Persistent negative symptoms in individuals at Ultra High Risk for psychosis
In this study, we examined the prevalence, baseline correlates and outcome of PNS in 363 Ultra High Risk individuals. (Source: Schizophrenia Research)
Source: Schizophrenia Research - October 26, 2018 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Alison R. Yung, Barnaby Nelson, Patrick D. McGorry, Stephen J. Wood, Ashleigh Lin Source Type: research
Clinical correlates of subsyndromal depression in African American individuals with psychosis: The relationship with positive symptoms and comorbid substance dependence
Patients with psychosis exhibit subsyndromal depressive symptoms during the course of illness and yet the clinical correlates of these symptoms remain under-investigated. We aimed to investigate the clinical correlates of subsyndromal depression in psychosis including the extent to which they mediate commonly observed comorbid substance dependence. We developed a model of depression in a non-clinical sample recruited via Amazon's Mechanical Turk (N = 266), and confirmed that model in a locally recruited African-American clinical sample comprising psychotic and non-psychotic individuals (N = 256). (Source: Schizophrenia Research)
Source: Schizophrenia Research - October 26, 2018 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Emma E.M. Knowles, Samuel R. Mathias, Godfrey D. Pearlson, Jennifer Barrett, Josephine Mollon, Dominique Denbow, Katrina Aberzik, Molly Zatony, David C. Glahn Source Type: research
Body mass index trajectories in childhood and adolescence - Risk for non-affective psychosis
Underweight in early adulthood increases risk for schizophrenia, but the effect of early childhood underweight on psychosis risk is not well known. (Source: Schizophrenia Research)
Source: Schizophrenia Research - October 25, 2018 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Elina Sormunen, Maiju M. Saarinen, Raimo K.R. Salokangas, Nina Hutri-K ähönen, Jorma S.A. Viikari, Olli T. Raitakari, Jarmo Hietala Source Type: research
Implementation intention training for prospective memory in schizophrenia: A 3-month follow-up study
This study examined whether a 10-session II programme could improve PM performance, social functioning and functional capacity in patients with schizophrenia immediately after training and at 3-month follow-up. Patients with schizophrenia (n = 42) recruited from the community were randomly assigned to II training (n = 21) or treatment as usual (TAU) (n = 21). (Source: Schizophrenia Research)
Source: Schizophrenia Research - October 24, 2018 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Tao Chen, Lu-lu Liu, Ji-fang Cui, Ying Li, Xiao-jing Qin, Shu-li Tao, David L. Neumann, David H.K. Shum, Eric F.C. Cheung, Ya Wang, Raymond C.K. Chan Source Type: research
Relationship of common variants in CHRNA5 with early-onset schizophrenia and executive function
Altered cholinergic neural transmission is hypothesized to increase susceptibility to cognitive deficits in psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia (SCZ). The nicotinic acetylcholine receptor α5 subunit gene (CHRNA5) is reported to be associated with cognitive function in nicotine-dependent populations and SCZ in non-smoking SCZ patients. Nevertheless, it is still not clear whether the CHRNA5 gene contributes to susceptibility to the cognitive deficits of SCZ without smoking. To further clarify the role of CHRNA5, we designed a two-stage, case-control study to examine the association between CHRNA5 and SCZ and its clini...
Source: Schizophrenia Research - October 23, 2018 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Wei Han, Tianxiao Zhang, Tong Ni, Li Zhu, Dan Liu, Gang Chen, Huali Lin, Teng Chen, Fanglin Guan Source Type: research
Current versus recently resolved attenuated psychotic symptoms: Same level of risk for transition to psychosis?
While the at-risk for psychosis mental state approach to identifying emergent psychotic disorders has been catalytic in driving clinical research for youth populations, calls have been made to rethink the operationalisation of the construct (McGorry et al., 2018). The rationale for this is in part due to studies indicating a declining rate of transition to psychosis in recent years, reducing from around 40% in initial research, down to ~10% in more recent work (Morrison et al., 2012). (Source: Schizophrenia Research)
Source: Schizophrenia Research - October 18, 2018 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Simon M. Rice, Patrick D. McGorry, G. Paul Amminger, Barnaby Nelson Tags: Letter to the Editor Source Type: research
Relationship between allostatic load and clinical outcomes in youth at ultra-high risk for psychosis in the NEURAPRO study
Individuals at ultra-high risk (UHR) for psychosis have an elevated risk of developing psychosis and other psychiatric outcomes. Risk biomarkers can assist in delineating individual risk and allow better prediction of longer-term outcomes. The aim of the present study was to examine if allostatic load (AL), a multisystem index of neuroendocrine, cardiovascular, immune and metabolic dysregulation, is associated with clinical outcomes in youth at UHR for psychosis.AL was measured in 106 participants of the NEURAPRO study (n = 70 female, n = 36 male; mean age 17.21, SD 2.37), a multicentre randomized-controlled trial...
Source: Schizophrenia Research - October 17, 2018 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Maximus Berger, Suzie Lavoie, Patrick D. McGorry, Barnaby Nelson, Connie Markulev, Hok-Pan Yuen, Miriam Schaefer, Zolt án Sarnyai, G. Paul Amminger Source Type: research
Correlation between neurocognitive impairment and DNA methylation of MMP-9 gene in patients with deficit schizophrenia
Deficit schizophrenia (DS) is defined as a homogeneous subtype of schizophrenia characterized by primary and persistent negative symptoms (Carpenter et al., 1988; Kirkpatrick and Galderisi, 2008). Compared to non-deficit schizophrenia (NDS), DS patients exhibited uniqueness in clinical characteristics, such as a higher rate in males, summer birth, poorer treatment responses, and long-term functional outcome. Most evidence suggested more severe neurocognitive impairments were observed in patients with DS relative to NDS (Cascella et al., 2008). (Source: Schizophrenia Research)
Source: Schizophrenia Research - October 16, 2018 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Ju Gao, Xiaowei Tang, Ju Kang, Chunming Xie, Miao Yu, Weiwei Sha, Xiang Wang, Xiaobin Zhang, Hongwei Yi, Xiangrong Zhang Tags: Letter to the Editor Source Type: research
Affective and physiological reactivity to emotional comments in individuals at elevated risk for psychosis
Individuals with schizophrenia are at increased risk of relapse when they live in highly critical (i.e., high expressed emotion; EE) family environments. It remains less clear, however, how individuals at elevated risk for a psychotic disorder react to the social stress of EE. Here we examined whether individuals at elevated risk for developing schizophrenia report greater subjective changes in affect and have increased physiological reactivity after hearing critical, praising and neutral comments. (Source: Schizophrenia Research)
Source: Schizophrenia Research - October 15, 2018 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Marc J. Weintraub, Amy Weisman de Mamani, William J. Villano, Travis C. Evans, Zachary B. Millman, Jill M. Hooley, Kiara R. Timpano Source Type: research
Influence of secondary sources in the Brief Negative Symptom Scale
Negative symptoms are core symptoms of schizophrenia associated with poorer clinical outcome (Strauss et al., 2010). They can be clinically subdivided into primary and secondary features, representing different phenomenology and pathophysiological mechanisms (Miller et al., 1994). Secondary negative symptoms phenotypically present as primary symptoms, but are attributed to external causes. Positive symptom severity, depression and antipsychotic side-effects are known sources of secondary negative symptoms (Carpenter et al., 1985). (Source: Schizophrenia Research)
Source: Schizophrenia Research - October 11, 2018 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Devi Treen, George Savulich, Gisela Mezquida, Maria Paz Garc ía-Portilla, Alba Toll, Clemente García-Rizo, Leticia García-Álvarez, Daniel Bergé, Julio Bobes, Miguel Bernardo, Emilio Fernandez-Egea, Anna Mané Source Type: research
Comparison of prefrontal hemodynamic responses and cognitive deficits between adult patients with autism spectrum disorder and schizophrenia
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and schizophrenia share many phenotypic characteristics, but their association with prefrontal function have not been directly compared. The aim of this study is to compare cognitive profiles and their association with the prefrontal function between the two groups. We explored prefrontal dysfunction among adult individuals with ASD (n = 32), schizophrenia (n = 87), and healthy controls (HCs; n = 50). We assessed cognitive function in all participants using the Brief Assessment of Cognition in Schizophrenia (BACS). (Source: Schizophrenia Research)
Source: Schizophrenia Research - October 10, 2018 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Shenghong Pu, Kazuyuki Nakagome, Takahiro Satake, Hiroaki Ohtachi, Masashi Itakura, Takehiko Yamanashi, Akihiko Miura, Katsutoshi Yokoyama, Hiroshi Matsumura, Masaaki Iwata, Izumi Nagata, Koichi Kaneko Source Type: research
Corrigendum to “Long-term course of negative symptom subdomains and relationship with outcome in patients with a psychotic disorder” [Schizophr. Res. 193 (2018) 173–181]
The authors regret that the GROUP-investigators were not acknowledged for their work due to a missing affiliation in the original publication. (Source: Schizophrenia Research)
Source: Schizophrenia Research - October 9, 2018 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Annemarie P.M. Stiekema, Md Atiqul Islam, Edith J. Liemburg, Stynke Castelein, Edwin R. van den Heuvel, Jaap van Weeghel, Andr é Aleman, Richard Bruggeman, Lisette van der Meer, GROUP investigators, Behrooz Z. Alizadeh, Agna A. Bartels-Velthuis, Nico J. Tags: Corrigendum Source Type: research
Compensatory Cognitive Training for psychosis: Effects on negative symptom subdomains
We examined the effects of Compensatory Cognitive Training (CCT) on expressive deficits and social amotivation in a randomized controlled trial comparing CCT to standard pharmacotherapy alone in 43 individuals with psychosis. ANCOVA analyses demonstrated significant CCT-associated effects on both expressive deficits and social amotivation. Moreover, improvements in both sub-domains were associated with improvements in global life satisfaction, with improvements in social amotivation also related to increased social contact. (Source: Schizophrenia Research)
Source: Schizophrenia Research - October 4, 2018 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Zanjbeel Mahmood, Jillian M.R. Clark, Elizabeth W. Twamley Source Type: research
Highlights in this issue
Lindenmayer et al. (2018) propose that the impact of cognitive remediation therapy on cognition in schizophrenia could be augmented by social cognition training. They test that hypothesis in this 12 week, n = 131, parallel group study, and found additional benefits in visual learning, memory, executive functions, and social cognition relative to cognitive training alone. These results suggest a role of combining cognitive remediation therapy and social cognition training in improving out comes in schizophrenia. (Source: Schizophrenia Research)
Source: Schizophrenia Research - October 4, 2018 Category: Psychiatry Authors: John Torous, Matcheri Keshavan Tags: Editorial Source Type: research
Navigating the co-prescription of clozapine and fluvoxamine
Clozapine is a unique atypical antipsychotic with demonstrated superior efficacy in the medical management of treatment-resistant schizophrenia (Siskind et al., 2016). Its effects are attributed to clozapine itself and to its active metabolite N-desmethylclozapine (norclozapine), with the latter being responsible for many side effects encountered with clozapine therapy (L égaré et al., 2013). Clozapine plasma level monitoring is used to optimise clozapine therapy. A clozapine plasma level above 350 microgram/litre (μg/L) should be achieved (Gee and Howes, 2016). (Source: Schizophrenia Research)
Source: Schizophrenia Research - September 28, 2018 Category: Psychiatry Authors: Gordon Shymko, Vaughan Clark, Liana Shymko, Flavie Waters Tags: Letter to the Editor Source Type: research
