TASK DEFINITION: Given a passage classify if the passage has a definite objective/aim/goal or not. Output '1' if the passage has a defininte objective/aim/goal and output '0' if the passage does not have a definite objective/aim/goal.
PROBLEM: Depression is the most common psychiatric comorbidity in epilepsy patients. The lack of success with current pharmacological interventions for this patient population, highlights the importance of optimizing non-pharmacological neuromodulatory treatments such as vagus nerve stimulation (VNS). Studies on the antidepressant effect of VNS in epilepsy patients may be confounded by concurrent anti-epileptic drug therapy. To date, studies in epilepsy models overcoming this problem are lacking.', 'We investigated whether VNS affects anhedonia, a key symptom of major depression, in the kainic acid rat model for temporal lobe epilepsy.', 'Anhedonia was assessed in kainic acid (KA) and saline (SAL) injected rats using the saccharin preference test (SPT). To exclude differences in taste perception, the quinine aversion test (QAT) was performed. Both groups were randomly subdivided in a VNS and a SHAM group, yielding 4 experimental arms: KA-VNS, KA-SHAM, SAL-VNS and SAL-SHAM. Both VNS groups received 2 weeks of VNS, while the SHAM groups were not stimulated. Thereafter, the SPT and QAT were repeated.', 'Saccharin preference was significantly reduced in the KA compared to the SAL rats (P<0.05), without differences in quinine aversion. Two weeks of VNS significantly increased the saccharin preference in the KA-VNS group (P<0.05), while it had no effect on quinine aversion. No effects of VNS or SHAM were found in the other groups.

SOLUTION: 1

PROBLEM: Several studies have reported that ventriculoperitoneal shunt insertion for treatment of normal-pressure hydrocephalus results in improvement of gait and, less frequently, improvement of cognition. We sought to identify the demographic factors associated with cognitive improvement after shunt insertion to improve assessment of prognosis for cognitive gains with treatment.', 'We report cognitive testing before and after ventriculoperitoneal shunt insertion in 36 patients with normal pressure hydrocephalus, who previously had improvement of any clinical symptom--gait, urinary incontinence, cognition--after a diagnostic trial of continuous cerebrospinal fluid drainage.

SOLUTION: 0

PROBLEM: The aim of this study was to investigate whether mRNA expression of the apoptosis-associated genes, XAF1 and XIAP, in bladder cancer patients correlates with response to neoadjuvant treatment.', 'Gene expression was analyzed by a real-time quantitative PCR method in paired samples from 14 bladder cancer patients treated with a combination of neoadjuvant gemcitabine and cisplatin. The prognostic significance of XAF1 and XIAP mRNA expression as well as the correlation with several clinical and pathological findings were evaluated.', 'The clinical response in the XAF1-high subset (n = 5) was remarkably higher compared with the XAF1-low subset (n = 9) (100% vs. 44.4%; P = 0.038). These results translated into a notably improvement of progression-free survival (PFS) in the XAF1-high subset (log-rank P = 0.012). In addition, patients in the XAF1-high subset had a 3.9-fold decreased chance of dying from the disease (hazard ratio for death (HR), 0.257; (CI 95%), 0.043-1.536, P = 0.036). When we evaluated the expression of XIAP, although an inverse correlation was found between expression and pathological response, there were no statistically significant associations with the clinical response, the length of PFS, and OS.

SOLUTION:
1