The prognosis for schizophrenia is much better when patients achieve drug abstinence, including in the domains of depression, quality of life, and community integration.Read More
While research suggests that cannabis use can induce an acute psychotic state, there is controversy about whether it may precipitate psychotic disorders, such as schizophrenia. Here, an update.Read More
Psychiatrists vary in their eagerness to share therapeutic decisions with patients. These authors argue in favor of a radically more collaborative style.Read More
Is the mortality from smoking-related diseases higher in patients with schizophrenia? What decade did the concept of the quality of life with antipsychotics come into being? These questions and more in this quiz.Read More
How frequently do you find yourself prescribing antibiotics for inpatients with schizophrenia and related psychotic disorders during hospitalization? More »
Schizophrenia has long been considered a neurodevelopmental disorder in which onset of diagnostic symptoms in late adolescence or adulthood is the end... More »
It is clear that the prognosis for schizophrenia is much better when patients achieve drug abstinence, including in the domains of depression, quality... More »
Pharmacological and nonpharmacological strategies to treat and manage comorbid schizophrenia and addiction concern psychiatrists who are learning... More »
There has been substantial interest lately on the early stages of schizophrenia and the effects of untreated psychosis. Clinical trials have focused... More »
Commentary on: HsiaoCYHsiehMHTsengCJ. Quality of life of individuals with schizophrenia living in the community: relationship to socio-demographic, clinical and psychosocial characteristics J Clin Nurs2012;21:2367–76.
Increasingly, financial reinforcement interventions based on behavioral economic principles are being applied in health care settings, and this study examined the use of financial reinforcers for enhancing adherence to medications.|Electronic databases and bibliographies of relevant references were searched, and a meta-analysis of identified trials was conducted. The variability in effect size and the impact of potential moderators (study design, duration of intervention, magnitude of reinforcement, and frequency of reinforcement) on effect size were examined.|Fifteen randomized studies and 6 nonrandomized studies examined the efficacy of financial reinforcement interventions for medication adherence. Financial reinforcers were applied for adherence to medications for tuberculosis, substance abuse, human immunodeficiency virus, hepatitis, schizophrenia, and stroke prevention. Reinforcement interventions significantly improved adherence relative to control conditions with an overall
Childhood-onset schizophrenia (COS) is a rare severe form of schizophrenia that may have greater salient genetic risk. Despite evidence for high heritability, conclusive genetic causes of schizophrenia remain elusive. Recent genomic technologies in concert with large case-control cohorts have led to several associations of highly penetrant rare copy number variants (CNVs) and schizophrenia. We previously reported two patients with COS who carried a microduplication disrupting the PXDN and MYT1L genes at 2p25.3. This rate of duplications within our COS population (N=92) is significantly higher than that in 2026 healthy controls (P=0.002). As a replication, we report a meta-analysis of four recently published studies that together provide strong evidence for an association between variably sized microduplications involving the MYT1L gene and schizophrenia. None have reported this separately. Altogether, among 5325 patients and 9279 controls, 10 microduplications were observed: nine in
Current drug treatments for schizophrenia are inadequate for many patients, and despite 5 decades of drug discovery, all of the treatments rely on the same mechanism: dopamine D(2) receptor blockade. Understanding the pathophysiology of the disorder is thus likely to be critical to the rational development of new treatments for schizophrenia.|To investigate the nature of the dopaminergic dysfunction in schizophrenia using meta-analysis of in vivo studies.|The MEDLINE, EMBASE, and PsycINFO databases were searched for studies from January 1, 1960, to July 1, 2011.|A total of 44 studies were identified that compared 618 patients with schizophrenia with 606 controls, using positron emission tomography or single-photon emission computed tomography to measure in vivo striatal dopaminergic function.|Demographic, clinical, and imaging variables were extracted from each study, and effect sizes were determined for the measures of dopaminergic function. Studies were grouped into those of
There is a well-established but poorly understood association between tobacco use and psychotic illness. The aim of this study was to determine whether tobacco use is associated with an earlier age at onset of psychotic illness.|Peer-reviewed publications in English reporting the age at onset of psychosis in tobacco-using and non-tobacco-using groups were located using searches of CINAHL, EMBASE, MEDLINE, PsycINFO and ISI Web of Science, and were supplemented by papers located by manual searches and unpublished data obtained by correspondence with primary researchers. A total of 29 samples reported age at onset data in a consecutive series of patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia related psychosis or first episode psychosis. Information on study design, study population and effect size was extracted independently by three authors. A random effects meta-analysis was performed.|There was no significant difference between smokers and non-smokers in age at the onset of psychosis
The investigation of cognitive biases has considerably broadened our understanding of the cognitive underpinnings of schizophrenia. This is the first study to investigate the illusory truth or validity effect in schizophrenia, which denotes the phenomenon that the renewed exposure to difficult knowledge questions shifts responses toward affirmation. We hypothesized an excess of the truth effect in schizophrenia, which may play a role in the maintenance of the disorder, particularly relating to positive symptoms.|The study was set up over the Internet. The final analyses considered 36 patients with a probable diagnosis of schizophrenia, and a sample of 40 healthy subjects. Both groups took part on two occasions. In the baseline survey, difficult knowledge questions on neutral (e.g., "On each continent there is a town called Rome." (true)) or emotional (delusion-relevant; e.g., "The German federal police uses approximately 3000 cameras for the purpose of video-based face-detection."
Asenapine is an approved treatment for schizophrenia in the United States.|Meta-analyses were conducted to evaluate the efficacy of asenapine in acute schizophrenia compared with placebo and other antipsychotics.|Four asenapine trials from the asenapine development program were pooled for the meta-analysis. To compare asenapine versus placebo treatment effect with other antipsychotics, we added integrated asenapine data to a previously published meta-analysis. For comparative efficacy of asenapine versus other second-generation antipsychotics (SGAs), data from a second published meta-analysis were combined with the 4 asenapine trials. DATA ANALYSES: To evaluate efficacy, mean change in Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) total score was examined in asenapine and other antipsychotics. To assess clinical relevance, PANSS response rates and associated odds ratios (ORs) for treatment response were assessed. To assess the relative efficacy of SGAs, a network meta-analysis with
Multiple sources of evidence suggest that genetic factors influence variation in clinical features of schizophrenia. The authors present the first genome-wide association study (GWAS) of dimensional symptom scores among individuals with schizophrenia.|Based on the Lifetime Dimensions of Psychosis Scale ratings of 2,454 case subjects of European ancestry from the Molecular Genetics of Schizophrenia (MGS) sample, three symptom factors (positive, negative/disorganized, and mood) were identified with exploratory factor analysis. Quantitative scores for each factor from a confirmatory factor analysis were analyzed for association with 696,491 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) using linear regression, with correction for age, sex, clinical site, and ancestry. Polygenic score analysis was carried out to determine whether case and comparison subjects in 16 Psychiatric GWAS Consortium (PGC) schizophrenia samples (excluding MGS samples) differed in scores computed by weighting their
22450644 2012 03 27 2012 08 08 1545-7222 24 1 Dec 1 J Neuropsychiatry Clin Neurosci E39-40 10.1176/appi.neuropsych.11020045 Khairkar Praveen P Jain Varun V Bhatnagar Amit A Saoji Narendra N eng Case Reports Letter United States J Neuropsychiatry
Primary Care Can't Thrive Without Nurse Practitioners Courtney H. Lyder, ND, May 17, 2013 With a projected shortfall of primary-care physicians, it's time for alternate solutions to patient care. Nurse practitioners are one logical remedy.