Validity, trial, schizophrenia

The validity of pharmacoeconomic data is invariably diminished by two important factors a failure to account for all direct and indirect cost outcomes, and the difficulty of assigning costs to human experiences. In schizophrenia, validity is further reduced by the near-impossibility of conducting trials over several years, or even decades, so as to approach the reality of what is usually a lifelong illness. Given these observations, it would be imprudent to act on the minutiae of data generated in even the best-conducted trials, but it may well be appropriate to draw broad conclusions. 

Trial validity is also grossly affected by the type of trial carried out. In schizophrenia there are several health-care decision models, retrospective mirror-image analyses (with or... 

Overall, the results of both clinical and experimental research have strengthened the validity of the GSH hypothesis of schizophrenia and justified a clinical trial with NAC. NAC is a safe, orally bioavailable donor of cysteine, the rate-limiting substrate of GSH. Given orally, NAC is quickly absorbed, and plasma peak concentration of cysteine is reached within 120 min (Borgstrom et al., 1986 Olsson et al., 1988 Borgstrom... 

Patients with schizophrenia perform poorly on tasks requiring cognitive control and contextual information processing (Stroop, AX-CPT, go/no-go). In the typical AX-CPT task (Rosvold et al., 1956), participants are shown a series of letters, presented one at a time. The letter X is designated as a target, but only when it is immediately preceded by a valid cue (letter A ) X preceded by an invalid cue (a letter other than A BX trials), and other letters preceded by A (AY trials) or any other letter (BY trials) are... 

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