We established a new ambiguous-cue interpretation paradigm and, with respect to the etiology of depression,
evaluated if environmental and genetic factors contribute to a negative bias. Rats were trained to press a lever to receive a food reward contingent to one tone and to press another lever in response to a different tone to avoid punishment by electric foot-shock. In the ambiguous-cue test, the lever-press responses to tones with frequencies intermediate to the trained tones were taken as indicators for the rats’ expectation of a positive or negative event. A negative response bias because of decreased positive and increased negative responding was found in congenitally helpless rats, a genetic animal model of depression. Moreover, treatment with a combined noradrenergic-glucocorticoid challenge,
mimicking stress-related changes in endogenous neuromodulation, biased rats SC79 clinical trial away from positive responding. This response shift was accompanied by neuronal activation in dentate gyrus and amygdala. Thus, environmental and genetic risk factors Selleck AICAR for depression induce a response bias, which resembles the pessimistic bias of patients suffering from depression. The behavioral paradigm described constitutes a useful tool to study the neuronal basis of decision making under ambiguous conditions and may promote innovative pharmaco- and psychotherapy for depression. Neuropsychopharmacology (2010) 35, 1008-1015; doi:10.1038/npp.2009.204; published online 30 December 2009″
“Purpose: Unexplained clinical conditions share common features such as pain, fatigue, disability out of proportion to physical examination findings, inconsistent laboratory abnormalities, and an association with stress and psychosocial factors. We examined the extent of the overlap among urological and nonurological unexplained clinical conditions characterized by pain. We describe the limitations of previous research and suggest several possible explanatory models.
Materials and Methods: Using hallmark symptoms and syndromes as search terms a search of 12 databases identified a total of 1,037 full-length published articles in
8 languages from 1966 to April 2008. isothipendyl The search focused on the overlap of chronic pelvic pain, interstitial cystitis, painful bladder syndrome, chronic prostatitis/chronic pelvic pain syndrome or vulvodynia with fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, temporomandibular joint and muscle disorders or irritable bowel syndrome. We abstracted information on authorship, type of case and control groups, eligibility criteria, case definitions, study methods and major findings.
Results: The literature suggests considerable comorbidity between urological and nonurological unexplained clinical conditions. The most robust evidence for overlap was for irritable bowel syndrome and urological unexplained syndromes with some estimates of up to 79% comorbidity between chronic pelvic pain and symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome.