Complex Cognitive Performance and Antihistamine Use

Executive function on the Psychology Experiment Building Language tests

“…The females in this sample were older (25.2 ± 1.8 years) than the males (19.9 ± 1.3 years), t (236.6) = 2.42, p < .05, so sex differences were evaluated with the sample stratified into age categories. The instructions, slightly modified from Snyder and Rice (1990), were as follows: This is an experiment to see how well you can estimate the speed of a moving square target. The target will always start at the top of the screen and descend at a constant rate toward the bottom.…”

“…The “Time-Wall” task is a recently developed nonverbal decision-making test modeled after a task originally included in the Unified Tri-Services Cognitive Performance Assessment Battery, which was used by the military of the United States for personnel testing (Perez, Masline, Ramsey, & Urban, 1987; Snyder & Rice, 1990). The objective of the original Time-Wall task was to assess the ability to estimate the time at which a target, moving vertically at a fixed rate, will have traveled a specified distance.…”

Workshift and antihistamine effects on task performance

“…Several studies have shown that these newer, non-sedating antihistamines have few, if any, negative effects in comparison to the earlier H 1 -blocker antihistamines. For example, it has been shown that newer, non-sedating antihistamines have no apparent negative effects on various cognitive and psychomotor abilities (Cingi, Cingi, & Cingi, 1990;Clarke & Nicholson, 1978;Fink & Irwin, 1979;Kulshrestha, Gupta, Turner, & Wadsworth, 1978;Nesthus, Schiflett, Eddy, & Whitmore, 1991;Nicholson & Stone, 1982;Nicholson & Stone, 1986;Philpot, Biegalski, & Brooker, 1993;Reeves, Blackwell, Molina, & Hixson, 1989;Rice & Snyder, 1993;Snyder & Berg, 1990;Tharion, McMenemy, & Rauch, 1994;Witek, Canestrari, Miller, Yang, & Riker, 1995). They also do not appear to disrupt EEG activity (Loring & Meador, 1989;Stephens, Caldwell, Comperatore, Pearson, & Delrie, 1992;Tharion et al, 1994) or more basic sensory-psychophysical functions (Fink & Irwin, 1979;Kulshrestha et al, 1978;Nicholson, Smith, & Spencer, 1982;Nicholson & Stone, 1982;Nicholson & Stone, 1986), and they do not typically influence self-reported levels of subjec-• tive state (Philpot et al, 1993;Reeves et al, 1989;Tharion et al, 1994).…”

“…Despite the lowered risk of side-effects from the new generation of non-sedating antihistamines, many people use older H 1 -blocking at1tihistamines, no doubt because they can be purchased without prescription and are prevalent in many OTC preparations. Many of these antihistamines have been shown to produce significant decrements in cognitive skills (Burns, Shat1aman, & Shellenberger, 1994;Cingi et al, 1990;Hindmarch, Kerr, & Sherwood, 1991;Nesthus et al, 1991;Nicholson & Stone, 1982;Nicholson & Stone, 1986;Reeves et al, 1989;Rice & Snyder, 1993;Snyder & Berg, 1990;Witek et al, 1995) and basic psychomotor abilities (Cingi et al, 1990;Clarke & Nicholson, 1978;Fink & Irwin, 1979;Hindmarch et al, 1991;Kulshrestha et al, 1978;Nesthus et al, 1991;Nicholson, 1979;Nicholson & Stone, 1982;Nicholson & Stone, 1986;Reeves et al, 1989;Rice & Snyder, 1993;Snyder & Berg, 1990;Witek et al, 1995). Further, negative effects due to the older H 1blocking antihistamines have been shown in stUdies of job performance and studies of operational environments (Betts et al, 1984;Eddy et al, 1992;Johnson & McMenemy, 1989;Stephens et al, 1992).…”

Diagnosis of periodontal disease activity by detection of key microbial antigens

“…The sub-culture and identification of up to 50 separate colonies from each primary isolation plate can take several weeks. Cultural methods are considered by some to be less sensitive than the new rapid techniques (Loesche et al, 1992b, Gmur & Guggenheim 1990, Savitt et al, 1988, Nonetheless, predominant cultivable, microbiota and selective media studies have provided a cornerstone for contemporary periodontal diagnostics by identifying the key bacteria associated with disease activity which include Actinobacillus actinomycetemocomitans, Porphyromonas gingivalis, Prevotella intermedia, Campylobacter rectus, Eikenella corrodens and Bacteroides forsythus, Haffajee et al, (1988b), in a predominant cultivable microbiota study identified certain complexes of species associated with refractory periodontal disease, which included B, forsythus, Fusobacterium nucleatum, C, rectus. Streptococcus intermedius, P. gingivalis and Peptostreptococcus micros.…”