Clinical Psychopharmacology and Neuroscience : the Official Scientific Journal of the Korean College of Neuropsychopharmacology

Very-late-onset schizophrenia-like psychosis (VLOSLP) is a condition in which psychotic symptoms emerge after the age of 60 years. Given its heterogeneous nature, VLOSLP remains a diagnostic and therapeutic dilemma. Here, we report a case of a 68-year-old patient with psychosis refractory to antipsychotics who was successfully treated with mirtazapine monotherapy. This case suggests that mirtazapine monotherapy may be effective for the treatment of patients with antipsychotic- refractory VLOSLP.

This study compares the changes in Quantitative electroencephalography (QEEG), loudness dependence of auditory evoked potentials (LDAEP), and mismatch negativity (MMN) in the case of bipolar depression, mania, and euthymia in a single patient. the characteristic of QEEG in this patient with mixed depression was an increase in alpha; in mixed mania, there was little increase in alpha, and the decrease in delta, theta, and beta was noticeable. LDAEP increased more in the manic phase than in the depressive phase...

OBJECTIVE: : Intramuscular medications are widely used to treat psychomotor agitation (PMA) in uncooperative patients. We evaluated knowledge and attitude towards guidelines and the prescribing patterns in a sample of Italian psychiatrists. METHODS: : A structured 28-item questionnaire was submitted to psychiatrists of Italian Departments of Mental Health. We considered 8 clinical scenarios of PMA. For comparing two qualitative variables Chi-square tests were performed...

OBJECTIVE: : This study tried to observe clinical benefit of aripiprazole augmentation (ARPA) treatment for major depressive disorder with anxious distress (MDDA) in routine practice. METHODS: : Retrospective chart review (n = 41) was conducted for clinical benefit of ARPA in patients with MDDA in routine practice. The primary endpoint was the mean change of Hamilton Anxiety Rating scale (HAMA) total scores from baseline to the endpoint. Additional secondary endpoints were also retrieved...

OBJECTIVE: This study determined the threshold for recurrent depressive episodes that predicted conversion from major depressive disorder (MDD) to bipolar disorder (BD). METHODS: We retrospectively reviewed the medical records of 296 patients diagnosed with MDD for a minimum of 5 years in two university hospitals. We examined their the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition diagnoses and detailed clinical information at the initial admission and yearly assessments after discharge to establish the threshold for recurrent depressive episodes indicating a risk of diagnostic conversion from MDD to BD...

OBJECTIVE: : Environmental deprivation, a type of childhood maltreatment, has been reported to constrain the cognitive developmental processes such as associative learning and implicit learning, which may lead to functional and morphological changes in the ventral pallidum (VP) and pessimism, a well-known cognitive feature of major depression. We examined whether neonatal isolation (NI) could influence the incidence of learned helplessness (LH) in a rat model mimicking the pessimism, and the number of vesicular glutamate transporter 2 (VGLUT2)-expressing VP cells and Penk-expressing VP cells...

OBJECTIVE: : Impulsivity can be observed in individuals with or without mental illness. The discovery of neural correlates responsible for trait impulsivity can therefore help to understand the severity of psychiatric symptoms, personality characteristics and social adjustment. In this study, we aimed to identify the gray matter substrates of trait impulsivity in healthy individuals. METHODS: : Seventy-five healthy individuals were enrolled. At baseline, trait impulsivity was assessed using the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale (BIS) and all participants underwent T1-weighted magnetic resonance imaging scan...

OBJECTIVE: : This study aims to examine the clinical characteristics, cognitive functions, and levels of insight, which are thought to be related to disability in schizophrenia patients, and to determine which variable will guide the clinician to predict the disability. METHODS: : Participants were 102 individuals with schizophrenia aged 18-60. All participants completed the social functioning scale and the Beck cognitive insight scale. To determine the severity of disability, World Health Organization Disability Assessment Schedule 2...

OBJECTIVE: The present study aims to compare the levels of 7 microRNAs (mi-RNAs) (mi-RNA-125b, mi-RNA-23a-3p, mi-RNA-146a-5p, mi-RNA-106a, mi-RNA-151a-3p, mi-RNA-28, mi-RNA-125a) in the blood of the preschool children with autism and those of their siblings with healthy controls, and to investigate the association between these mi-RNAs and the severity of autism, behavioral problems, and siblings' autistic traits. METHODS: A total of 35 children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) at the ages of 18-60 months (patient group), 35 non-affected siblings of the ASD group (sibling group), and 30 control subjects (control group) were involved in the study...

OBJECTIVE: The current study aimed to identify distinctive functional brain connectivity characteristics that differentiate patients with restless legs syndrome (RLS) from those with primary insomnia. METHODS: Quantitative electroencephalography (QEEG) was employed to analyze connectivity matrices using the phaselocking value technique. A total of 107 patients with RLS (RLS group) and 17 patients with insomnia without RLS (primary insomnia group) were included in the study...

OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to evaluate the unexplored relationship between BDNF methylation, long-term outcomes, and its interaction with suicidal ideation (SI), which is closely associated with both BDNF expression and stroke outcomes. METHODS: A total of 278 stroke patients were assessed for BDNF methylation status and SI using suicide-related item in the Montgomery-Åsberg Depression Rating Scale at 2 weeks post-stroke. We investigated the incidence of composite cerebro-cardiovascular events (CCVEs) during an 8-14-year period after the initial stroke as long-term stroke outcome...

OBJECTIVE: : Tic disorders can affect the quality of life in both childhood and adolescence. Many factors are involved in the etiology of tic disorders, and the genetic and epigenetic factors of tic disorders are considered complex and heterogeneous. METHODS: : In this study, the differentially methylated regions (DMRs) between normal controls (n = 24; aged 6-15; 7 females) and patients with tic disorders (n = 16; aged 6-15; 5 females) were analyzed. We performed an epigenome-wide association study of tic disorders in Korean children...

OBJECTIVE: Many psychiatric disorders are linked to low grade systemic inflammation as measured by systemic cytokine levels. Exploration of cytokines and immune activity and their role in psychiatric symptoms may inform pathobiology and treatment opportunities. The aim of this study is to explore if there are associations between cytokines and psychiatric symptom clusters. Comparison between patients regularly using and those not using psychotropic medication is also conducted. METHODS: This was a cross sectional naturalistic study with 132 participants from a general open inpatient psychiatric ward at the Nordland Hospital Trust, Norway...

OBJECTIVE: Sleep affects the development and severity of psychiatric symptoms in children, and maternal personality traits may influence children's sleep. We aimed to confirm the longitudinal effect of maternal personality traits on children's sleep disturbance using cohort data from the Panel Study on Korean Children. METHODS: Maternal personality traits were assessed using the Personality Assessment Inventory in 2009, and the sleep disturbance of children was assessed using parent survey data from 2010 to 2014 (2nd-6th waves)...

OBJECTIVE: Although maintenance treatment for mood disorders is important, the treatment discontinuation rate is reported to be high. This study aimed to investigate the dropout rates and associated factors in mood disorders. METHODS: The patients in a mood disorder clinic (n = 535) were examined. Demographic and clinical factors, scores of psychometric scales, time to dropout from initial treatment in patients with bipolar disorder (BP) (n = 288) and depressive disorder (DD) (n = 143) were evaluated based on database of the mood disorder clinic...

OBJECTIVE: While the association between depression and frailty in the elderly population has been investigated, the psychological factors that mediate such a relationship remain unknown. The identification of psychological factors in interventions for depression treatment in the elderly may assist in the treatment and care. We aimed to explore the mediating effects of anger, anxiety, and resilience on the link between frailty and depression symptoms in patients with late-life depression...

Clozapine is the only approved drug for treatment-resistant schizophrenia, but the response to the drug is often inadequate. Augmentation with other antipsychotics, anticonvulsants, and antidepressants is recommended for such patients, but there is a lack of evidence regarding the most effective therapy. This network meta-analysis was conducted to evaluate the efficacy of pharmacological agents used in the augmentation strategies in patients who were partial/ non-responders to clozapine. Relevant data were extracted from 30 randomized controlled trials through searches of electronic databases (MEDLINE/PubMed, Embase, Cochrane, clinical trial registries)...

Previous studies suggested effectiveness of psilocybin in the field of mental health. FDA designated psilocybin as a "breakthrough therapy" for the treatment of treatment-resistant depression (TRD) in 2018. This paper provided a review of psilocybin's potential role in treatment of depression by focusing on published clinical trials. Studies showed that psilocybin, an agonist on 5-HT2A receptors, manifests antidepressant and anxiolytic effects by increasing glutamate transmission, reducing brain inflammation, decreasing default mode network activity...

Sleep disturbance and abnormal circadian rhythm might be closely related to bipolar disorder. Several studies involving disturbed sleep/wake cycle, changes in rhythms such as melatonin and cortisol, clock genes, and circadian preference have shown the relationship between bipolar disorder and circadian rhythm. The results differed across different studies. In some studies, a delay in the circadian rhythm was observed in the depressive episode and advanced circadian rhythm was observed during the manic episode...

For the first time after many decades, many new antidepressants have been approved and many more are under various stages of development and will soon be available in the market. The new drugs present a range of new mechanisms of action with benefits in terms of speed of action, tolerability and range of treatable disorders. Neurosteroids have been recently approved and their rapid benefit may extend from postpartum depression to anxious depression and bipolar depression, dextromethorphan and bupropion combination may prove useful in major depression but also in treatment resistant depression, dextromethadone is a possible augmentation in partial antidepressant response, psychedelic drugs have the potential of long lasting benefits after a single administration, though are still experimental treatments...