Early onset schizophrenia

BACKGROUND: The duration of untreated psychosis (DUP) has been associated with negative outcomes in psychosis; however, few studies have focused on the duration of active psychotic symptoms after commencing treatment (DAT). In this study, we aimed to evaluate the effect of DUP and DAT on functional long-term outcomes (3 years) in patients with early psychosis. METHODS: We evaluated the Scale for the Assessment of Positive Symptoms (SAPS) at frequent intervals for 3 years after presentation to determine the DAT for 307 individuals with first-episode psychosis together with DUP and clinical variables...

BACKGROUND: Probands with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are at increased risk for several psychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders. The risk of these disorders among the siblings of probands has not been thoroughly assessed in a population-based cohort. METHODS: Every child born in Finland in 1991-2005 and diagnosed with ADHD in 1995-2011 were identified from national registers. Each case was matched with four controls on sex, place, and date of birth...

Background: Past studies using the Bonn Scale for the Assessment of Basic Symptoms (hereafter, Bonn Scale) have shown that self-reported perceptual/cognitive disturbances reveal which persons have or will soon develop schizophrenia. Here, we focused specifically on the clinical value of self-reported visual perceptual abnormalities (VPAs) since they are underexplored and have been associated with suicidal ideation, negative symptoms, and objective visual dysfunction. Method: Using the 17 Bonn Scale vision items, we cross-sectionally investigated lifetime occurrence of VPAs in 21 first-episode psychosis and 22 chronic schizophrenia/schizoaffective disorder (SZ/SA) patients...

BACKGROUND: Schizophrenia and related disorders affect a sizable proportion of any population. Antipsychotic medications are the primary treatment for these disorders. Antipsychotic medications are associated with a variety of adverse effects including tardive dyskinesia. Dyskinesia is a disfiguring movement disorder of the orofacial region that can be tardive (having a slow or belated onset). Tardive dyskinesia is difficult to treat, despite experimentation with several treatments. Calcium channel blockers (diltiazem, nifedipine, nimodipine, verapamil, flunarizine) have been among these experimental treatments...

AIM: Duration of untreated psychosis (DUP), or the time between onset of psychosis and treatment initiation, is a prognostic factor of schizophrenia. However, few studies evaluated the relative influence of individual-related factors on this duration. The objective of this study was to evaluate the influence of socio-demographic, clinical and cannabis use on DUP. METHODS: This study was part of a large prospective study in help-seeking individuals referred to our specialized early detection / intervention clinic in the Service Hospitalo-Universitaire of Sainte-Anne Hospital in Paris (ICAAR study)...

BACKGROUND: Being in a period with extensive brain maturation, adolescents with early-onset schizophrenia-spectrum disorders (EOS) provide unique neurodevelopmental data that may contribute to a better understanding of schizophrenia at all ages. Cognitive dysfunction is a central feature of schizophrenia and is more pronounced in EOS than in later onset illness. However, there is limited research on both the long-term course of global cognition in EOS, and how cognition over time is influenced by clinical characteristics during the early illness period...

BACKGROUND: We validated the Social Mistrust Scale (SMS) and utilized it to examine the structure, prevalence, and heritability of social mistrust in a large sample of Chinese children and adolescents. METHODS: In Study 1, a large sample of healthy twins (N=2094) aged 8 to 14years (M=10.27years, SD=2) completed the SMS. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was conducted to assess the structure of the SMS and to estimate the heritability of social mistrust in a sub-sample of twins (n=756 pairs)...

OBJECTIVE: Right frontal function, as indicated by the N200 component of the event-related potential during target detection, has previously been associated with excitement (excitement, impulsivity, hostility, uncooperativeness) in men with a long-term diagnosis of schizophrenia. The current study investigated excitement in relation to N200 in men who had recently experienced their first episode of psychosis. SUBJECTS AND METHODS: Twenty men who had recently suffered their first psychotic episode underwent a clinical interview and auditory oddball task...

BACKGROUND: Cognitive problems in people with schizophrenia predict poor functional recovery even with the best possible rehabilitation opportunities and optimal medication. A psychological treatment known as cognitive remediation therapy (CRT) aims to improve cognition in neuropsychiatric disorders, with the ultimate goal of improving functional recovery. Studies suggest that intervening early in the course of the disorder will have the most benefit, so this study will be based in early intervention services, which treat individuals in the first few years following the onset of the disorder...

BACKGROUND: Failure to respond to antipsychotic medication in schizophrenia is a common clinical scenario with significant morbidity. Recent studies have highlighted that many patients present treatment-resistance from disease onset. We here present an analysis of clozapine prescription patterns, used as a real-world proxy marker for treatment-resistance, in a cohort of 1195 patients with schizophrenia from a Latin-American cohort, to explore the timing of emergence of treatment resistance and possible subgroup differences...

Glucocorticoids can have psychosis as a potential side effect, but have also been suggested to yield protective effects due to anti-inflammatory properties. Nonetheless, knowledge is sparse on the association between glucocorticoid treatment and development of psychosis, which we aimed to study in this first large-scale longitudinal study. Among all individuals born in Denmark 1995-2003 (n=597,257), we compared individuals who had redeemed ≥1 prescription for glucocorticoids to an active comparator group and a non-exposed group concerning subsequent development of schizophrenia spectrum disorders until 2013...

Background: A recent review reported that the median proportion of patients recovering from schizophrenia was 13.5% and that this did not change over time. Various factors including the duration of untreated psychosis, cognitive impairment, negative symptoms, and morphological changes in the brain influence the functional outcome of schizophrenia. The authors herein reviewed morphological changes in the brain of schizophrenia patients, effects of early intervention, and a direction of developing novel therapeutics to achieve significant improvement of the functional outcome...

OBJECTIVE: Advances in developmentally sensitive measurement have enabled differentiation of normative versus clinically salient irritability in early childhood. However, clinical application of these measures is still nascent. The authors developed an optimized model of clinically salient irritable behaviors at preschool age. Based on this model, the authors derived an empirically based cutoff in relation to concurrent DSM-5 irritability-related disorders (i.e., oppositional defiant disorder, disruptive mood dysregulation disorder, other depressive disorders) and used longitudinal models to test the predictive validity of the cutoff for impairment and irritability trajectories and later DSM disorders...

The role of NMDA receptors in learning, memory and hippocampal function has long been recognized. Post-mortem studies have indicated that the expression or subunit composition of the NMDA glutamate receptor subtype might be related to the impaired cognitive functions found in schizophrenia patients. NMDA receptor antagonists have been used to develop animal models of this disorder. There is accumulating evidence showing that not only the acute but also the chronic application of NMDA receptor antagonists may induce schizophrenia-like alterations in behavior and brain functions...

There is a strong correlation between neurocognition and social cognition. However, none of these studies have examined the key role of time consumption during social cognition tasks. Participants included 84 individuals with clinical high risk of psychosis (CHR), 95 healthy controls (HC), and 66 case controls (schizophrenia patients, SZ), who were assessed through the Reading-Mind-in-Eyes Tasks (RMET) with computerized recording of the response time (RT). Neurocognitive tests were also performed for the HC and CHR groups...

INTRODUCTION: Different types of childhood trauma have been repeatedly shown to contribute to psychotic symptoms. Gender differences in schizophrenia are well known. Some studies argue that trauma history means a significantly higher risk of psychosis for women than men. However, there is evidence of early adverse life events to be associated with higher stress-sensitivity in men. Little is known about the connection of specific type of trauma and specific psychotic symptoms as well as the course of illness with explicit regard to gender differences...

Zika virus (ZIKV) infection during early pregnancy can cause microcephaly and associated defects at birth, but whether it can induce neurologic sequelae that appear later in life remains unclear. Using a model of the developing brain based on embryonic stem cell-derived brain organoids, we studied the impact of ZIKV infection on the DNA methylation pattern across the entire genome in selected neural cell types. The virus unexpectedly alters the DNA methylome of neural progenitors, astrocytes, and differentiated neurons at genes that have been implicated in the pathogenesis of a number of brain disorders, most prominently mental retardation and schizophrenia...

Sleep spindles and slow waves are the main brain oscillations occurring in non-REM sleep. Several lines of evidence suggest that spindles are initiated within the thalamus, whereas slow waves are generated and modulated in the cortex. A decrease in sleep spindle activity has been described in Schizophrenia (SCZ), including chronic, early course, and early onset patients. In contrast, slow waves have been inconsistently found to be reduced in SCZ, possibly due to confounds like duration of illness and antipsychotic medication exposure...

This study investigated adolescent cannabis use as a risk factor for schizophrenia spectrum disorder (SSD). Motives for early cannabis use and resulting usage patterns were examined alongside clinical measures of SSD onset and symptomatology. Participants (N = 178) were recruited for two samples, 1: healthy controls (HC) with cannabis use, 2: schizophrenia patients (SSD) with cannabis use. Structured interviews of participants and family informants were used to obtain diagnostic and biographical information...

22q11.2 deletion syndrome (22q11.2DS) is one of the most common copy number variants and confers a markedly increased risk for schizophrenia. As such, 22q11.2DS is a homogeneous genetic liability model which enables studies to delineate functional abnormalities that may precede disease onset. Mismatch negativity (MMN), a brain marker of change detection, is reduced in people with schizophrenia compared to healthy controls. Using dynamic causal modelling (DCM), previous studies showed that top-down effective connectivity linking the frontal and temporal cortex is reduced in schizophrenia relative to healthy controls in MMN tasks...