The aim of the study was to analyse the prevalence of polypharmacy with antipsychotic drugs and analyse types of coprescribing episodes at the University Psychiatric Hospital in Serbia. A sample of 120 patients (198 hospitalisations) was analysed. The prevalence of polypharmacy was calculated as the proportion of patients receiving two ...

Different structural alterations of the central nervous system (CNS), such as an increase in ventricular size, decrease in hippocampus and amygdala volume, and other abnormalities that are probably secondary to a loss of neuronal mass and neuropili (axons and dendrite ramifications) linked to a precocious alteration in neurodevelopment are described ...

OBJECTIVES: Patients with bipolar disorder have changes in brain structures but it is unclear if these are present at disease onset and thus predispose subjects to develop the disorder, or whether they develop during the course of the disorder, either due to the effects of multiple episodes or as a ...

The objectives of this study were 1) to examine whether the prevalence of 22q11.2 deletion syndrome (22q11DS) in schizophrenia patients with the Deficit syndrome is higher than the reported approximately 2% for the population of schizophrenia patients as a whole, and 2) to estimate the overall prevalence of 22q11DS among ...

OBJECTIVE: This study explored the concurrent courses of the neuroanatomical and neuropsychological changes that occurred over the first 2-3 years of illness in patients with first-episode schizophrenia (FES). METHODS: Fifty-two patients with FES underwent neuropsychological testing and a structural magnetic resonance imaging (sMRI) scan within three months of their first ...

The aim of this study was to examine the clinical characteristics of patients with gender identity disorder (GID) at a GID clinic in Japan. A total of 603 consecutive patients were evaluated at the GID clinic using clinical information and results of physical and neurological examinations. Using DSM-IV criteria, 579 ...

Reelin, a secretory protease that plays major roles in neurodevelopment and synaptic plasticity, may also play a role in the pathogenesis of schizophrenia. The present study was undertaken to examine whether the expression of two receptors for reelin, very low-density lipoprotein receptor (VLDLR) and apolipoprotein E receptor type 2 (ApoER2), ...

BACKGROUND: Results of studies on antisaccade (AS) deficit in relatives of patients with schizophrenia are inconclusive. We hypothesized that AS performance in siblings of patients with schizophrenia is worse than in healthy controls and better than in patients with schizophrenia. METHOD: We included 55 first-episode patients with schizophrenia, 28 healthy ...

Although some insights into the etiology of schizophrenia have been gained, an understanding of the illness at the molecular level remains elusive. Recent advances in proteomic profiling offer great promise for the discovery of markers underlying pathophysiology of diseases. In the present study, we employed two high-throughput proteomic techniques together ...

BACKGROUND: Evaluating cerebral asymmetry in schizophrenia patients potentially leads to understanding the extent to which the disorder involves a neurodevelopmental failure. We sought to clarify in which brain regions of the patient the normal cerebral asymmetry is disrupted and the extent of disruption. METHODS: Voxel-based morphometry to evaluate gray matter ...

Prior studies demonstrate structural abnormalities of cerebellar vermis in adult bipolar patients. Cerebella of 16 young bipolar patients (mean age+/-S.D.=15.5+/-3.4) and 21 healthy controls (mean age+/-S.D.=16.9+/-3.8) were examined using magnetic resonance imaging. The volumes of right, left and total cerebellum, vermis, and areas of vermal regions V1 (lobules I-V), V2 ...

Disturbed autonomic nervous system (ANS) function in schizophrenia might contribute to increased cardiovascular mortality. We obtained heart rate variability indices from 40 unmedicated schizophrenic patients and 58 matched controls. Mainly we found that patients displaying stronger psychotic symptoms as assessed by the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale exhibit more severe cardiac ...

OBJECTIVE: To report the usefulness of antipsychotic dose-reduction for avoiding paralytic ileus in a patient with chronic schizophrenia and comorbid dementia. CASE SUMMARY: A 65-year-old in-patient developed severe paralytic ileus warranting a transfer to the general hospital. Constipation was very troublesome and he often needed enema to prevent intestinal obstruction. ...

The present study examined financial competence in patients with schizophrenia and the relationship between their financial competence and cognitive function. The subjects consisted of 25 patients with schizophrenia (10 inpatients and 15 outpatients) and 22 normal controls who were community-dwelling people with no psychiatric disorders or cognitive deficit. To assess ...

Malingering is easy to define, difficult to detect, and very costly for any health care system. The structured interview of reported symptoms (SIRS) was constructed using rational strategies to detect malingering in patients endorsing psychotic symptoms. This study validated the SIRS using evoked potentials. Nineteen patients meeting DSM-IV criteria for ...

OBJECTIVE: NoGo-stimuli during a Continuous Performance Test (CPT) activate prefrontal brain structures such as the anterior cingulate gyrus and lead to an anteriorisation of the positive electrical field of the NoGo-P300 relative to the Go-P300, so-called NoGo-anteriorisation (NGA). NGA during CPT is regarded as a neurophysiological standard index for cognitive ...

Metabolic syndrome is a strong determinant of new-onset diabetes and coronary heart disease in general populations. Given the higher prevalence of metabolic syndrome among mentally ill patients, the syndrome poses a greater health risk to this population. Atypical antipsychotic treatment may exacerbate this condition. We compared both the rate and ...

Structural and functional abnormalities of the insular cortex have been reported in patients with schizophrenia. Most studies have shown that the insular volumes in schizophrenia patients are smaller than those of healthy people. As the insular cortex is functio-anatomically divided into anterior and posterior subdivisons, recent research is focused on ...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: The callosal disconnectivity theory was previously proposed to explain the pathophysiology of schizophrenia. The goal of this study was to investigate the metabolic integrity of the corpus callosum in patients with schizophrenia by proton MR spectroscopy. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Twelve first-episode and 16 chronic patients meeting the ...

A model of disconnectivity involving abnormalities in the cortex and connecting white matter pathways may explain the symptoms and cognitive abnormalities of schizophrenia. Recently, diffusion imaging tractography has made it possible to study white matter pathways in detail, and we present here a study of patients with first-episode psychosis using ...

BACKGROUND: Cognitive dysfunctions are being recognized as a major roadblock to functional recovery in patients with bipolar disorders. Little is known about the treatment of these cognitive dysfunctions. Donepezil, approved to treat memory dysfunction in Alzheimer's disease, is evaluated for cognitive dysfunctions common in bipolar disorder. Of concern is some ...

Insight, psychopathology and functioning are related in schizophrenia, but it is unclear whether insight relates independently to functioning after controlling for psychopathology. Equally, any such relationship may vary culturally. We investigated the relationship between insight, psychopathology and functioning in 60 patients with schizophrenia in Mzuzu, a town in Malawi. After ...

BACKGROUND: Atypical antipsychotics are commonly used to treat behavioral disturbances in elderly demented patients. However, recent data have brought the tolerability of these drugs into question, as the majority of them have been associated with an increased risk for cerebrovascular events and death in this population. Specifically, increased risk has ...

The purpose of this study was to investigate the earliest stages of visual information processing using electroretinography (ERG) in patients with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder and to compare these values with those of healthy control volunteers. In the acute stage of the illness, patients with schizophrenia exhibited decreased a-wave amplitude ...

Negative symptoms of schizophrenia have generally been found in association with ventricular enlargement and prefrontal abnormalities. These relationships, however, have not been observed consistently, most probably because negative symptoms are heterogeneous and result from different pathophysiological mechanisms. The concept of deficit schizophrenia (DS) was introduced by Carpenter et al to ...

During periods of psychological stress, excess amounts of free radicals are produced, and they play an important role in the pathophysiological process. Bilirubin oxidative metabolites, biopyrrins, are generated from bilirubin as a result of this scavenging action against free radicals. We investigated whether the urinary excretion of biopyrrin is altered ...

BACKGROUND: The aim of this study was to examine whether patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) have deficits in cognitive inhibition as measured with an anti-saccade eye task similar to patients with schizophrenia (Sz). Furthermore, we investigated whether these inhibition errors were more prominent among BPD patients with psychotic-like symptoms ...

Declarative memory impairments are common in patients with bipolar illness, suggesting underlying hippocampal pathology. However, hippocampal volume deficits are rarely observed in bipolar disorder. Here we used surface-based anatomic mapping to examine hippocampal anatomy in bipolar patients treated with lithium relative to matched control subjects and unmedicated patients with bipolar ...

The purpose of this study was to explore whether there are differences in cerebral asymmetry between subgroups of schizophrenic patients with or without auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs) and normal controls by using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (efMRI). A total of 26 Chinese Han male patients with paranoid schizophrenia (diagnosed ...

BACKGROUND: Epidemiological studies of schizophrenia suggest that this disorder has a substantial genetic component. Cognitive and social abilities, as well as the volumes of brain regions involved in emotion processing, have been found to be distributed along a continuum when comparing patients, siblings and controls, with siblings showing intermediate scores. ...

The aim of the study was to examine the association of arachidonic acid-related signal transduction with cerebral metabolism in patients with schizophrenia who have violently and dangerously offended while psychotic. Cerebral 31-phosphorus magnetic resonance spectroscopy was carried out in 11 male patients with schizophrenia who had violently offended (homicide, attempted ...

In spite of significant advances in treatment of patients with schizophrenia and continued efforts towards their deinstitutionalization, a considerable group of patients remain chronically hospitalized or otherwise dependent on others for basic necessities of life. It has been proposed that these patients belong to a distinct etiopathological subgroup, termed Kraepelinian, ...

PURPOSE: To prospectively investigate the incidence of interictal psychoses of epilepsy patients, and make a comparison between those with interictal psychoses and patients with schizophrenia in respect to their responses to antipsychotic drugs, as well as psychotic states. METHODS: We undertook a two-part prospective investigation. In Part I, the psychotic ...

Impairments in the buildup and use of context may lead to disorders of thought and language in schizophrenia. To test this hypothesis, event-related potentials (ERPs) were measured while patients and healthy controls read sentences that were highly causally related, intermediately related, or unrelated to preceding contexts. Although patients were slower ...

BACKGROUND: Nicotine dependence is common in schizophrenia patients but rare in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder. Little is known, however, about smoking in schizophrenia patients with obsessive-compulsive symptoms (OCS) especially in a developing country, such as Egypt, that has the highest rate of tobacco consumption in the Middle East and North ...

OBJECTIVE: To investigate gender differences in the onset and other clinical features of Han Chinese inpatients with schizophrenia. METHODS: Five-hundred-and-forty-two Han Chinese inpatients with DSM-IV schizophrenia were assessed with the Positive and Negative Symptoms Scale (PANSS), the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS), the Global Assessment of Function scale (GAF) and ...

Previous data show that the effects of clozapine on regional brain activity are different from those of other antipsychotic agents. It seemed of interest to study the brain activity patterns after treatment with clozapine, since this drug might correct basal deficits directly related to schizophrenia or instead induce changes that ...

BACKGROUND: Stigma associated with mental illness affects patients and their families. Diverse beliefs about the cause and treatment of schizophrenia are common among patients and their relatives. AIM: To study the association between stigma and beliefs about illness in patients and their relatives. METHOD: Standard instruments were used to assess ...

INTRODUCTION: Violence in first episode psychosis poses significant challenges for mental health staff and patients' families. Violence has been shown to be related to psychopathology. Duration of untreated psychosis (DUP) has been shown to influence psychopathology at presentation in first-episode psychosis, but little is known about the direct relationship between ...

The objective of this study was to investigate the clinical and neuropsychological correlates of white matter abnormalities in patients with schizophrenia studied early in the course of illness. A total of 33 (21 male/12 female) patients with recent onset schizophrenia and 30 (18 male/12 female) healthy volunteers completed structural and ...

A substantial proportion of adolescent schizophrenia patients also has obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). As the reliability of OCD identification in schizophrenia has been challenged, we evaluated insight into OCD symptoms and awareness of schizophrenia, using the Brown Assessment of Beliefs Scale and the Scale to Assess Unawareness of Mental Disorder respectively, ...

BACKGROUND: Previous studies have reported that hippocampal volumes correlate with symptom severity in schizophrenia. This longitudinal study measured changes in symptoms and hippocampal volume in patients switched from typical antipsychotics to olanzapine. METHODS: MRI scans were acquired from patients with chronic schizophrenia (n=10) and healthy volunteers (n=20). At baseline, patients ...

BACKGROUND: This study aimed to evaluate the blood homocysteine concentration in Arab patients with schizophrenia and assess its associations with clinical phenotypes of the disease. SUBJECTS AND METHODS: Two age-matched groups of subjects were studied: (1) Healthy Controls, HC, n=165; (2) patients with schizophrenia, SZ: n=207. Each subject was evaluated ...

Administration of doxapram hydrochloride, a respiratory stimulant, is experienced by panic disorder patients to be similar to panic attacks but has reduced emotional effect in normal volunteers, thus providing a laboratory model of panic for functional imaging. Six panic patients and seven normal control subjects underwent positron emission tomography with ...

INTRODUCTION: Approximately one third of schizophrenia patients show partial or no response to pharmacotherapy. Despite intensive investigations, the phenomenological and biological characteristics of such patients are far from elucidated. This study examined the premorbid behavioral and intellectual functioning of schizophrenia patients who showed poor response to antipsychotic treatment. METHOD: One ...

BACKGROUND: More than 20% of bipolar patients may present with seasonal pattern (SP). Seasonality can alter the course of bipolar disorder. However, to date, long-term follow-up studies of bipolar patients presenting with SP are scarce. We present a 10-year follow-up study comparing clinical and demographic features of bipolar patients with ...

Magnetic resonance imaging was used to evaluate the prevalence of the cavum septi pellucidi (CSP) in 154 schizophrenia patients, 47 schizotypal disorder patients, and 163 healthy controls. We also explored the relation of a large CSP (> or =6 mm) with medial temporal lobe structures. No significant difference was found ...

BACKGROUND: Prepulse inhibition (PPI) of the startle response refers to a reduction in the response to a strong stimulus (pulse) if preceded shortly by a weak stimulus (prepulse). Disrupted PPI is thought to reflect abnormalities in the inhibitory control of information processing. Reduced PPI has been reported in mania, although ...

BACKGROUND: NAA, marker of neurons integrity and viability, is one of the most important brain metabolites visible in 1H MRS. In most studies of schizophrenia, the decrease of NAA level was observed in the temporal, frontal lobes and in the thalamus. This finding was observed more often among chronic patients, ...

The authors compared the severity and clinical profiles of patients with two etiologically different apathy syndromes: apathy after traumatic brain injury (TBI) and deficit schizophrenia (DSS). Patients from both groups were equally apathetic, but those with DSS had more severe anhedonia, blunted affect, and alogia, as measured by the Scale ...