Background: Interpersonal communication competence impairments are widespread among patients with schizophrenia, with the majority experiencing ongoing difficulty in life functioning. One possible contributor to these difficulties may be deficit in emotion recognition with schizophrenic patients which are essential components of interpersonal communications competence. Emotion recognition is receptive emotional skills include the ability to accurately perceive emotion. Consequently, patients who have emotion recognition deficit often experience difficulty in interpersonal communications competence. Objective: Assess the level of interpersonal communication competence and the ability of emotional recognition among patients with schizophrenia. Settings: The study was conducted at EL-Maamoura Hospital for Psychiatric Medicine, in Alexandria, Egypt. Subjects: the data was collected from 270 outpatients with schizophrenia. Tools: three tools were used to collect the date; sociodemographic and clinical structured interview schedule, Interpersonal communication competence Scale (ICCS) and Bell-Lysaker Emotion Recognition Task (BLERT). Results: Findings of the present study revealed that 99.3% of the studied patients have low level of interpersonal communication competence and most of the studied patients have emotional recognition deficit in all emotion except happy emotion. Moreover, statistically positive significant correlations were found between overall interpersonal communication competence and overall emotional recognition among the studied subjects. (r=0.659, P<0.001). Conclusion:The present study concluded that, the studied subjects demonstrated low level of interpersonal communication competence, emotional recognition deficit and there was positive correlation between interpersonal communication competence and emotional recognition. Recommendations: Hospital policies should incorporate the routine clinical assessment of interpersonal communication competence and emotional recognition among patients with schizophrenia to consider appropriate psychiatric nursing care and intervention.

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Objective: We aimed to investigate the alteration of differential WBC counts, apoptosis-associated speck-like protein (ASC) and B-cell lymphoma protein (BCL-6) in Egyptian multiple sclerosis (MS) patients in response to disease modifying therapy (DMT) Methods: The present study was conducted on a total of 58 relapsingremitting MS (RRMS) patients who were classified into 21 untreated naïve patients and 37 treated patients as well as 30 healthy individuals. Assessment of neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio (NLR), platelet-lymphocyte ratio (PLR) and monocyte-lymphocyte ratio (MLR) was performed. Peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) were isolated and cultured in the presence of lipopolysaccharide (LPS) for the detection of inflammasome adaptor protein ASC and BCL-6 using ELISA. Results:The results revealed that untreated RRMS patients showed a significant increase in neutrophils and BCL-6 levels together with a marked decrease in monocytes and MLR compared to both treated patients and healthy controls. A marked increase in ASC levels was observed in all patients compared to healthy controls where ASC was negatively correlated with BCL-6. We also demonstrated that both NLR and ASC were positively correlated with IgG index. Conclusions: It can be concluded that altered peripheral blood cells, ASC and BCL-6 may have vital roles in RRMS pathogenesis suggesting their possible diagnostic and therapeutic potentials in RRMS.

In this prospective observational study, 80 patients with suspected elevated ICP were subjected to both CT brain imaging and optic nerve US assessment. Then, according to the CT findings, they were mentioned as two groups. Only fifty-seven patients (71.3%) were diagnosed with EICP "CT positive group". Twenty-three patients (28.7%) were not diagnosed with EICP "CT negative group". Findings from optic nerve ultrasonography were compared with CT brain imaging to detect the diagnostic performance of ONSD. Patients with positive findings were followed up using second assessment clinically and radiologically using CT brain imaging and optic nerve ultrasonography after 24 hours or when indicated. Intracranial pressure (ICP) monitoring is a vital element in the diagnosis and management of several neurological disorders, such as head injury, hydrocephalus, subarachnoid hemorrhage, and intracranial hematoma. The optic nerve sheath is in direct contact with the subarachnoid space. This relationship provides the physiological foundation for using the optic nerve sheath to assess intracranial pressure. Since the optic nerve sheath is loosely attached to the nerve, the subarachnoid space in this region more distensible, and appears bulbous on ultrasound. Dilation of the optic nerve sheath, in contrast to papilloedema, occurs faster, and can be a sign of increased intracranial pressure. The advancements of ultrasound modalities enabled researchers to enhance optic nerve sheath diameter (ONSD) measurements, with further research that concentrated on determining the best distance behind the globe to measure OSND. According to a 1996 study, ONSD increased by up to 60% at 3 mm behind the globe compared to only 35% at 10 mm. Later studies showed that the measuring should be performed 3 mm behind the globe, since ultrasound contrast is superior at this depth with a linear probe, allowing for reproducibility.