Current Psychiatry Research and Reviews - Volume 17, Issue 3, 2021

Background: Impulsiveness and compulsiveness, though traditionally assumed to represent the opposite poles of a spectrum, have increasingly been understood to have common, rather than disparate, features. Objective: We investigated the influence of the ECS on the intricate interplay between impulsiveness and compulsiveness. Methods: We conducted a search in PubMed, PsyhInfo, and Scopus by using the keywords compulsiveness, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), impulsiveness, Impulse Control Disorders (ICDs), addiction, ECS, serotonin, and dopamine. Results: The ECS is famous for its role in motivational processes and reward signaling, contributing to the hedonic effect elicited by pleasurable activities. Impulsiveness involves an inability to delay pleasure; compulsiveness, in contrast, is associated with a postponement of present pleasure due to an increased sense of menace. Impulsiveness and compulsiveness work together to result in addiction. The manipulation of the ECS through pharmacological or genetic methods is effective on the manifestations of OCD, ICDs, and impulsiveness. The ECS is distributed throughout the basal ganglia, prefrontal cortex, amygdala, and hippocampus and interacts with serotonergic, dopaminergic, noradrenergic, GABAergic, and glutamatergic neural circuits which are all involved in impulsive and compulsive symptomatology. The ECS or cannabinoids exhibit divergent effects depending on environmental conditions, dose, and duration of exposure. The endocannabinoids are retrograde messengers inhibiting the presynaptic neurons (causing a braking effect) and released “on demand”, generating a fine-tuning adjustment of the neural activity. Conclusion: How impulsiveness and compulsiveness, two apparently opposite traits, interoperate might be accounted for by the specific functions of the ECS.

Background: Fatigue is generally a normal response to physical exertion or any stressful situation. Its prevalence rates have reached the level of 1.5-3% among the general population. Due to the unclear etiology, diagnostic ambiguity, and resultant heterogeneousness among the population, there is a lack of a solid treatment regimen for fatigue. As the absolute treatment option is vague, patients are moving towards complementary and alternative medicines. Hence it is mandatory to review the efficiency of complementary and alternative therapies along with herbal medicines. Objective: The purpose of this review is to carry out an evidence-based exploration of the potentiality of medicinal plants in the treatment and management of fatigue. Methods: This evidence-based review was performed by conducting a literature review of the available studies from the PubMed database. Results: The study was based on 23 pre-clinical and clinical studies. It showed that medicinal herbs including Andrographis paniculata, Angelina sinensis, Astralagus membranaceus, Cordyceps sinensis, Panax ginseng, Gymnostemma pentaphyllum, Holy Basil, Lepidium meyenii, Rhodiola rosea, and Withania somnifera that belong to various traditional medicinal systems such as Ayurveda and Chinese Traditional Medicines can be a promising strategy to manage the various forms of fatigue. Conclusion: On the basis of these studies, it was concluded that the medicinal herbs and the phytochemicals within have a possible role in improving the symptoms associated with fatigue which can be further validated to produce targeted therapy for fatigue.

Objective: The most effective modality for presbycusis is using hearing aids. However, the rate of adoption and use of hearing aids among the elderly is not in line with the expectations. This review investigates the current evidence to identify factors affecting the adoption and use of hearing aids among the elderly with hearing loss. Design: This is a systematic review whose sample includes English articles published in peer-reviewed journals from January 2015 to October 2020. The search was conducted in PubMed, Web of Science, ProQuest, and Scopus electronic databases. Study selection, data extraction, and quality assessments were performed by two independent reviewers. Results: In the 22 studies included in this review, a number of factors, including demographic status (economic status and level of education), auditory factors (hearing loss severity, presence of tinnitus, and the sound quality of hearing aids), attitudinal and psychosocial factors (self-perceived hearing problems, perceived self-efficacy, perceived benefit, support from significant others, and extrovert and ambivert personality types) were identified as variables potentially impacting the adoption and use of hearing aids. Conclusion: The results show that demographic, attitudinal, and psychosocial factors, as well as auditory factors, play an influential role in the adoption and use rate of hearing aids among older populations suffering from hearing loss. Therefore, it is necessary to consider these factors in order to formulate hearing healthcare policies and adopt targeted and appropriate interventions in the process of prescribing, adjusting, and evaluating hearing aids. PROSPERO Registration: The protocol of this systematic review was published in the International prospective register of systematic reviews (PROSPERO) with registration number: CRD42021227684 (https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/display_ record.php?ID=CRD42021227684)

Background: Fear generalization is an adaptive mechanism which enables an individual to appropriately respond to novel stimuli based on overlapping features with a learned threat stimulus. When it is maladaptive, it is named overgeneralization. Overgeneralization was observed in psychiatric disorders, including Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD). Overgeneralization seems to be related to mnemonic discrimination, a fundamental component of memory which encodes a given event as distinct from highly similar events. Mnemonic discrimination is thought to rely on Pattern Separation (PS), which plays a critical role in discriminating safe stimuli similar to threatening ones. PS performance showed to be impaired in patients with some psychiatric disorders but has never been studied in OCD. Objective: Mnemonic discrimination for context, used as a proxy of pattern separation, was measured in patients with OCD to verify whether it is related to overgeneralization. Methods: Thirty patients with OCD and 30 non-psychiatric controls were enrolled (matched for sex, age). The Mnemonic Similarity Task-Object and the Mnemonic Similarity Task-Contest were administered to assess PS performance. Results: When patients with OCD and controls were compared, statistically significant differences were not found for mnemonic performances and pattern separation. Based on multivariate regression analysis, the group of patients with OCD was more likely to report lower mnemonic discrimination for context (OR = 0.67, 95% CI = 0.48-0.93) than the control group. Conclusion: Mnemonic discrimination for context was specifically referred to as new lures misidentified as similar. It is hypothesized that pattern separation performances might discriminate patients with OCD from non-psychiatric subjects.

Background: COVID-19 virus outbreak appeared in December 2019 and was announced as a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) in March 2020. Recent cases of reactive psychosis in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic have been reported. However, there has been observed reduced interest in cases of acute psychosis affecting patients with COVID-19. Here, we present a clinical case of a female patient who showed a brief psychotic disorder during symptomatic infection with COVID-19. Methods: We discuss the differential diagnosis of brief psychotic disorder with marked stressor and neuropsychiatric symptoms of COVID-19 infection. Although the stress factor appeared to be linked to the acute psychosis onset in our COVID-19 positive patient, the diagnosis of a psychotic disorder due to the viral coronavirus infection is worthy of being reported and discussed. Results: The stress factor appears to be linked to the onset of acute psychosis in this COVID-19 positive patient; the diagnosis of a psychotic disorder due to the viral coronavirus infection is worth to be mentioned. Thus, we suggest that a new psychosis case associated with COVID-19 infection due to potential immune-mediated neuropathogenesis would justify further investigation. Conclusion: Through this case report, we highlight the need for vigilant monitoring of neuropsychiatric symptoms in individuals with COVID-19 infection.