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Progressive neuropsychological dysfunction and complaints of cognitive difficulty frequently accompany HIV-1 infection. Providing appropriate treatment to HIV-1 patients requires determination of the extent to which the presentation of cognitive complaints reflects HIV-1-associated neuropsychological abnormalities or represents expression of depressive symptomatology. We prospectively treated 75 HIV-1 patients who were not demented but met criteria for major mood disorder with antidepressants for 12 weeks and compared pretreatment and posttreatment measures of depression, cognitive complaints, and neuropsychological performance. Complaints of difficulty with memory and attention were found to be independent of neuropsychological impairment, whereas memory complaints were highly correlated with severity of depression. Cognitive complaints declined significantly across the course of treatment for those patients who responded to antidepressant treatment. All patients, regardless of antidepressant treatment response, exhibited parallel improvement on 12-week follow- up neuropsychological examination. These findings suggest that treatment of depression affects cognitive complaints in HIV-1 individuals and that cognitive complaints of patients in asymptomatic or early symptomatic stages of HIV-1 infection may signal the need for evaluation of depression. In patients with more advanced HIV-1 infection, investigation into the basis of cognitive complaints may require a dual assessment of mood disturbance and neuropsychological status.

Physicians need to be aware that women and mothers are capable of sexually abusing children and need to watch for signs that a mother may be at risk for perpetrating abuse or that a child may have been abused. Posttraumatic stress disorder, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, secondary enuresis and encopresis, nightmares, and inappropriate sexual behavior are often symptoms of sexual abuse. It is important for physicians who are attempting to elicit a report of abuse from a child to keep in mind that (1) children express themselves most easily by nonverbal means, (2) the waiting room, school, and home are settings where information might be retrieved, and (3) the child's statements need to be evaluated using established criteria for analyzing their content. Physicians also need to remember that there is often an absence of physical findings in boys who have been sexually abused, although physical abuse and sexual abuse present simultaneously in some cases.

Larvae of the southern armyworm, Spodoptera eridania, are highly polyphagous feeders which frequently encounter and feed upon plants containing high levels of prooxidant allelochemicals. While ingestion of moderate quantities of prooxidants can be tolerated by these larvae, ingestion of larger quantities can result in toxicity. Studies were conducted to assess the role of the antioxidant enzymes, superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT) and glutathione reductase (GR) in the protection of S. eridania against redox active prooxidant plant allelochemicals. Dietary exposure of mid-fifth-instar larvae to either quercetin (a flavonoid) or xanthotoxin (a photoactive furanocoumarin), which generate superoxide radical, and singlet oxygen, respectively, resulted in an increase in SOD levels. CAT levels increased in all groups of S. eridania including control insects. This may have been due to the sudden exposure to food following an extended fast of 18 h (to insure that larvae would not reject the diet because of the prooxidants' bitter taste) with an eventual lowering of CAT values with time. GR activities did not significantly change except for a slight inhibition at the highest prooxidant concentrations used at 12-h post-ingestion. The data from these studies suggest that SOD responds to prooxidant challenges in these insects and together with CAT and GR contributes to the insect's defense against potentially toxic prooxidant compounds.