Grey matter density changes of structures involved in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) after recovery following Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy

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La notion d'endophénotype en psychiatrie

AIX-MARSEILLE2-BU Méd/Odontol. (130552103) / SudocPARIS-BIUM (751062103) / SudocSudocFranceF

Caregiver’s quality of life and its positive impact on symptomatology and quality of life of patients with schizophrenia

Background: Although the quality of life (QoL) experienced by patients with schizophrenia has been recognized, few studies have assessed the relationship between the caregivers’ QoL and patients’ QoL. Methods: The study included 253 stabilized outpatients with schizophrenia and their caregivers from 3 Mental Health Services in Bolivia (N = 83), Chile (N = 85) and Peru (N = 85). Caregivers’ and patients’ QoL were respectively assessed using two specific QoL questionnaires (S-CGQoL and S-QoL 18). We collected socio-demographic information and clinical data. Multiple linear regressions were performed to determine which variables were associated with patient’s QoL. We tested the following hypothesis using structural equation modeling (SEM): caregivers’ QoL may have an indirect effect on patients’ QoL mediated by their influence of the severity of psychotic symptoms. Results: In the multivariate analysis, the caregivers’ QoL was not significantly associated with the patients’ QoL, except for one QoL dimension about relationship with family (Beta = 0.23). Among patients’ characteristics, being a woman and Aymara, having lower educational level, unemployment and severity of symptoms was significantly associated to a lower QoL. The SEM revealed a moderate significant association between caregivers’ QoL and psychotic symptoms severity (path coefficient = −0.32) and a significant association between psychotic symptoms severity and patients QoL (path coefficient = −0.40). The indirect effect of caregivers’ QoL on patients’ QoL was significant (mediated effect coefficient = 0.13). Conclusion: Improvement of caregiver’s QoL may have a direct impact on the psychotic symptoms of patients and indirectly on patient’s QoL, confirming the need for ongoing family interventions in these regions

Disparities in suicide mortality trends between United States of America ă and 25 European countries: retrospective analysis of WHO mortality ă database

International audienceThe objective was to examine changes in temporal trends in suicide ă mortality in 26 Western countries by retrospective trend analysis of the ă WHO mortality database on causes of deaths. From 1990 to 2010, there was ă a median reduction in suicide mortality of 22.7%, ranging from a 46% ă reduction in Estonia to a 26.2% increase in Romania. Suicide mortality ă decreased by >= 20% in 15 countries, and the reduction tended to be ă greater in countries with higher mortality in 1990. In most of the ă central European countries mortality strongly declined. The median ă changes in the age groups were -25.3% (range -62.9% to 72.6%) in ă people aged 15-24 years, -36.9% (-60.5% to 32.4%) in 25-34 years, ă -3.6% (-57.1% to 92%) in 35-54 years, -12.2% (-37% to 65,7%) in ă 55-74 years and -16.1% (-54.5% to 166.7%) in >= 75 years. Suicide ă prevention programs in youths and in the elderly seem to be effective ă (at least in females for the elderly) and efforts should be pursued in ă this way. However, suicide mortality of the people aged 35-54 years has ă increased in half of the studied countries between 1990 and 2010. Public ă policies should further orientate their efforts toward this population

How to:Measuring blood cytokines in biological psychiatry using commercially available multiplex immunoassays

International audienceCytokines produced by both immune and non-immune cells are likely to play roles in the development and/or progression of psychiatric disorders. Indeed, many investigators have compared the blood cytokine levels in psychiatric patients with those of healthy controls or monitored their levels in patients during disease progression to identify biomarkers. Nevertheless, very few studies have confirmed that such cytokines remain stable in healthy individuals through periods of weeks and months. This is an important issue to consider before using blood cytokine levels as biomarkers of disease traits, disease state, or treatment response. Although multiplex assay technology represents an advance in identifying biomarkers because it allows simultaneous examination of large panels of analytes from a small volume of sample, it is necessary to verify whether these assays yield enough sensitivity and reproducibility when applied to the blood from neuropsychiatric patients. Therefore, we compared two multiplex immunoassays, the bead-based Luminex® (Bio-Rad) and the electro-chemiluminescence-based V-plex® (MesoScaleDiscovery), for the detection and quantification of 31 cytokines, chemokines and growth factors in both the sera and plasma of patients with major depressive episodes (MDE) and age-and sex-matched healthy control subjects during a 30-week period. Although both platforms exhibited low coefficients of variability (CV) between the duplicates in the calibration curves, the linearity was better in general for the V-PLEX® platform. However, neither platform was able to detect the absolute values for all of the tested analytes. Among the 16 analytes that were detected by both assays, the intra-assay reproducibility was in general better with the V-PLEX® platform. Although it is not a general rule that the results from sera and plasma will be correlated, consistent results were more frequent with the V-PLEX® platform. Furthermore, the V-PLEX® results were more consistent with the gold standard ELISA simplex assay for IL-6 in both sera and plasma. The intra-individual variability of the measurements, among the sera and plasma for the 4 samples harvested from each healthy individual, was low for Eotaxin, G-CSF, IL-4, IL-7, IL-9, IL-12p40, IL-12p70, IL-15, MIP-1β, PDGF-BB, TNF, TNF-β and VEGF, but intermediate or high for IFN-γ, IL-6, IL-8, IL-10, and IP10. Together, these data suggest that extreme caution is needed in translating the results of multiplex cytokine profiling into biomarker discovery in psychiatry

Modeling a linkage between blood transcriptional expression and activity in brain regions to infer the phenotype of schizophrenia patients

Imaging: Searching for links to aid diagnosis Researchers explore links between the expression of genes associated with schizophrenia in blood cells and variations in brain activity during emotion processing. El Chérif Ibrahim and Eric Fakra at Aix-Marseille Université, France, and colleagues have developed a method to relate the expression levels of 33 schizophrenia susceptibility genes in blood cells and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data obtained as individuals carry out a task that triggers emotional responses. Although they found no significant differences in the expression of genes between the 26 patients with schizophrenia and 26 healthy controls they examined, variations in activity in the superior temporal gyrus were strongly linked to schizophrenia-associated gene expression and presence of disease. Similar analyses of larger data sets will shed further light on the relationship between peripheral molecular changes and disease-related behaviors and ultimately, aid the diagnosis of neuropsychiatric disease

Fear extinction learning improvement in PTSD after EMDR therapy: an fMRI study

International audienceObjective: Neurobiological models of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) implicate fear processing impairments in the maintenance of the disorder. Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is one of the most efficient psychotherapies to treat PTSD. We aimed at exploring the brain mechanisms of the fear circuitry involved in PTSD patients’ symptom remission after EMDR therapy.Method: Thirty-six PTSD participants were randomly assigned to either EMDR group receiving EMDR therapy or Wait-List (WL) group receiving supportive therapy. Participants underwent a behavioural fear conditioning and extinction paradigm during functional magnetic resonance (fMRI). In the EMDR group, patients were scanned at baseline, before EMDR and one week after remission. In the WL group, patients were scanned at baseline and within the same time interval as the EMDR group.Results: In the EMDR group after treatment, fear responses in the late extinction were significantly lower than before therapy. In parallel, significant functional activity and connectivity changes were found in the EMDR group versus the WL during the late extinction. These changes involve the fear circuit (amygdalae, left hippocampus), the right inferior frontal gyrus, the right frontal eye field and insula (pFWE < .05).Conclusion: These functional modifications underlie a significant improvement of fear extinction learning in PTSD patients after EMDR therapy

Childhood trauma and emotional processing circuits in schizophrenia: A functional connectivity study

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Development and Calibration of the PREMIUM Item Bank for Measuring Respect and Dignity for Patients with Severe Mental Illness

International audienceMost patient-reported experience measures (PREMs) are paper-based, leading to a high burden for patients and care providers. The aim of this study was to (1) calibrate an item bank to measure patients’ experience of respect and dignity for adult patients with serious mental illnesses and (2) develop computerized adaptive testing (CAT) to improve the use of this PREM in routine practice. Patients with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depressive disorder were enrolled in this multicenter and cross-sectional study. Psychometric analyses were based on classical test and item response theories and included evaluations of unidimensionality, local independence, and monotonicity; calibration and evaluation of model fit; analyses of differential item functioning (DIF); testing of external validity; and finally, CAT development. A total of 458 patients participated in the study. Of the 24 items, 2 highly inter-correlated items were deleted. Factor analysis showed that the remaining items met the unidimensional assumption (RMSEA = 0.054, CFI = 0.988, TLI = 0.986). DIF analyses revealed no biases by sex, age, care setting, or diagnosis. External validity testing has generally supported our assumptions. CAT showed satisfactory accuracy and precision. This work provides a more accurate and flexible measure of patients’ experience of respect and dignity than that obtained from standard questionnaires

Impaired cortico-limbic functional connectivity in schizophrenia patients during emotion processing

International audienceFunctional dysconnection is increasingly recognized as a core pathological feature in schizophrenia. Aberrant interactions between regions of the cortico-limbic circuitmay underpin the abnormal emotional processing associated with this illness. We used a functionalmagnetic resonance imaging paradigmdesigned to dissociate the various components of the corticolimbic circuit (i.e. a ventral automatic circuit that is intertwined with a dorsal cognitive circuit), to explore bottom-up appraisal as well as top-down control during emotion processing. In schizophrenia patients compared with healthy controls, bottom-up processes were associated with reduced interaction between the amygdala and both the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Contrariwise, top-down control processes led to stronger connectivity between the ventral affective and the dorsal cognitive circuits, i.e. heightened interactions between the ventral ACC and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex as well as between dorsal and ventral ACC. These findings offer a comprehensive view of the cortico-limbic dysfunction in schizophrenia. They confirmprevious results of impaired propagation of information between the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex and suggest a defective functional segregation in the dorsal cognitive part of the cortico-limbic circuit