PURPOSE: This study compared the mental symptoms, especially symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), of women who escaped prostitution, helping activists at shelters, and matched control subjects. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We assessed 113 female ex-prostitutes who had been living at a shelter, 81 helping activists, and 65 control subjects using self-reporting questionnaires on demographic data, symptoms related to trauma and PTSD, stress-related reactions, and other mental health factors. RESULTS: Female ex-prostitutes had significantly higher stress response, somatization, depression, fatigue, frustration, sleep, smoking and alcohol problems, and more frequent and serious PTSD symptoms than the other 2 groups. Helping activists also had significantly higher tension, sleep and smoking problems, and more frequent and serious PTSD symptoms than control subjects. CONCLUSION: These findings show that engagement in prostitution may increase the risks of exposure to violence, which may psychologically traumatize not only the prostitutes themselves but also the people who help them, and that the effects of the trauma last for a long time. Future research is needed to develop a method to assess specific factors that may contribute to vicarious trauma of prostitution, and protect field workers of prostitute victims from vicarious trauma.
Adult ; Alcoholism/etiology/psychology ; Depression/etiology/psychology ; Fatigue/etiology/psychology ; Female ; Humans ; Mental Disorders/etiology/psychology ; *Mental Health ; Prostitution/*psychology ; Questionnaires ; Risk Factors ; Smoking/psychology ; *Social Work ; Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic/complications/*psychology ; Stress, Psychological/complications

Histiocytic sarcoma is a type of lymphoma that rarely involves the central nervous system (CNS). Its rarity can easily lead to a misdiagnosis. We describe a patient with primary CNS histocytic sarcoma involving the cerebral hemisphere and spinal cord, who had been initially misdiagnosed as demyelinating disease. Two biopsies were necessary before a correct diagnosis was made. A histologic examination showed bizarre shaped histiocytes with larger nuclei and nuclear atypia. The cells were positive for CD68, CD163, and S-100 protein. As a resection was not feasible due to multifocality, he was treated with highdose methotrexate, but showed no response. As a result, he was switched to high dose cytarabine; but again, showed no response. The patient died 2 months from the start of chemotherapy and 8 months from the onset of symptoms. Since few patients with this condition have been described and histopathology is difficult to diagnose, suspicion of the disease is essential.
Biopsy ; Central Nervous System* ; Cerebrum ; Cytarabine ; Demyelinating Diseases ; Diagnosis ; Diagnostic Errors ; Drug Therapy ; Histiocytes ; Histiocytic Sarcoma* ; Humans ; Lymphoma ; Methotrexate ; S100 Proteins ; Sarcoma ; Spinal Cord

Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder that is associated with repetitive head injury and has distinctive neuropathological features that differentiate this disease from other neurodegenerative diseases. Intraneuronal tau aggregates, although they occur in different patterns, are diagnostic neuropathological features of CTE, but the precise mechanism of tauopathy is not known in CTE. We performed whole RNA sequencing analysis of post-mortem brain tissue from patients with CTE and compared the results to normal controls to determine the transcriptome signature changes associated with CTE. The results showed that the genes related to the MAP kinase and calcium-signaling pathways were significantly downregulated in CTE. The altered expression of protein phosphatases (PPs) in these networks further suggested that the tauopathy observed in CTE involves common pathological mechanisms similar to Alzheimer's disease (AD). Using cell lines and animal models, we also showed that reduced PPP3CA/PP2B phosphatase activity is directly associated with increases in phosphorylated (p)-tau proteins. These findings provide important insights into PP-dependent neurodegeneration and may lead to novel therapeutic approaches to reduce the tauopathy associated with CTE.
Alzheimer Disease ; Brain ; Brain Injury, Chronic* ; Cell Line ; Craniocerebral Trauma ; Gene Expression Profiling* ; Humans ; Models, Animal ; Neurodegenerative Diseases ; Phosphoprotein Phosphatases ; Phosphotransferases ; Sequence Analysis, RNA ; Tauopathies* ; Transcriptome*