Summary: Epilepsy and neurocardiogenic syncope share a final common pathway of loss of consciousness and consequent social disruption. We compared 52 patients with syncope, 96 with epilepsy and 100 controls. Epilepsy and syncope patients expressed significantly higher levels of anxiety and depression and reported significantly less good quality of life (QoL) compared with controls. There were no significant differences on any of the QoL parameters measured between the syncope and epilepsy patients. These findings suggest the main contributor to poor QoL in epilepsy may be the unpredictable loss of control that is the hallmark of the condition.

A double-blind trial was carried out in 62 depressed patients to compare the clinical efficacy and acceptability of amineptine and clomipramine. Patients were allocated at random to one or other of two treatment groups and received daily doses of amineptine ranging from 100 to 300 mg (mean 180 mg) or of clomipramine ranging from 50 to 150 mg (mean 84 mg) over a period of 6 weeks. Global assessment of response to treatment and Hamilton Rating Scale scores, assessed before and after 1,3 and 6 weeks of treatment, indicated that the two drugs appeared to be equally effective and no differences between them could be demonstrated in the analysis of the individual items or grouped items of the scale used. Measurements of ocular tone showed that there was significantly less risk of amineptine producing an increase in tone, and blood pressure and electrocardiographic investigations also underlined the greater cardiovascular tolerance of amineptine. Five (16%) of the 32 patients in the clomipramine group were withdrawn from the study because of adverse effects.

Déclaration de liens d'intérêts :Au cours des 5 dernières années, Pascal DEMOLY a perçu des honoraires ou financements pour participation à des congrès, communications, actions de formation, conseil, participation à des groupes d'experts, de la part les Laboratoires ALK et Stallergenes Greer. Au cours des 5 dernières années, Pascal DEMOLY a été investigateur principal, coordonnateur, responsable scientifique d'études cliniques promues par les Laboratoires ALK et Stallergenes Greer. Au cours des 5 dernières années, Davide CAIMMI a perçu des honoraires ou financements pour participation à des congrès, communications, actions de formation, conseil, participation à des groupes d'experts, de la part du Laboratoires ALK et Stallergenes Greer.

Biogeographers have long studied physical and biological factors that determine the distribution of species at local, regional, and global scales. This interest initially focused on contemporary species distributions, but as high quality fossil evidence became available biogeographers expanded their research into temporal patterns, often extending to the start of the Holocene or even into the Pleistocene in some locations. Specifically, in the latter decades of the twentieth century research extended to describing the dynamics of species ranges associated with past climates (glacial periods) and species' response to warming in the Holocene. More recently, since anthropogenic climate change has been recognized as a potential driver of environmental change in the coming century, biogeographers have applied what has been learned about species' responses to postglacial warming to describing species' response to recent warming and modeling ecosystem reactions to future climate change.