Clozapine: a distinct, poorly understood and under-used molecule

Clozapine: a distinct, poorly understood and under-used molecule.

Consensus of opinion is rare in psychiatry. Even in the field of clinical trials, where experimentation is tightly controlled and regulatory bodies scrutinize the proof, controversies are frequent and difficult to resolve. One issue for which there is a widespread consensus is the unique place that clozapine occupies in the treatment of severe mental illnesses, particularly refractory schizophr...

Thrombosis – Besieged but Poorly Understood

In biology, thrombosis is a mechanism of maintaining the integrity of biological surfaces in higher mammals, limiting fluid loss, and facilitating the recognition, containment, and destruction of pathogens and foreign materials by a scaffold of fibrin and DNA strands. However, thrombosis may also lead to vascular occlusion and subsequent tissue damage. In medicine, thrombosis is a hallmark of l...

Premenstrual asthma: still poorly understood.

Nephrogenic ascites: a poorly understood syndrome.

Nephrogenic ascites is a condition characterized by the presence of massive ascites in a patient with ESRD. Neither the exact cause nor the pathogenesis of ascites formation is clearly understood. Patients frequently present with hypertension, moderate to massive ascites, minimal extremity edema, cachexia, and a history of dialysis-associated hypotension. The ascitic fluid is typically an exuda...

Depression and pancreatic cancer: a poorly understood link.

Although pancreatic carcinoma and depression have been linked for many years, the prevalence and relationship of these two entities are still poorly understood. Published studies reviewing this issue have found that many patients with pancreatic cancer are depressed. A clinical gestalt asserts that many patients present with depression before pancreatic carcinoma is diagnosed. If the definition...