Posttraumatic stress disorder(PTSD), which has a life prevalence of 1%, can occur after expo-sure to a traumatic event that carries the risk of severe injury or death to itself.

The characteristic clinical features of PTSD are reexperiencing the events, increased arousal, and persistent avoidance or numbing of resposiveness. Authors reported that four survivors from Sampoong collapse suffered from symptoms of PTSD, guilty feeling, depressed mood, panic symptoms, claustrophobia, and suicidal threat since their injuries.

Interestingly, the psychotic symptom scale in self rating SCL-90-R(symptom checklist-90-revision) was somewhat high(>65)in three of them.

The author compared plasma lipid levels in 74 patients with panic attack with those innormal controls. SCL-90-R was performed to evaluate the relationship between psychiatricsynlptoms and serum levels of cholesterol and triglyceride in Panic patients. The resultswere :

1) No significant differences in levels of serum cholesterol(mg/d1) and triglyceride(mg/dl) were found between the two groups. But in male panic patients level of serum triglyceridewas somewhat higher than in controls without statistical significance(169.9±79.5 : 136.1±54.6)(0.05<p<0.1).

2) Serum levels of cholesterol and triglyceride were not significantly different in patientswith Higher depression and anxiety score from those in normal controls. The level of serumcholesterol was higher in patients(178.3±93.3) with higher phobic score than in controls(136.1±54.6, p<0.O5) but that of serum triglyceride was somewhat higher in patients with higher phobicscore without statistical significance(0.05<p<0.1).

3) Serum cholesterol level was significantly higher in male patientts(202.5± 46.3) with higherphobic score than those(158.0±21.6) with lower score(p<0.05). But in the same patient groupsthe triglyceride level was not significantly different(178.3±93.3 : 106.4±25.5).