Publications by authors named "Ana M Diaz Zuluaga"

Objectives: Most bipolar disorder (BD) patients initially present with depressive symptoms, resulting in a delayed diagnosis of BD and poor clinical outcomes. This study aims to identify features predictive of the conversion from Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) to BD by leveraging electronic health record (EHR) data from the Clínica San Juan de Dios Manizales in Colombia.

Methods: We employed a multivariable Cox regression model to identify important predictors of conversion from MDD to BD.

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  • - The PUMAS project aims to address the lack of representation of African and Latin American populations in psychiatric genetics studies by analyzing genetic data from individuals with serious mental illness (SMI), including disorders like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, using data from 89,320 participants across four different cohorts.
  • - The research involves harmonizing data from various clinical assessments to create standardized measures of mental health symptoms, which allows for more accurate genetic analyses across different diagnoses and symptoms.
  • - The findings show that schizophrenia and severe bipolar disorder are the most common diagnoses among participants, and a set of 19 key symptoms has been identified, which may be useful for cross-diagnosis genetic studies.
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Although specific risk factors for brain alterations in bipolar disorders (BD) are currently unknown, obesity impacts the brain and is highly prevalent in BD. Gray matter correlates of obesity in BD have been well documented, but we know much less about brain white matter abnormalities in people who have both obesity and BD. We obtained body mass index (BMI) and diffusion tensor imaging derived fractional anisotropy (FA) from 22 white matter tracts in 899 individuals with BD, and 1287 control individuals from 20 cohorts in the ENIGMA-BD working group.

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Background: Geographical variations in mood and psychotic disorders have been found in upper-income countries. We looked for geographic variation in these disorders in Colombia, a middle-income country. We analyzed electronic health records from the Clínica San Juan de Dios Manizales (CSJDM), which provides comprehensive mental healthcare for the one million inhabitants of Caldas.

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  • Schizophrenia is characterized by significant changes in brain structure, but it's not clear if these changes relate to the brain's network organization.
  • Researchers analyzed MRI scans from nearly 2,500 people with schizophrenia alongside healthy controls to see how structural changes connect to brain networks.
  • The study found that certain regions in the brain that are crucial for connectivity are more affected in schizophrenia, indicating a link between brain network vulnerability and the disease's impact, with some similarities to bipolar disorder but not major depressive disorder.
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Bipolar Disorder (BD) is a severe and chronic disorder characterized by recurrent episodes of depression, mania, and/or hypomania. Most BD patients initially present with depressive symptoms, resulting in a delayed diagnosis of BD and poor clinical outcomes. This study leverages electronic health record (EHR) data from the Clínica San Juan de Dios Manizales in Colombia to identify features predictive of the transition from Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) to BD.

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Background: Bipolar Disorder (BD) represents the seventh major cause of disability life-years-adjusted. Lithium remains as a first-line treatment, but clinical improvement occurs only in 30 % of treated patients. Studies suggest that genetics plays a major role in shaping the individual response of BD patients to lithium.

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  • The study looked at how the brain's left and right sides might differ in people with schizophrenia compared to those without it, using brain scans from over 5,000 patients and 6,000 control subjects.
  • Researchers found that people with schizophrenia had slightly thinner areas in the left side of their brains, especially in certain regions, compared to those without the disorder.
  • The differences in brain structure might be linked to how schizophrenia affects brain functions, like language, but more research is needed to understand why they happen.
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Background: Obesity is highly prevalent and disabling, especially in individuals with severe mental illness including bipolar disorders (BD). The brain is a target organ for both obesity and BD. Yet, we do not understand how cortical brain alterations in BD and obesity interact.

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Aims: Rates of obesity have reached epidemic proportions, especially among people with psychiatric disorders. While the effects of obesity on the brain are of major interest in medicine, they remain markedly under-researched in psychiatry.

Methods: We obtained body mass index (BMI) and magnetic resonance imaging-derived regional cortical thickness, surface area from 836 bipolar disorders (BD) and 1600 control individuals from 14 sites within the ENIGMA-BD Working Group.

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  • The study examines cognitive performance in 1175 Latin American individuals, including 864 with schizophrenia and 311 controls, to understand the impact of socioeconomic status (SES) and clinical factors.
  • Patients with schizophrenia demonstrated poorer cognitive abilities than non-affected individuals across all measured domains, and their cognitive performance was significantly influenced by factors like education and income.
  • The research highlights that while patients did not exhibit accelerated cognitive aging, their cognitive abilities were more adversely affected by lower SES, emphasizing the impact of demographic and socioeconomic challenges in low- and middle-income countries.
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Individuals with bipolar disorders (BD) frequently suffer from obesity, which is often associated with neurostructural alterations. Yet, the effects of obesity on brain structure in BD are under-researched. We obtained MRI-derived brain subcortical volumes and body mass index (BMI) from 1134 BD and 1601 control individuals from 17 independent research sites within the ENIGMA-BD Working Group.

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The hippocampus consists of anatomically and functionally distinct subfields that may be differentially involved in the pathophysiology of bipolar disorder (BD). Here we, the Enhancing NeuroImaging Genetics through Meta-Analysis Bipolar Disorder workinggroup, study hippocampal subfield volumetry in BD. T1-weighted magnetic resonance imaging scans from 4,698 individuals (BD = 1,472, healthy controls [HC] = 3,226) from 23 sites worldwide were processed with FreeSurfer.

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Background: Social and environmental factors such as poverty or violence modulate the risk and course of schizophrenia. However, how they affect the brain in patients with psychosis remains unclear.

Aims: We studied how environmental factors are related to brain structure in patients with schizophrenia and controls in Latin America, where these factors are large and unequally distributed.

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MRI-derived brain measures offer a link between genes, the environment and behavior and have been widely studied in bipolar disorder (BD). However, many neuroimaging studies of BD have been underpowered, leading to varied results and uncertainty regarding effects. The Enhancing Neuro Imaging Genetics through Meta-Analysis (ENIGMA) Bipolar Disorder Working Group was formed in 2012 to empower discoveries, generate consensus findings and inform future hypothesis-driven studies of BD.

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Background: Severe mental illness diagnoses have overlapping symptomatology and shared genetic risk, motivating cross-diagnostic investigations of disease-relevant quantitative measures. We analysed relationships between neurocognitive performance, symptom domains, and diagnoses in a large sample of people with severe mental illness not ascertained for a specific diagnosis (cases), and people without mental illness (controls) from a single, homogeneous population.

Methods: In this case-control study, cases with severe mental illness were ascertained through electronic medical records at Clínica San Juan de Dios de Manizales (Manizales, Caldas, Colombia) and the Hospital Universitario San Vicente Fundación (Medellín, Antioquía, Colombia).

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  • Positive symptoms in schizophrenia, such as thought disorders and auditory misperception, are linked to increased aggression, possibly due to shared abnormal brain structures.
  • A large study analyzed brain scans from 902 individuals with schizophrenia and 952 healthy controls to identify differences in brain structure.
  • Results showed reduced cortical thickness in specific brain areas, indicating that these structural changes may contribute to both positive symptoms and aggressive behavior in individuals with schizophrenia.
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We organized 10Kin1day, a pop-up scientific event with the goal to bring together neuroimaging groups from around the world to jointly analyze 10,000+ existing MRI connectivity datasets during a 3-day workshop. In this report, we describe the motivation and principles of 10Kin1day, together with a public release of 8,000+ MRI connectome maps of the human brain.

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Social and environmental factors are known risk factors and modulators of mental health disorders. We here conducted a nonsystematic review of the neuroimaging literature studying the effects of poverty, urbanicity, and community violence, highlighting the opportunities of studying non-Western developing societies such as those in Latin America. Social and environmental factors in these communities are widespread and have a large magnitude, as well as an unequal distribution, providing a good opportunity for their characterization.

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Bipolar disorders (BDs) are among the leading causes of morbidity and disability. Objective biological markers, such as those based on brain imaging, could aid in clinical management of BD. Machine learning (ML) brings neuroimaging analyses to individual subject level and may potentially allow for their diagnostic use.

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Background: Previous studies suggest that inflammatory molecules play an important role in the pathophysiology of Bipolar Disorder (BD). The evidence suggests that BD may present a progressive course. Therefore there are theories that postulate the relationship between progression and stages of the disease with distinct peripheral biomarkers.

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Background: Functional improvement in bipolar and schizophrenic patients is one of the main aims of treatment. Nevertheless, there is no evidence about the effect of socio-occupational intervention within a multimodal intervention (MI) programme.

Objective: To describe the socio-occupational profile and to evaluate the functional effect of a MI in bipolar I and schizophrenic patients.

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Background: Bipolar Disorder (BD) and schizophrenia are included in the group of severe mental illness and are main causes of disability and morbidity in the local population due to the bio-psycho-social implications in patients. In the last 20 years or so, adjunctive psychological interventions been studied with the purpose of decreasing recurrences, stabilising the course of the disease, and improving the functionality in these patients.

Objective: To analyse the psychological effect of a multimodal intervention (MI) vs a traditional intervention (TI) program in BD I and schizophrenic patients.

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