METHODS: Using data from the Research on Asian Psychotropic Prescription Patterns for Antidepressants (REAP-AD), the network of the ICD-10 diagnostic criteria for depressive episode was estimated from 1174 Asian patients with depressive disorders. The node strength centrality of all ICD-10 diagnostic criteria for a depressive episode was estimated using a community-detection algorithm. In addition, networks of depressive symptoms were estimated separately among East Asian patients and South or Southeast Asian patients. Moreover, networks were estimated separately among Asian patients from high-income countries and those from middle-income countries.
RESULTS: Persistent sadness, fatigue, and loss of interest were the most centrally situated within the network of depressive symptoms in Asian patients with depressive disorders overall. A community-detection algorithm estimated that when excluding psychomotor disturbance as an outlier, the other nine symptoms formed the largest clinically meaningful cluster. Geographic and economic variations in networks of depressive symptoms were evaluated.
CONCLUSION: Our findings demonstrated that the typical symptoms of the ICD-10 diagnostic criteria for depressive episode are the most centrally situated within the network of depressive symptoms. Furthermore, our findings suggested that cultural influences related to geographic and economic distributions of participants could influence the estimated depressive symptom network in Asian patients with depressive disorders.
METHODS: The participants were 1478 patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia whose EPS was assessed using the DIEPSS in India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, and Taiwan in the 2016 REAP AP-4 study. The records of the participants were randomly divided into two subgroups: the first for exploratory factor analysis of the eight DIEPSS items, and the second for confirmatory factor analysis.
RESULTS: The factor analysis identified three factors: F1 (gait and bradykinesia), F2 (muscle rigidity and tremor), and F3 (sialorrhea, akathisia, dystonia, and dyskinesia).
CONCLUSION: The results suggest that the eight individual items of the DIEPSS could be composed of three different mechanisms: acute parkinsonism observed during action (F1), acute parkinsonism observed at rest (F2), and central dopaminergic mechanisms with pathophysiology other than acute parkinsonism (F3).
METHODS: Asian countries were categorised into three groups; 'lower middle-income country', 'upper middle-income country' and 'high-income country'. The Medline/PubMed database was searched for articles published from January 2005 to December 2014 using relevant key words. Articles were excluded if they examined a specific injury mechanism, referred to a specific age group, and/or did not have full text available. We extracted information and variables on pre-hospital and hospital care factors, and regionalised system factors and compared them across countries.
RESULTS: A total of 46 articles were identified from 13 countries, including Pakistan, India, Vietnam and Indonesia from lower middle-income countries; the Islamic Republic of Iran, Thailand, China, Malaysia from upper middle-income countries; and Saudi Arabia, the Republic of Korea, Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore from high-income countries. Trauma patients were transported via various methods. In six of the 13 countries, less than 20% of trauma patients were transported by ambulance. Pre-hospital trauma teams primarily comprised emergency medical technicians and paramedics, except in Thailand and China, where they included mainly physicians. In Iran, Pakistan and Vietnam, the proportion of patients who died before reaching hospital exceeded 50%. In only three of the 13 countries was it reported that trauma surgeons were available. In only five of the 13 countries was there a nationwide trauma registry.
CONCLUSION: Trauma care systems were poorly developed and unorganised in most of the selected 13 Asian countries, with the exception of a few highly developed countries.
METHODS: We report the establishment of an immunocompetent wild type strain 129 (wt-129) mouse model, which can be cross-species infected with human EV-A71 clinical isolates via an intraperitoneal route.
RESULTS: One intriguing disease phenotype of this new model is the development of characteristic "White-Jade" patches in the muscle, which lost sporadically the normal pink color of uninfected muscle. Viral VP1 protein and massive leukocyte infiltration were detected in muscles with or without white-jades. We demonstrated further that hypoxia is a general phenomenon associated with white-jades in both immunocompetent and immunodeficient mouse models. Therefore, hypoxia appears to be a feature intrinsic to EV-A71 infection, irrespective of its host's immunogenetic background. To date, no effective treatment for EV-A71 is available. Here, using this new wt-129 mouse model, we showed that timely treatment with compound R837 (a TLR7 immune modulator) via oral or intraperitoneal routes, rescued the hypoxia, limb paralysis, and death at a high therapeutic efficacy.
CONCLUSIONS: In this new immunocompetent mouse 129 model, we observed an unexpected white-jade phenotype and its associated hypoxia. The successful treatment with TLR7 immune modulators via an oral route, provide us a new research direction for EV-A71 basic science and translational research. It remains an open issue whether R837 or its related compounds, will be a promising drug candidate in clinical trials in EV-A71 endemic or epidemic areas in the future.
METHODS: Patients with schizophrenia from Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, and Taiwan were randomly assigned to 6 weeks of double-blind treatment with 40 or 80 mg/d of lurasidone or placebo. The primary efficacy measure was change from baseline to week 6 on the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) total score. Efficacy was evaluated using a mixed-model repeated-measures (MMRM) analysis in the modified intention-to-treat (mITT) population.
RESULTS: On the basis of the analysis for the mITT population, the estimated difference score for lurasidone 40 and 80 mg/d vs placebo was -4.8 (P = 0.050) and -4.2 (P = 0.080). For the full intention-to-treat (ITT) population, the difference score for lurasidone 40 and 80 mg/d vs placebo was -5.8 (P = 0.017) and -4.2 (P = 0.043). The most frequent adverse events in the lurasidone 40 and 80 mg/d and placebo groups, respectively, were akathisia (7.3%, 10.4%, 3.3%), somnolence (6.0%, 2.6%, 0.7%), and vomiting (6.0%, 5.8%, 2.0%). The proportion of patients experiencing clinically significant weight gain (≥7%) was 5.3% for lurasidone 40 mg/d, 1.3% for 80 mg/d, and 1.4% for placebo. End point changes in metabolic parameters and prolactin were comparable for both lurasidone groups and placebo.
CONCLUSIONS: In the ITT (but not the mITT) population, treatment with lurasidone was associated with significant improvement in the PANSS total score in patients with schizophrenia. Lurasidone was generally well tolerated with minimal impact on weight and metabolic parameters.