BACKGROUND Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) is prone to numerous systemic confounding factors that should be acknowledged to avoid false conclusions. PURPOSE To investigate the possible effects of age, gender, smoking, alcohol consumption, and education on cerebral DTI parameters in a generally healthy homogenous sample with no neurological or psychiatric diseases. MATERIAL AND METHODS Forty ...

Lower IQ is associated with earlier death, but the cause of the relationship is unknown. In the present study, psychometric intelligence and reaction times were both significantly related to all-cause mortality in a representative sample of 898 people aged 56 years who were followed up with respect to survival until age 70. The association between IQ and mortality remained significant after adj...

Pharmacological Magnetic Resonance Imaging (phMRI) is a variant of conventional MRI that adds pharmacological manipulations in order to study the effects of drugs, or uses pharmacological probes to investigate basic or applied (e.g., clinical) neuroscience questions. Issues that may confound the interpretation of results from various types of phMRI studies are briefly discussed, and a set of me...

BACKGROUND Reflection on experience is an increasingly critical part of professional development and lifelong learning. There is, however, continuing uncertainty about how best to put principle into practice, particularly as regards assessment. This article explores those uncertainties in order to find practical ways of assessing reflection. DISCUSSION We critically review four problems: 1. I...

Syncope is a condition often misdiagnosed as epileptic seizures. However, the differential diagnosis between both conditions can be quite difficult, even for well-trained physicians. Four cases of epilepsy and/or syncope are reported, to exemplify this situation. Each case is discussed individually, and the confounding factors are analyzed.

Williams and colleagues,1 in a recent article (September 2008), highlighted the importance of language used by elderly patients to describe the sensation of breathlessness in distinguishing COPD. However, breathlessness may occur in elderly persons with a number of conditions such as congestive heart failure, asthma, interstitial lung disease, coronary artery disease, age-related changes, and a...

BACKGROUND Brain death is strictly defined medically and legally. This diagnosis depends on three cardinal neurological features: coma, absent brainstem reflexes, and apnea. The diagnosis can only be made, however, in the absence of intoxication, hypothermia, or certain medical illnesses. CASE PRESENTATION A patient with severe hypoxic-ischemic brain injury met the three cardinal neurological...

As the most important among the modifiable risk factors for many cancer types tobacco smoking is dutifully treated as a potent confounder when epidemiologists explore new candidate relations. The role for smoking changes from ‘confounder’ to ‘confounded’ variable in anogenital cancers. Among the latter, cervical cancer is a case in point. Smoking was first suspected as a risk factor for cervica...

physical child abuse is a psycho-social and health problem that has been ignored for many years. although the official report of child abuse ignored for many years, and the official reports of child abuse cases are very limited, but there are evidences that show the significant extent of physical child abuse prevalence rate in two regions of tehran, which are completely different in socioeconom...

background: ninety-five percent of low birth weight infants are born in developing countries. this study was aimed to assess the predictors of low birth in east azerbaijan, north-west province of iran. materials and methods: the study was conducted through a hospital based case–control design involving 49 women delivering low birth weight infants and 98 delivering normal weight infants. the dat...