognosis. Aim: To assess the pathway to care of schizophrenia patients and role of traditional healers into it, the sociodemographic and clinical correlates of those patients. Methods: We assessed 232 patients with schizophrenia after confirmation of diagnosis with Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Axis I Disorder (SCID-I) research version using a questionnaire designed by authors to assess help seeking behavior in schizophrenia patients and its sociodemographic and clinical correlates. Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale to identify the presence and severity of symptoms. Results: A total of 41.8% sought traditional healers first, 58.1% sought a psychiatric consultation first, main symptoms related to traditional healers seeking were hallucinations in 51.5%, delusions 29.9%, 9.28% bizarre behavior and 9.28% formal though disorder. Main causes of traditional healers’ preference were society acceptance 30.39%, affordability 24.74% and accessibility 16.49%. Conclusion: This study shows that a significant percentage of the patients suffering from schizophrenia prefer to approach faith healers first due to their own beliefs, society acceptance, affordability and easy accessibility.

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Objectives:Tramadol addiction is one of the major addiction problems in growing countries, especially in Egypt. Moreover, there is a strong relation between suicidality and addiction even after exclusion of personality disorders; the burden of suicide adds to the burden of substance abuse in those individuals and their families. Materials and Methods:A cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted on 72 tramadol-dependent patients who were recruited randomly in this study from the addiction outpatient clinic of Okasha Institute of Psychiatry of Ain Shams University, after obtaining an informed consent. They are assessed by ( 1) Structured Clinical Interview for Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th Edition Axis I Disorders for diagnosis of substance use disorder, (2) Structured Clinical Interview for Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th Edition Axis II Disorders for exclusion of personality disorders, (3) suicide probability scale, and (4) Addiction Severity Index. Results:Regarding suicidal probability, 44.44% of the sample showed risk of suicide, which was severe among 19.44%, moderate among 11.11%, and mild among 13.89% of the sample. Regarding "Addiction Severity Index," most patients had no real medical problem. In the employment domain, 38.89% had a slight problem. In the drug use domain, 80.56% had a moderate problem.There is a significant relation between the degree of medical, drug use, and legal problem and the severity of suicidal risk. Moreover, the longer duration of addiction and the advanced age of patients are risk factors for suicidal probability. Conclusions:There is a suicide probability among tramadol addicts. The duration of tramadol use could be considered a strong risk factor for suicide, as the longer the duration of tramadol, the higher the suicidal risk.

Background Vitiligo is a skin and less common hair disease characterized by decline in melanocyte function and depigmentation, with a prevalence of 0.5–1% in most populations. Autophagy is the degradation of components of the cytoplasm within lysosomes. This is distinct from endocytosis-mediated lysosomal degradation of extracellular and plasma membrane proteins. Aim The aim was to detect biochemical parameter light chain 3 (LC3) to monitor autophagy in vitiligo skin of patients as compared with normal control persons to evaluate the role of autophagy in the vitiligo pathogenesis. Materials and methods This case–control study included 60 patients with vitiligo and 60 age-matched and sex-matched healthy controls. Herein, 4 mm punch skin biopsy was taken from every patient (vitiligo lesion) and control and kept in lysis solution for the stability of the studied parameters and was kept frozen at −80°C till analysis of autophagy protein LC3 by qRT PCR. Results The level of LC3 in lesional skin of vitiligo was significantly lower as compared with normal control persons.

Background: Poor quality of life has been reported after renal transplantation. So, we aimed to identify the quality of life and its demographic and clinical correlates among Egyptian renal transplant recipients. A cross-sectional observational study of 230 post-renal transplantation recipients (PRTRs) who were recruited from Ain Shams University Specialized Hospital and Nasser Institute nephrology clinics. All cases were subjected to a designed questionnaire for PRTRs, the semi-structured questionnaire for renal transplant recipients and the Arabic version of the World Health Organization Quality of Life Questionnaire (WHOQOL-100). Results: All the PRTRs had unsatisfactory social quality of life (QoL) while 97.8% had unsatisfactory overall QoL; moreover, 92.6% were not satisfied as regards environmental and independence QoL. Psychological dissatisfaction was met in 75.7% of all subjects, whereas the least dissatisfaction rate was the spiritual QoL (15.2%). Younger age groups were the most who complained of unsatisfactory quality of life in all domains except the spiritual QoL. All domains of QoL were found not statistically associated with gender, marital status, or social class. Subjects who received higher education had better psychological and independence QoL. The overall QoL and physical QoL were found to be correlated only with age. The psychological and independence QoL were positively correlated with age, sex, educational level, and occupation while the environmental QL was found to be positively correlated with occupation. Conclusion: The prevalence of unsatisfactory quality of life is quite high among PRTRs. Our findings pointed to the need of recognizing quality of life among renal transplant recipients, and we suggest that mental health professionals should be included in the multidisciplinary team.