Medical Library

The factor structure of the posttraumatic growth inventory: A comparison of five models using confirmatory factor analysis.

There are different views about the dimensions of the positive changes resulting from the struggle with traumatic events. Using Posttraumatic Growth Inventory (PTGI) data reported by participants (N = 926) experiencing a variety of traumatic events, five models of the underlying structure of the PTGI were tested via confirmatory factor analyses to examine whether the PTGI comprises three domains (Changed Perception of Self, Changed Interpersonal Relationships, and Changed Philosophy of Life), five factors (Relating to Others, New Possibilities, Personal Strength, Spiritual Change, and Appreciation of Life), or a unitary dimension. Results indicated an oblique 5-factor model best fit the data, thus revealing the PTGI was multidimensional. Present findings offer implications for understanding the nature of posttraumatic growth.

Taku K, Cann A, Calhoun LG, Tedeschi RG.

Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, NC.

War-related posttraumatic stress disorder in Black, Hispanic, and majority White Vietnam veterans: The roles of exposure and vulnerability.

Elevated prevalence rates of chronic posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) have been reported for Black and Hispanic Vietnam veterans. There has been no comprehensive explanation of these group differences. Moreover, previous research has relied on retrospective reports of war-zone stress and on PTSD assessments that fail to distinguish between prevalence and incidence. These limitations are addressed by use of record-based exposure measures and clinical diagnoses of a subsample of veterans from the National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study (NVVRS). Compared with Majority White, the Black elevation is explained by Blacks\’ greater exposure; the Hispanic elevation, by Hispanics\’ greater exposure, younger age, lesser education, and lower Armed Forces Qualification Test scores. The PTSD elevation in Hispanics versus Blacks is accounted for mainly by Hispanics\’ younger age.

Dohrenwend BP, Turner JB, Turse NA, Lewis-Fernandez R, Yager TJ.

Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University, Department of Epidemiology, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, and New York State Psychiatric Institute, New York, NY.

Elevated rates of current PTSD among Hispanic veterans in the NVVRS: True prevalence or methodological artifact?

The elevated rate of current posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among Hispanic Vietnam veterans has been attributed to culturally based expressiveness that inflates symptom self-reports. To investigate this possibility, the authors conducted three hypothesis-driven analyses with National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study (NVVRS) data from the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-III-R (SCID-) diagnosed subsample of male Vietnam Theater veterans (N = 260). First, persistence of the Hispanic elevation after adjusting for war-zone stress exposure initially suggested the effect of greater expressiveness. Second, symptom-based analyses isolated this effect to the self-report Mississippi Scale for Combat-Related PTSD and not to the clinician-rated SCID interview. Third, objective measures of functioning did not reveal a unique Hispanic pattern of lower impairment associated with current PTSD. These tests suggest that greater Hispanic expressiveness does not account for the Hispanic elevation in current PTSD in the NVVRS SCID-diagnosed subsample.

Lewis-Fernández R, Turner JB, Marshall R, Turse N, Neria Y, Dohrenwend BP.

Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University and New York State Psychiatric Institute, New York, NY.

Unpacking the relationship between posttraumatic numbing and hyperarousal in a sample of help-seeking motor vehicle accident survivors: Replication and extension.

The current study is a replication and extension of previous research that has found support for a relationship between posttraumatic numbing and hyperarousal. This study examined this association while controlling for depression in 345 motor vehicle accident survivors. Additionally, the relationships among specific hyperarousal symptoms and numbing were explored. Results provided further evidence for an association between hyperarousal and numbing, even while controlling for the influence of depression, and revealed that all hyperarousal symptoms (except hypervigilance) contribute to this association.

Palyo SA, Clapp JD, Beck JG, Grant DM, Marques L.

Department of Psychology, University at Buffalo–SUNY, Buffalo, NY.

Accumulated childhood trauma and symptom complexity.

The relationship between accumulated exposure to different types of traumatic events (cumulative trauma) in childhood and the total number of different types of symptomatology reported (symptom complexity) in adulthood was examined in a sample of 2,453 female university students. There was a linear relationship between the number of trauma types experienced by participants before 18 and symptom complexity. This effect remained even when controlling for specific traumatic events, suggesting a generalized effect of cumulative trauma.

Briere J, Kaltman S, Green BL.

Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA and the National Child Traumatic Stress Network.

Mutations, structural variations, and genome-wide resequencing: where to from here in our understanding of disease and evolution?

The 9th International Symposium on Mutations in the Genome, Mutation Detection 2007, was held on 23-27 September 2007 in Xiamen, China. Meeting participants reported on a broad range of advances in mutation detection technologies and their applications, including developments in SNP genotyping systems applicable to point-of-care diagnostic testing; and emerging views on structural variation, high-throughput sequencing and the importance of bioinformatic tools to support the growing amounts of genome variation data. This meeting report summaries the major themes presented at the meeting. Hum Mutat 0, 1-5, 2008. (c) 2008 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

Tabone T.

School of Agriculture, Food and Wine, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia.

A cohort study of the long-term impact of a fire disaster on the physical and mental health of adolescents.

The literature on adult trauma survivors demonstrates that those exposed to traumatic stress have a poorer physical health status than nonexposed individuals. Studies on physical health effects in adolescent trauma survivors, in contrast, are scarce. In the current study, it was hypothesized that adolescents who have been involved in a mass burn incident (N = 124) will demonstrate more physical and mental health problems than an unaffected cohort from the same community (N = 1,487). Health data were extracted from electronic medical records, covering 1-year prefire and 4-years postfire. When compared to the prefire baseline, survivors showed significantly larger increases in mental, respiratory, and musculoskeletal problems than community controls during the first year after the fire, but not during the later years.

Dorn T, Yzermans JC, Spreeuwenberg PM, Schilder A, Zee JV.

Netherlands Institute for Health Services Research (NIVEL), Utrecht, The Netherlands.

Disaster mental health workers responding to ground zero: One year later.

The current study examined anniversary reactions in mental health disaster relief workers following traumatic exposure at the site of the World Trade Center terrorist attacks. Despite relatively low levels of symptom reporting, workers endorsed an increase in both negative mood symptoms and functional impairment at the one-year anniversary of their traumatic exposure (compared to 6 months postexposure). For those individuals who met at least partial criteria for PTSD immediately following exposure, overall self-reported PTSD symptoms tended to increase from 6 to 12 months. This tendency resulted specifically from an increase in hyperarousal symptoms. Although few endorsed symptoms at clinical levels, our results demonstrate that disaster relief workers may experience an increase in symptomatology at the anniversary of their traumatic exposure.

Daly ES, Gulliver SB, Zimering RT, Knight J, Kamholz BW, Morissette SB.

VA Boston Healthcare System, Jamaica Plain, MA and Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA.

Comparison of mass spectra of peptides in different matrices using matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization and a multi-turn time-of-flight mass spectrometer, MULTUM-IMG.

The mass spectra of peptides obtained with different matrices were compared using a matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI) ion source and a multi-turn time-of-flight (TOF) mass spectrometer, MULTUM-IMG, which has been developed at Osaka University. Two types of solid matrices, alpha-cyano-4-hydroxycinnamic acid (CHCA) and 2,5-dihydroxybenzoic acid (DHB), and a liquid matrix made from a mixture of 3-aminoquinoline and CHCA were used. When measuring the peak signal intensity of human angiotensin II [M+H](+) from a fixed sample position, the liquid matrix produced a stable signal over 1000 laser shots, while the signal obtained with CHCA and DHB decayed after about 300 and 100 shots, respectively. Significant differences in the mass resolving power were not observed between the spectra obtained with the three matrices. Signal peak areas were measured as a function of the cycle number in a multi-turn ion trajectory, i.e., the total flight time over a millisecond time scale. For both [M+H](+) of human angiotensin II and bovine insulin, the decay of the signal peak area was the most significant with CHCA, while that measured with DHB was the smallest. The results of the mean initial ion velocity measurements suggested that the extent of metastable decomposition of the analyte ions increased in order of DHB, the liquid matrix, and CHCA, which is consistent with the difference in the decay of the signal peak area as the total flight time increased. Copyright (c) 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Hazama H, Nagao H, Suzuki R, Toyoda M, Masuda K, Naito Y, Awazu K.

Graduate School of Engineering, Osaka University, 2‐1 Yamadaoka, Suita, Osaka 565‐0871, Japan.

Mixed-effects Poisson regression analysis of adverse event reports: The relationship between antidepressants and suicide.

A new statistical methodology is developed for the analysis of spontaneous adverse event (AE) reports from post-marketing drug surveillance data. The method involves both empirical Bayes (EB) and fully Bayes estimation of rate multipliers for each drug within a class of drugs, for a particular AE, based on a mixed-effects Poisson regression model. Both parametric and semiparametric models for the random-effect distribution are examined. The method is applied to data from Food and Drug Administration (FDA)\’s Adverse Event Reporting System (AERS) on the relationship between antidepressants and suicide. We obtain point estimates and 95 per cent confidence (posterior) intervals for the rate multiplier for each drug (e.g. antidepressants), which can be used to determine whether a particular drug has an increased risk of association with a particular AE (e.g. suicide). Confidence (posterior) intervals that do not include 1.0 provide evidence for either significant protective or harmful associations of the drug and the adverse effect. We also examine EB, parametric Bayes, and semiparametric Bayes estimators of the rate multipliers and associated confidence (posterior) intervals. Results of our analysis of the FDA AERS data revealed that newer antidepressants are associated with lower rates of suicide adverse event reports compared with older antidepressants. We recommend improvements to the existing AERS system, which are likely to improve its public health value as an early warning system. Copyright (c) 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Gibbons RD, Segawa E, Karabatsos G, Amatya AK, Bhaumik DK, Brown CH, Kapur K, Marcus SM, Hur K, Mann JJ.

Center for Health Statistics, University of Illinois at Chicago, Rooms 455–457 (MC 912), 1601 W. Taylor, Chicago, IL 60612, U.S.A.