Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) analysis of reinitiation into methamphetamine abusers: qualitative findings from an exploration of methamphetamine abusers in Shanghai, China

Patients with Methamphetamine Use Disorder Show Highly Utilized Proactive Inhibitory Control and Intact Reactive Inhibitory Control with Long-Term Abstinence

Methamphetamine use disorder (MUD) is a chronic brain disorder that involves frequent failures of inhibitory control and relapses into methamphetamine intake. However, it remains unclear whether the impairment of inhibitory control in MUD is proactive, reactive or both. To address this issue, the current study used the conditional stop-signal task to assess proactive and reactive inhibitory control in 35 MUD patients with long-term abstinence and 35 matched healthy controls. The results showed that MUD patients with long-term abstinence had greater preparation costs than healthy controls, but did not differ in performance, implying a less efficient utilization of proactive inhibitory control. In contrast, MUD patients exhibited intact reactive inhibitory control; reactive but not proactive inhibitory control was associated with high sensation seeking in MUD patients with long-term abstinence. These findings suggest that proactive and reactive inhibitory control may be two different important endophenotypes of addiction in MUD patients with long-term abstinence. The current study provides new insight into the uses of proactive and reactive inhibitory control to effectively evaluate and precisely treat MUD patients with long-term abstinence.

Aberrant expression of BDNF might serve as a candidate target for cocaine-induced psychosis: insights from bioinformatics analysis and microarray validation

Background

Cocaine use disorder (CUD) and associated psychosis are major public health issues worldwide, along with high relapse outcome and limited treatment options. Exploring the molecular mechanisms underlying cocaine-induced psychosis (CIP) could supply integrated insights for understanding the pathogenic mechanism and potential novel therapeutic targets.

Aims

The aim of the study was to explore common alterations of CUD-schizophrenia-target genes and identify core risk genes contributing to CIP through data mining and network pharmacology approach.

Methods

Target genes of CUD were obtained from GeneCards, Comparative Toxicogenomics Database, Swiss Target Prediction platform and PubChem. Schizophrenia-related target genes were derived from DisGeNET, GeneCards, MalaCards and Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man databases. Then, the overlap genes of these two sets were regarded as risk genes contributing to CIP. Based on these CUD-schizophrenia-target genes, functional annotation and pathway analysis were performed using the clusterProfiler package in R. Protein–protein interaction network construction and module detection were performed based on the Search Tool for the Retrieval of Interacting Genes (STRING) database and Cytoscape software. Gene expression datasets GSE54839 and GSE93577 were applied for data validation and diagnostic capacity evaluation of interested hub genes.

Results

A total of 165 CUD-schizophrenia-target genes were obtained. These genes were mainly contributing to chemical synaptic transmission, neuropeptide hormone activity, postsynaptic membrane and neuroactive ligand–receptor interaction pathway. Network analysis and validation analysis indicated that BDNF might serve as an important risk gene in mediating CIP.

Conclusions

This study generates a holistic view of CIP and provides a basis for the identification of potential CUD-schizophrenia-target genes involved in the development of CIP. The abnormal expression of BDNF would be a candidate therapeutic target underlying the pathogenesis of CUD and associated CIP.

Situation of labour room documentation at secondary level public health facilities of Cuttack district, Odisha, India - A SWOT analysis

Background:

Poor documentation practices in labour rooms have been a challenge especially in resource limited countries. This hinders the efforts towards improving quality of maternal healthcare services. Little effort has been made on this regard in many countries including India. SWOT analysis on labour room documentation would be the first step in understanding the situation, barriers and to formulate strategies for improvement.

Materials and Methods:

Facility based cross-sectional study was carried out in five secondary health facilities of Cuttack district, Odisha, India. A qualitative method using in-depth interviews among 26 healthcare providers was adopted for data collection and inductive content analysis approach for analysis. Strategies like pioneering, positive, conservative and resistive were formulated under each of the three major components identified.

Results:

Three major components emerged were i) Adherence and completeness of labour room records and reports, ii) Status of the monitoring and supervision and iii) Utilization of labour room data. Improving knowledge and skill through training and supportive supervision, adopting computer-based application for data management, better coordination among supervisors and labour room staff, infrastructural strengthening for documentation and its security, making documentation a priority, more accountability would improve the documentation. Ensuring data analysis and interpretation, discussion in review meetings and regular monitoring and supervision will improve performance.

Conclusion:

Ensuring documentation of labour room records, regular quality monitoring and supervision, and analysis and interpretation of data are critical to improve labour room performance. Making it a priority and adopting the strategies will achieve the same, thereby better labour outcome.

Need to establish a new adolescent suicide prevention programme in South Korea

Adolescent suicide is the leading cause of death among South Korean (Korean) youth. Despite great efforts being made towards suicide prevention in Korea, the suicide rate has not decreased significantly. There is an urgent need for a new adolescent suicide prevention strategy. This paper describes the seriousness of the issue of adolescent suicide in Korea, evaluates its current management by the SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) and further recommends a new suicide prevention programme that integrates national/social involvement (State Suicide Intervention Committee, suicide posts’ monitoring, parental divorce information sharing and Adolescence Mental Health Promotion Foundation), school-based programmes (continuous monitoring system, psychology consultation team and mental health educational curricula) and family-based programmes (parental education and family-school communication). In addition, genetic analysis, biochemical tests and psychological disease registration are the indispensable elements that aid in suicidal behaviour prevention and prediction.

Clinical effectiveness of cognitive behavioural therapy on alcohol-dependent patients: an observation with the WeChat platform

Background

With the continuous improvement of people’s material living standards, the consumption of alcoholic beverages is increasing. Alcohol dependence caused by alcohol addiction has become a widespread concern in society. As the brand-new medical and health model created by the modern biomedical technology revolution and the information technology revolution, mobile health has been used more and more widely in the field of medical health with the characteristics of convenience, rapidity and generalisability. With the general use of the social software WeChat, it is feasible to implement mobile health on the WeChat platform.

Aim

We aimed to explore the clinical effect of WeChat platform used in the cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) on the maintenance period of alcohol dependence and addiction.

Methods

Seventy alcohol-dependent patients in the withdrawal maintenance stage admitted into our hospital were randomly divided into the CBT on WeChat platform group (the experiment group, n=35) and the general clinical treatment using sertraline group (the control group, n=35) with block randomisation grouping. They were evaluated with the Severity of Alcohol Dependence Questionnaire (SADQ-C) before the treatment, at the end of the fourth week, at the end of the eighth week and at the end of the twelfth week of treatment. In addition, Zung’s Self-Rating Anxiety Scale (SAS) and Self-Rating Depression Scale (SDS) were employed to evaluate the degree of anxiety and depression of the two groups.

Results

The SADQ-C, SAS and SDS scores of the two groups after treatment decreased markedly compared with those before treatments, and the differences were statistically significant. Between-group comparison: the SADQ-C scores of the experiment group at the end of the fourth, eighth and twelfth weeks were lower than those of the control group, and the difference was statistically significant, which indicated that the score reduction in the experiment group was larger than that in the control group. The SAS and SDS scores of the experiment group at these time points were not significantly different from those of the control group, which indicated that these two treatment methods were comparable in treating patients’ anxiety and depression.

Conclusion

The CBT intervention using WeChat may improve the subjectively reported severity of alcohol dependence of patients who had completed detoxification. It is conducive to prevention of relapse, and is convenient for patients. It is worthy of clinical application and further study.