The bromo-domain containing protein 1 gene is implicated in the susceptibility to schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, confirm findings of an association study. (Source: MedWire News - Psychiatry)MedWorm Message: Get the very latest Swine Flu news via the MedWorm Swine Flu RSS news feed - updated hourly from thousands of authoritative health and news sources.

Researchers at MIT are eagerly anticipating the summer delivery of Elekta Neuromag®, a system that uses magnetoencephalography or MEG to explore brain function. MEG can detect the very weak magnetic fields arising from electrical activity in the brain, and allows researchers to monitor the timing of brain activity with millisecond precision. MIT researchers will use MEG to study normal cognition in children and adults, as well as the neural basis of autism, depression, schizophrenia and other brain disorders... (Source: Health News from Medical News Today)

Authors: Nadine Petrovsky, Boris B Quednow, Ulrich Ettinger, Anne Schmechtig, Rainald Mössner, David A Collier, Kai-Uwe Kühn, Wolfgang Maier, Michael Wagner & Veena Kumari Keywords: Acetylcholine; Neurogenetics; Neuropharmacology; Schizophrenia/Antipsychotics; Prepulse inhibition; nicotine; sensorimotor gating; CHRNA3; nicotinic acetylcholine receptor (Source: Neuropsychopharmacology)

White blood cell count may be useful for predicting the metabolic syndrome and more severe psychiatric symptoms in non-diabetic patients with schizophrenia, say US researchers. (Source: MedWire News - Psychiatry)

Scientists at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) are genetically modifying mice in order to make them mentally ill. Dr. Jacqueline Crawley and her colleagues are searching for an animal model for schizophrenia. If they can create "schizophrenic mice" then they can test promising new medications without risking the health of human subjects. (Source: About.com Mental Health)

The objective burden on caregivers of patients with bipolar disorder is significantly higher than for those with unipolar [straightforward] depression.” Due to the cyclical nature of the illness and the stresses arising from manic and hypomanic episodes, it “causes uncertainty regarding how best to structure family interventions to optimally alleviate burden.” Studies on U.S. caregiver burden in bipolar disorder suggest that the burden is “high and largely neglected.” As well as depression, caregivers can experience poor physical health, low social support, disruption of household routine, financial strain, and can neglect their own health needs. According to Eduard Vieta, MD, and colleagues at the University of Barcelona, Spain, the most burdensome aspects f...MedWorm Message: Get the very latest Swine Flu news via the MedWorm Swine Flu RSS news feed - updated hourly from thousands of authoritative health and news sources.

Dr. Peter Yellowlees talks about the comparative efficacy and tolerability of ziprasidone compared with 5 other atypical antipsychotic agents. Medscape Psychiatry & Mental Health (Source: Medscape Psychiatry Headlines)

Infant trauma is common in patients with paranoid schizophrenia and appears to be linked to specific psychopathology, particularly hostility, unnatural movements and posture, depression, and preoccupation, study findings show. (Source: MedWire News - Schizophrenia)

Purpose: Quantitative analysis of anxiety level in patient groups with generalized and focal, temporal or extratemporal epilepsy. Material and method: Ninety patients (30 with generalized epilepsy, 30 with temporal and 30 with extratemporal epilepsy), and age-matched healthy control subjects were investigated. Anxiety level in all subjects was assessed with Beck Anxiety Inventory. Sheehan Disability Scale was used to determine the functional disability level. Patients with comorbid major depression, schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, progressive neurological disease, alcoholism, and epilepsy associated with mental retardation were excluded. (Source: Clinical Neurophysiology)

Conclusions: Greater intra and inter hemispheric fluctuations of ASSR gamma band phase synchronization in Sz add to previous studies suggesting timing deficiencies within neural populations, possibly caused by impairments of neural network parameters.Significance: This study provides experimental support that may aid in understanding the dynamics of neural phase synchrony caused by modifications of underlying neurotransmitter systems, as reflected in disease states such as schizophrenia. (Source: Clinical Neurophysiology)

Munich, Germany - Contrary to expectations, the opioid receptor antagonist naltrexone is no better than placebo and can be counterproductive in treating substance use disorder in patients with schizophrenia, according to data released at the 18th European Congress of Psychiatry... (Source: Health News from Medical News Today)MedWorm Message: Get the very latest Swine Flu news via the MedWorm Swine Flu RSS news feed - updated hourly from thousands of authoritative health and news sources.

Munich, Germany - Contrary to expectations, the opioid receptor antagonist naltrexone is no better than placebo and can be counterproductive in treating substance use disorder in patients with schizophrenia, according to data released at the 18th European Congress of Psychiatry... (Source: Mental Health News From Medical News Today)

(Source: BMJ Online First)

Future Neurology , March 2010, Vol. 5, No. 2, Pages 195-198. (Source: Future Neurology)

CONCLUSION: The HADS Unitary Scale and its subscales were effective in identifying affective disorders. They can be used as screening measures in breast cancer patients. The GHQ-12 was less accurate in detecting affective disorders than the HADS, but it can also be used as a screening instrument to detect affective disorders, generalized anxiety disorder, and DSM major depression. PMID: 20204904 [PubMed - in process] (Source: Turkish Journal of Psychiatry)

Conclusion: Doctors may wish to consider fluvoxamine as an alternative approach in treating akathisia associated with antipsychotic drugs such as aripiprazole. (Source: Annals of General Psychiatry)MedWorm Message: Get the very latest Swine Flu news via the MedWorm Swine Flu RSS news feed - updated hourly from thousands of authoritative health and news sources.

Studies commonly report poor performance in psychotic patients compared with controls on tasks testing a range of cognitive functions, but, because current IQ is often not matched between these groups, it is difficult to determine whether this represents a generalized deficit or specific abnormalities. Fifty-three first-episode psychosis patients and 53 healthy controls, one-to-one matched for sex, age, and full-scale current IQ, were compared on Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) subtests representing indices of perceptual organization, verbal comprehension, processing speed, and working memory as well as other tests of executive function and episodic memory. The groups showed an equivalent pattern of performance on all WAIS subtests except digit symbol processing speed, on which th...

Atypical antipsychotic treatment has been associated with serious metabolic adverse events, such as glucose dysregulation and development of type 2 diabetes. As part of our studies on possible underlying mechanisms, we investigated the acute effects of various typical and atypical antipsychotics on plasma glucose and insulin in FVB/N mice, a strain that showed a more pronounced hyperglycemic response to clozapine than C57BL/6 and CD-1 mice. Acute administration of high doses of clozapine, olanzapine, quetiapine, perphenazine, or chlorpromazine significantly increased plasma glucose by 100%–140% above basal levels without significant effects on insulin levels. In contrast, risperidone reduced plasma glucose (–30%) and markedly enhanced plasma insulin levels. Doses of ziprasidone...

Individuals with schizophrenia have consistently been found to exhibit cognitive deficits, which have been identified as critical mediators of psychosocial functional outcomes. Recent reviews of cognitive remediation (CRT) have concluded that these deficits respond to training. This multi-site community study examined 40 individuals with schizophrenia who underwent cognitive remediation using the Neuropsychological Educational Approach to Remediation1 (NEAR). Assessments using the same neuropsychological tests and measures of psychosocial outcome were made at four time points: baseline, before start of active intervention, end of active intervention and 4 months after end of active intervention. Dose of antipsychotic medication remained constant throughout the study period. After participa...

Individuals with schizophrenia are at increased risk for poor health outcomes and mortality. This may be due to inadequate self-management of co-occurring conditions, such as type 2 diabetes. We compared adherence to oral hypoglycemic medications for diabetes patients with vs without comorbid schizophrenia. Using Veterans Affairs (VA) health system administrative data, we identified all patients with both schizophrenia and type 2 diabetes and with at least one oral hypoglycemic prescription fill in fiscal year 2002 (N = 11 454) and a comparison group of patients with diabetes who were not diagnosed with schizophrenia (N = 10 560). Nonadherence was operationalized as having a medication possession ratio indicating receipt of less than 80% of needed hypoglycemic medications. Poor adherence w...