A proof-of-concept study applying machine learning methods to putative risk factors for eating disorders: results from the multi-centre European project on healthy eating.

Background: Despite a wide range of proposed risk factors and theoretical models, prediction of eating disorder (ED) onset remains poor. This study undertook the first comparison of two machine learning (ML) approaches [penalised logistic regression (LASSO), and prediction rule ensembles (PREs)] to conventional logistic regression (LR) models to enhance prediction of ED onset and differential ED diagnoses from a range of putative risk factors.

Method: Data were part of a European Project and comprised 1402 participants, 642 ED patients [52% with anorexia nervosa (AN) and 40% with bulimia nervosa (BN)] and 760 controls.

Visuo-tactile shape perception in women with Anorexia Nervosa and healthy women with and without body concerns.

A key feature of Anorexia Nervosa is body image disturbances, the study of which has focused mainly on visual and attitudinal aspects, did not always contain homogeneous groups of patients, and/or did not evaluate body shape concerns of the control group. In this study, we used psychophysical methods to investigate the visual, tactile and bimodal perception of elliptical shapes in a group of patients with Anorexia Nervosa (AN) restricting type and two groups of healthy participants, which differed from each other by the presence of concerns about their own bodies. We used an experimental paradigm designed to test the hypothesis that the perceptual deficits in AN reflect an impairment in multisensory integration.

Evaluating Proactive Strategy in Patients With OCD During Stop Signal Task.

Objectives: The aim of the present study was to investigate "Proactive-Adjustment hypothesis" (PA) during the Stop Signal Task (SST). The PA is implied in the highly inconsistent literature, and it deals with the role of response inhibition (RI) in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). This hypothesis assumed that participants would balance stopping and going by adjusting the response threshold (RT) in the go task.

Planning functioning and impulsiveness in obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Planning ability (PA) is a key aspect of cognitive functioning and requires subjects to identify and organise the necessary steps to achieve a goal. Despite the central role of executive dysfunction in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), deficits in PA have been investigated leading to contrasting results. Given these inconsistencies, the main aim of our work is to give a deeper and clearer understanding of PA in OCD patients.

Evaluation of Mother-Child Agreement and Factorial Structures of the SCARED Questionnaire in an Italian Clinical Sample.

A great part of the literature has confirmed the importance of both child and parents reports as source of factual information, especially for childhood emotional syndromes. In our study we aimed at: (i) calculating mother-child agreement and (ii) evaluating factorial structure of the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders (SCARED) questionnaire in an Italian clinical sample. The novelty of this contribution is two-fold: first, from a clinical point of view, we investigated the parent-child agreement level and examined separately the factorial structures of both parent and child versions of the SCARED for the first time in an Italian clinical sample.

Eating disorders.

Twenty years have passed from the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision (ICD-10) to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5) and, in the meanwhile, a lot of research data about eating disorders has been published. This article reviews the main modifications to the classification of eating disorders reported in the "Feeding and Eating Disorders" chapter of the DSM-5, and compares them with the ICD-10 diagnostic guidelines. Particularly, we will show that DSM-5 criteria widened the diagnoses of anorexia and bulimia nervosa to less severe forms (so decreasing the frequency of Eating Disorders, Not Otherwise Specified (EDNOS) diagnoses), introduced the new category of Binge Eating Disorder, and incorporated several feeding disorders that were first diagnosed in infancy, childhood, or adolescence.

A new social-family model for eating disorders: A European multicentre project using a case-control design.

Objective: To examine a new socio-family risk model of Eating Disorders (EDs) using path-analyses.

Method: The sample comprised 1264 (ED patients = 653; Healthy Controls = 611) participants, recruited into a multicentre European project. Socio-family factors assessed included: perceived maternal and parental parenting styles, family, peer and media influences, and body dissatisfaction.

Evaluating effect of symptoms heterogeneity on decision-making ability in obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Aims: Despite having a univocal definition, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) shows a remarkably phenotypic heterogeneity. The published reports show impaired decision-making in OCD patients, using tasks such as the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT). We wanted to verify the hypothesis of an IGT worse performance in a large sample of OCD patients and healthy control (HC) subjects and to examine the relation between neuropsychological performance in IGT and the OCD symptoms heterogeneity.

Cross-disorder genome-wide analyses suggest a complex genetic relationship between Tourette's syndrome and OCD.

Objective: Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and Tourette's syndrome are highly heritable neurodevelopmental disorders that are thought to share genetic risk factors. However, the identification of definitive susceptibility genes for these etiologically complex disorders remains elusive. The authors report a combined genome-wide association study (GWAS) of Tourette's syndrome and OCD.

Copy number variation in obsessive-compulsive disorder and tourette syndrome: a cross-disorder study.

Objective: Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and Tourette syndrome (TS) are heritable neurodevelopmental disorders with a partially shared genetic etiology. This study represents the first genome-wide investigation of large (>500 kb), rare (<1%) copy number variants (CNVs) in OCD and the largest genome-wide CNV analysis in TS to date.

Method: The primary analyses used a cross-disorder design for 2,699 case patients (1,613 ascertained for OCD, 1,086 ascertained for TS) and 1,789 controls.

Partitioning the heritability of Tourette syndrome and obsessive compulsive disorder reveals differences in genetic architecture.

The direct estimation of heritability from genome-wide common variant data as implemented in the program Genome-wide Complex Trait Analysis (GCTA) has provided a means to quantify heritability attributable to all interrogated variants. We have quantified the variance in liability to disease explained by all SNPs for two phenotypically-related neurobehavioral disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and Tourette Syndrome (TS), using GCTA. Our analysis yielded a heritability point estimate of 0.

Smoking, physical activity and respiratory irregularities in patients with panic disorder.

Background: In the past decades different evidences suggested a relationship between panic disorder (PD) and respiration, among which the presence of different respiratory irregularities at rest in PD patients. It has been hypothesized that PD could be characterized by a dysfunction of those areas involved in the central control of respiration. The aim of the present study was to elucidate possible differences in breath-by-breath respiratory function at rest between a sample of PD patients with agoraphobia and healthy controls (HC), with particular attention to smoking and physical activity as possible relevant factors in the understanding of respiratory dynamics in PD.

Executive functioning in anorexia nervosa patients and their unaffected relatives.

Formal genetic studies suggested a substantial genetic influence for anorexia nervosa (AN), but currently results are inconsistent. The use of the neurocognitive endophenotype approach may facilitate our understanding of the AN pathophysiology. We investigated decision-making, set-shifting and planning in AN patients (n=29) and their unaffected relatives (n=29) compared to healthy probands (n=29) and their relatives (n=29).

Low baseline startle in anorexia nervosa patients.

This study examined baseline startle magnitude, using eye blink response and skin conductance response in anorexia nervosa patients. Twenty female in-patients with anorexia nervosa and an equal number of female healthy controls were tested. Baseline startle response was assessed during blank screens while four startling loud sounds (a 116 dB, 1s, 250 Hz tone) were delivered with a time interval ranging from 35 to 55 s.

Genome-wide association study of obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a common, debilitating neuropsychiatric illness with complex genetic etiology. The International OCD Foundation Genetics Collaborative (IOCDF-GC) is a multi-national collaboration established to discover the genetic variation predisposing to OCD. A set of individuals affected with DSM-IV OCD, a subset of their parents, and unselected controls, were genotyped with several different Illumina SNP microarrays.

Temperament, character and anxiety sensitivity in panic disorder: a high-risk study.

Background: Adult patients with panic disorder (PD) show high levels of harm avoidance and anxiety sensitivity. Peculiar temperament profiles and high anxiety sensitivity have been proposed as developmental risk factors for PD in adult age. Since familial-genetic influences play a role both in PD and in anxiety sensitivity and temperament profiles, this study aims to investigate the possible association between family history of PD and peculiar temperament-character profiles or high anxiety sensitivity in offspring of patients with PD.

Fat mass and obesity-associated gene (FTO) in eating disorders: evidence for association of the rs9939609 obesity risk allele with bulimia nervosa and anorexia nervosa.

Objective: The common single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) rs9939609 in the fat mass and obesity-associated gene (FTO) is associated with obesity. As genetic variants associated with weight regulation might also be implicated in the etiology of eating disorders, we evaluated whether SNP rs9939609 is associated with bulimia nervosa (BN) and anorexia nervosa (AN).

Methods: Association of rs9939609 with BN and AN was assessed in 689 patients with AN, 477 patients with BN, 984 healthy non-population-based controls, and 3,951 population-based controls (KORA-S4).

Low social interactions in eating disorder patients in childhood and adulthood: a multi-centre European case control study.

The objective of this article was to examine lifestyle behaviours in eating disorder (ED) patients and healthy controls. A total of 801 ED patients and 727 healthy controls from five European countries completed the questions related to lifestyle behaviours of the Cross-Cultural Questionnaire (CCQ). For children, the ED sample exhibited more solitary activities (rigorously doing homework [p<0.

Cardiorespiratory response to physical exercise and psychological variables in panic disorder.

Objective: To investigate the possible influence of psychological variables on cardiorespiratory responses and perceived exertion of patients with Panic Disorder (PD) during a submaximal exercise test.

Method: Ten outpatients with PD and 10 matched healthy subjects walked up on a treadmill slope at a speed of 4 km/h in order to reach 65% of their maximum heart rate. Cardiorespiratory variables were continuously recorded.

Motor inhibition and cognitive flexibility in eating disorder subtypes.

Anorexia Nervosa (AN) and Bulimia Nervosa (BN) are complex Eating Disorders (EDs). Even if are considered two different diagnostic categories, they share clinical relevant characteristics. The evaluation of neurocognitive functions, using standardized neuropsychological assessment, could be a interesting approach to better understand differences and similarities between diagnostic categories and clinical subtypes in EDs thus improving our knowledge of the pathophisiology of EDs spectrum.

The somatic marker affecting decisional processes in obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Introduction: Patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) demonstrate impairment in decisional processes in which both cognition and emotion play a crucial role.

Methods: We investigated the connection between decision-making performances and choice-related skin conductance responses (SCRs), to identify a somatic marker impairment affecting decisional processes in these patients. We explored SCRs during the Iowa Gambling Task in 20 OCD and 18 control, measuring anticipatory and posticipatory psychophysiological reactions according to card choices and to the outcomes of each selection.

Emotional intelligence in panic disorder.

Panic attacks are psychopathological phenomena with a strong emotional activation that often induces subsequent anticipatory anxiety and phobic avoidance. Impairment in emotional processing in patients with Panic Disorder (PD) has been hypothesized. Emotional Intelligence (EI) involves the individual abilities to perceive, understand and manage emotions in order to cope with changes in internal and external environment.

Novel antidepressants and panic disorder: evidence beyond current guidelines.

Aim: The aim of the present review is to summarize available evidence about the efficacy and side effects of novel antidepressants for the treatment of panic disorder.

Methods: A literature search was undertaken using MEDLINE, ISI web of knowledge and references of retrieved articles. The search included articles published in English up to September 2009.