Undiagnosed heart disease and cancer steal 12 to 15 years from the lives of people with schizophrenia, reports a study published online January 15 in the American Journal of Psychiatry.
Read this story at Schizophrenia Research Forum.
mental health
Brain scanners turn to mice
Mice carrying a truncated form of DISC1, a gene related to psychiatric illness, also show defects in the dopamine system akin to those found in schizophrenia. The study, published online January 11 in Human Molecular Genetics, is the first to apply positron emission tomography (PET) to an animal model for psychiatric disorders.
Read this story at Schizophrenia Research Forum.
Stress reworks dopamine systems
Stressful events contribute to the development of psychiatric illnesses, but what are the transducers of this connection? Two studies published January 18 in Science uncover actions by stress hormones on dopamine signaling in mice.
Read this story at Schizophrenia Research Forum.
DSM-5 field tests reliably detect schizophrenia
Clinicians trying out the new version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the DSM-5, largely come to the same conclusions, according to a trio of papers published online October 30 in the American Journal of Psychiatry. For schizophrenia, reliability in diagnosis and in dimensional measures of psychosis scored in the “good” range.
Read this story at Schizophrenia Research Forum.
Family roots for mental illness
Despite clinical boundaries between autism, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder, a new study in Archives of General Psychiatry suggests they have shared roots.
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DNA damage
Disorder-specific patterns of DNA damage in neurons mark the brain in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, according to a recent study in Archives of General Psychiatry. This suggests that the cellular controls that keep the genome in good working order inside each neuron are disrupted in these mental illnesses.
Read this article at Schizophrenia Research Forum.
Spontaneous mutations linked to bipolar disorder
Bipolar disorder has joined the ranks of brain disorders associated with mutations called copy number variations (CNVs) — specifically spontaneously-occurring ones — in a new study published in Neuron. The findings suggest that bipolar disorder lies on the milder end of a continuum of brain disorders that includes schizophrenia, autism, and intellectual disability.
Read this article at Schizophrenia Research Forum.
The urban brain
The brains of city dwellers are more sensitive to social stress than those of country folk, according to a study in Nature. This might contribute to the increased risk of certain psychiatric disorders associated with urban living.
Read this article at Scientific American Mind.
WCPG 2011 — The coming calamity in research funding
Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, delivered the expected news of a prolonged period of research funding cutbacks. He stressed that during this time of austerity, the NIMH would fund projects based on the science, and that data and resource sharing with other researchers should be a priority.
Read this meeting report at Schizophrenia Research Forum.
The shifting diagnostic sands of psychosis
A new study finds that the diagnosis initially given to 50% of study participants who had been admitted to the hospital for psychosis changed at least once during the ensuing 10 years. These shifts reflected changing symptoms over the course of life, rather than misdiagnosis.
Read this article at Schizophrenia Research Forum.
