(Source: Synapse)MedWorm Message: Register for MedMatcha, MedWorm's medical advertising network, and receive $5 free advertising.

Results from a Danish study support an association between maternal infection with the herpes simplex virus and an increased risk for schizophrenia in offspring. (Source: MedWire News - Psychiatry)

Scientists have long sought to understand the biological basis of thought. In the second century A.D., physician and philosopher Claudius Galen held that the brain was a gland that secreted fluids to the body via the nerves--a view that went unchallenged for centuries. In the late 1800s clinical researchers tied specific brain areas to dedicated functions by correlating anatomical abnormalities in the brain after death with behavioral or cognitive impairments. French surgeon Pierre Paul Broca, for example, found that a region on the brain’s left side controls speech. In the first half of the 20th century, neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield mapped the brain’s functions by electrically stimulating different places in conscious patients during neurosurgery, triggering vivid memories, lo...

Scientists have long sought to understand the biological basis of thought. In the second century A.D., physician and philosopher Claudius Galen held that the brain was a gland that secreted fluids to the body via the nerves--a view that went unchallenged for centuries. In the late 1800s clinical researchers tied specific brain areas to dedicated functions by correlating anatomical abnormalities in the brain after death with behavioral or cognitive impairments. French surgeon Pierre Paul Broca, for example, found that a region on the brain’s left side controls speech. In the first half of the 20th century, neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield mapped the brain’s functions by electrically stimulating different places in conscious patients during neurosurgery, triggering vivid memories, lo...

Abstract: Although a suboptimal prenatal environment has been linked with schizophrenia and depression, possible associations with personality disorders remain unclear. The aim of this study was to examine the associations of body size at birth and length of gestation with hospitalization for personality disorders in a cohort study of 6506 men and 5857 women born in Helsinki, Finland, between 1934 and 1944. International Classification of Diseases (-8, -9, -10) diagnoses of personality disorders were extracted from the national Finnish Hospital Discharge Register since 1969. 102 men and 80 women had been hospitalized due to any personality disorder. 41 men and 30 women had dramatic personality disorders. Among men, head circumference showed an inverse J-shaped, nonlinear association with h...

Abstract: We previously identified a small region on chromosome 5p13 related to schizophrenia in a Puerto Rican pedigree. We screened one of the positional candidate genes, C1QTNF3, for mutations in affected family members. The direct sequencing identified 10 sequence variants, including five shared by all affected family members. Genotyping of the shared variants in a Puerto Rican sample of 118 cases and 136 controls did not reveal either allelic or genotype association with schizophrenia. (Source: Psychiatry Research)MedWorm Message: Register for MedMatcha, MedWorm's medical advertising network, and receive $5 free advertising.

Abstract: Cognitive deficits are a key feature of recent-onset psychosis, but there is no consensus on whether such deficits are generalized or confined to specific domains. Besides, it is unclear whether cognitive deficits: a) are found in psychotic patients in samples from outside high-income countries; and b) whether they progress uniformly over time in schizophrenia and affective psychoses. We applied 12 tests organized into eight cognitive domains, comparing psychosis patients (n=56, time from initial contact=677.95±183.27days) versus healthy controls (n=70) recruited from the same area of São Paulo, Brazil. Longitudinal comparisons (digit span and verbal fluency) were conducted between a previous assessment of the subjects carried out at their psychosis onset, and the current follo...

Abstract: The purpose of this study was to examine the psychometric properties of the Thinking and Perceptual Style Questionnaire (TPSQ) and the Multidimensional Schizotypal Traits Questionnaire-Reduced (MSTQ-R) in non-clinical adolescents. The final sample consisted of 991 participants with a mean age of 14.7 years (S.D.=1.8). The internal consistency of the TPSQ subscales ranged from 0.77 to 0.89, and that of the MSTQ-R subscales ranged from 0.62 to 0.81. Construct validity analysis from the TPSQ subscales showed a three-dimensional solution based on the factors social disorganisation, aberrant processing and anhedonia. For its part, factor analysis of the MSTQ-R also showed a three-dimensional solution based on the factors: positive symptoms, negative symptoms and impulsive-nonconformi...

Abstract: The gene encoding d-amino acid oxidase (DAO), which acts as a receptor for the schizophrenia-associated neurotransmitter, N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA), is regarded as a potential candidate gene for schizophrenia. However, the potential association of the DAO gene with schizophrenia has been the subject of some debate. Here, we tested three single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of DAO in a group of Korean schizophrenia patients, and found no significant association in the overall study subjects. Interestingly, however, we found gender-specific differences in allele distributions, with SNP rs2070586 appearing to act as a risk allele in female schizophrenia patients, but as a protective allele in males. Our data support the hypothesis that DAO plays a role in schizophrenia, possibly...

Abstract: Schizophrenia is a common disease associated with reduced fertility. Therefore, the existence of common susceptibility alleles not removed by natural selection may be considered an evolutionary paradox. The antagonistic pleiotropy model, proposed to explain this paradox, states that an allele may be common because of its overall selective advantage, in spite of deleterious effects on specific traits. Recent work on DAOA, PPP1R1B, and APOL1 suggests that these genes present common alleles associated to increase risk of schizophrenia but conferring an overall selective advantage, related to better cognitive performance (DAOA and PPP1R1B) or protection against pathogens (APOL1). To test if these genes fit the antagonistic pleiotropy model, we searched for recent natural selection at...

In this study, 135 patients with schizophrenia were assessed 3 weeks after admission to inpatient treatment. Four central self-concepts were measured by the Frankfurt Self-Concept Scales (FSKN; Deusinger, I.M., 1986, Die Frankfurter Selbstkonzeptskalen (FSKN), Göttingen, Hogrefe). Clinical psychopathologic, neuropsychological and sociodemographic factors were analysed in two-step exploratory correlation and regression analyses to determine their relative contribution to self-concepts. The median of the four self-concepts ranged between −0.9 and −1.4 standard deviations below normative level. The relationship between negative symptoms and self-concepts was consistently significant, even when the contribution of depression was partialed out. In the multivariate analyses, these two symp...MedWorm Message: Register for MedMatcha, MedWorm's medical advertising network, and receive $5 free advertising.

Abstract: Changes in cortical γ-aminobutyric acid A (GABAA) receptors and muscarinic receptors have been reported in schizophrenia, a disorder treated with antipsychotic drugs and benzodiazepines. As there is a reported functional relationship between the GABAergic and cholinergic systems in the human central nervous system we have investigated whether there are changes in the GABAA and muscarinic receptors in the cortex of subjects from APD-treated subjects with schizophrenia and whether changes were different in subjects who had also received benzodiazepine treatment. We failed to show any strong correlations between changes in GABAA and muscarinic receptors in the CNS of subjects with schizophrenia. We showed that subjects with schizophrenia treated with benzodiazepines had lower level...

Abstract: Negative symptoms commonly seen in chronic schizophrenia are related to prefrontal hypodopaminergia. Dysfunction of the catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) gene has long been thought to confer susceptibility to schizophrenia because of its catalytic activity for dopamine degradation. The present study is an attempt to perform a quantitative trait test for genetic association between the COMT gene and negative symptoms in a Chinese population. A total of 290 unrelated individuals with schizophrenia patients were recruited and their symptoms were assessed through the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS). The quantitative trait test was performed by the UNPHASED programme to examine the correlation between the scored negative symptoms and the coding single nucleotide polymor...

This study was designed to assess cognitive functioning in a clinical sample of adolescents with heterogeneous psychiatric diagnoses, with a specific focus on patients at clinical high risk (CHR) for psychosis. The sample comprised 22 patients identified at CHR for psychosis, 67 psychotic and 187 non-psychotic, non-CHR patients. Neuropsychological assessment was conducted as part of the clinical examination and treatment, including Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC)-III and/or Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS)-III measures of verbal comprehension, perceptual organisation, working memory and processing speed, Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) measures of executive function, and the Rorschach Comprehensive System measures of perceptual and thinking accuracy. Patients at ...

Conclusions: The results demonstrate impairment of frontal and parietal brain areas involved in response control in schizophrenia. They also suggest that the timing of oscillations in patients is less precise leading to smaller evoked amplitudes and more variable reaction times.Significance: These findings add to the evidence that abnormal EEG oscillations contribute to impaired behavioural control in schizophrenia. (Source: Clinical Neurophysiology)

ABSTRACT (Source: International Journal of Mental Health Nursing)MedWorm Message: Register for MedMatcha, MedWorm's medical advertising network, and receive $5 free advertising.

Source: London New Drugs Group Area: Evidence > Drug Specific Reviews EU approval for aripiprazole for the treatment of schizophrenia in adolescents aged 15 years and older was granted in July 2009. This review evaluates the evidence supporting aripiprazole use in adolescents with schizophrenia. One short term placebo-controlled RCT, one unpublished open label extension trial and one combined safety analysis are discussed. (Source: NeLM - Drug Specific Reviews)

Source: Br J Psychiatry Area: News There have been mixed reports about the effectiveness of antidepressants in treating the negative symptoms of schizophrenia. This systematic review and meta-analysis was therefore conducted to assess the efficacy of add-on antidepressants in this setting.   A total of 23 trials from 22 publications (n = 819) were included in the review. The antidepressants involved were SSRIs, mirtazapine, reboxetine, mianserin, trazodone and ritanserin. Effects of treatment on negative symptoms were measured through standardised rating scales and outcome was measured as standardised mean difference between end-of-trial and baseline scores of negative symptoms.   The overall standardised mean difference was moderate (-0.48) in favour of antidepressants ...

Conclusions: Given the fact that amphetamine induces psychosis and that the AISS rat is a widely accepted animal model of psychosis, our data suggest that D2R dimerization may be important in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia and may be a promising new target for novel antipsychotic drugs. (Source: BioMed Central)

CONCLUSIONS: The prevalence of metabolic syndrome and cardiometabolic risk factors, such as overweight, hypertension, dyslipidemia, and glucose abnormalities, was substantial and frequently untreated in this U.S. national mental health clinic screening program. (Source: Psychiatr Serv)