Publications by authors named "Ayse Kurtulmus"

Objective: People with epilepsy suffer from the stress of living with a chronic, unpredictable disease that can lead to discrimination, misunderstanding, social stigma, and loss of autonomy in activities of daily life, elevating anxiety. Within the scope of this research, we aimed to elucidate the frequency of separation anxiety disorder in adult people with epilepsy and to examine the relationship between separation anxiety symptoms, perceived overprotection, and quality of life in comparison to the control group.

Material And Methods: This prospective study was conducted with 105 people with epilepsy and 115 healthy volunteers.

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Background: 'Early Intervention in Psychosis' (EIP) services have been associated with improved outcomes for early psychosis. However, these services are heterogeneous and many provide different components of treatment. The impact of this variation on the sustained treatment effects is unknown.

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Extracellular Genomic Materials (EGMs) are the nucleic acids secreted or released from all types of cells by endogenous or exogenous stimuli through varying mechanisms into the extracellular region and inevitably to all biological fluids. EGMs could be found as free, protein-bound, and/ or with vesicles. EGMs can potentially have immunophenotypic and/or genotypic characteristics of a cell of origin, travel to distant organs, and interact with the new microenvironment.

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In anxiety, depression and psychosis, there has been frustratingly slow progress in developing novel therapies that make a substantial difference in practice, as well as in predicting which treatments will work for whom and in what contexts. To intervene early in the process and deliver optimal care to patients, we need to understand the underlying mechanisms of mental health conditions, develop safe and effective interventions that target these mechanisms, and improve our capabilities in timely diagnosis and reliable prediction of symptom trajectories. Better synthesis of existing evidence is one way to reduce waste and improve efficiency in research towards these ends.

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There is a growing body of evidence indicating retinal layer thinning in schizophrenia. However, neuropathological processes underlying these retinal structural changes and its clinical correlates are yet to be known. Here, we aim to investigate the clinical and biological correlates of OCT findings in schizophrenia.

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We investigated the effect of low-intensity focused ultrasound (LIFU) on gene expression related to alcohol dependence and histological effects on brain tissue. We also aimed at determining the miRNA-mRNA relationship and their pathways in alcohol dependence-induced expression changes after focused ultrasound therapy. We designed a case-control study for 100 days of observation to investigate differences in gene expression in the short-term stimulation group (STS) and long-term stimulation group (LTS) compared with the control sham group (SG).

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Background: Behavioural, cognitive, and pharmacological interventions can all be effective for insomnia. However, because of inadequate resources, medications are more frequently used worldwide. We aimed to estimate the comparative effectiveness of pharmacological treatments for the acute and long-term treatment of adults with insomnia disorder.

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Sleep deprivation, alone or in combination with pharmacological treatment and as part of a chronotherapy package, is of potential use for people with major depressive episodes, however the evidence base is still conflicting. The aim of this systematic review and meta-analysis is to assess the clinical effects of sleep deprivation in comparison to any other intervention for the acute and long-term treatment of mood disorders. We searched electronic databases and trial registries (last update: 16th October 2021) for published and unpublished randomised controlled trials recruiting participants with a major depressive episode in unipolar or bipolar affective disorder.

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Background: We aimed to evaluate the optical coherence tomography(OCT) findings and oxidative stress parameters in patients with bipolar disorder(BD) and their unaffected first-degree relatives(FDRs) and to explore OCT findings and oxidative stress parameters as potential endophenotype candidates.

Methods: Fifty patients with BD, 40 FDRs of BD, and 50 healthy controls(HCs) were included. OCT was performed to measure peripapillary retinal nerve fiber layer(RNFL), ganglion cell layer(GCL), inner plexiform layer(IPL), central macular, and minimum foveal thicknesses(CMT and MFT), choroidal thickness(ChT).

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Objective: Schizophrenia (SCZ) is a chronic, disruptive mental disorder with unknown pathogenic mechanisms. Several studies evidenced that oxidative stress (OS) may be one of the causal factors to play a role in the pathophysiology of the disease. Our study aims to contribute to the SCZ research by investigating a possible relationship between the severity of illness (scored with "The Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale [PANSS]") and OS biomarkers in patients.

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Introduction: Eating disorders (ED) constitute an important group of conditions that commonly occur in adolescents. Gastrointestinal complaints are frequently reported in ED patients. Few studies assessed the association of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) with ED.

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Aim: To investigate anxiety, stress, and depression levels of physicians during the Covid-19 outbreak and explored associated factors in both clinical and general site.

Methods: An online survey is conducted to asses psychological responses of healthcare workers and related factors during Covid-19 outbreak. It is consisted of three subsections covering the following areas: 1) sociodemographic data 2) information on individuals` working condition 3) Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale-21 (DAS-21).

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Aim: To investigate whether circulating T cells including regulatory T cells (Treg) and derived cytokines contribute to the immune imbalance observed in schizophrenia.

Methods: Forty patients with schizophrenia and 40 age, sex, body mass index, education, and smoking status-matched healthy controls (HC) are included in the study. We stained cells with anti-CD14, anti-CD3, anti-CD4, anti-CD8, anti-CD19, anti-CD20, and anti-CD16/56.

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Background: The aim of this study was to investigate the prevalence of and the factors associated with psychiatric symptoms (PS) and challenging behaviour (CB) in adults with intellectual disabilities, and the utilization of psychiatric services in Turkey.

Method: Psychiatric Assessment Schedule for Adults with Developmental Disorders Checklist-Revised was used for PS and a structured form for other variables in 771 participants.

Results: Of the participants, 50.

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Background: Utilisation of routinely collected electronic health records from secondary care offers unprecedented possibilities for medical science research but can also present difficulties. One key issue is that medical information is presented as free-form text and, therefore, requires time commitment from clinicians to manually extract salient information. Natural language processing (NLP) methods can be used to automatically extract clinically relevant information.

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Introduction: A large number of studies using different neuroimaging methods showed various structural changes both in patients and their unaffected first-degree relatives (FDRs) over the past years. Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a relatively new, non-invasive imaging method used to obtain high-resolution cross-sectional images of the retina. A growing body of evidence reports thinning of retinal layers in patients with schizophrenia which is considered as a proxy for CNS alterations.

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Melatonin, a neuro-differentiation factor, may play a role in the neurodevelopmental origins of schizophrenia. Cognitive impairment and decreased melatonin are reported in schizophrenia; however, the relationship between them remains unclear. We hypothesised that patients with schizophrenia would have lower concentrations of circulating melatonin than healthy controls and that melatonin levels would be associated with cognitive impairment.

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