Publications by authors named "Bernardo Miguel"

Frailty is a concept that is emerging as an important tool in the preoperative assessment of patients. The incidence of frailty in vascular surgery patients is high and is expected to increase concomitantly with the aging of the population. The identification of these patients and their optimization in the perioperative period can lead to an improvement in their outcomes with a reduction in morbidity and mortality.

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Background: Multiple genetic and environmental risk factors play a role in the development of both schizophrenia-spectrum disorders and affective psychoses. How they act in combination is yet to be clarified.

Methods: We analyzed 573 first episode psychosis cases and 1005 controls, of European ancestry.

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Background: The association between cannabis and psychosis is established, but the role of underlying genetics is unclear. We used data from the EU-GEI case-control study and UK Biobank to examine the independent and combined effect of heavy cannabis use and schizophrenia polygenic risk score (PRS) on risk for psychosis.

Methods: Genome-wide association study summary statistics from the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium and the Genomic Psychiatry Cohort were used to calculate schizophrenia and cannabis use disorder (CUD) PRS for 1098 participants from the EU-GEI study and 143600 from the UK Biobank.

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  • - The study investigates the link between urban living conditions (urbanicity) and schizotypy, a potential precursor to psychosis, suggesting this relationship varies significantly between North-western and Southern Europe.
  • - Researchers assessed 1080 individuals across 14 sites in both regions, measuring urbanicity through local population density and controlling for factors like age and childhood experiences.
  • - Findings reveal that higher population density is strongly associated with increased schizotypy in North-western Europe, while the effect is notably weaker in Southern Europe, indicating that urbanization’s impact on mental health is not uniform across different contexts.
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Childhood adversity is associated with various clinical dimensions in psychosis; however, how genetic vulnerability shapes the adversity-associated psychopathological signature is yet to be studied. We studied data of 583 First Episode Psychosis (FEP) cases from the EU-GEI FEP case-control study, including Polygenic risk scores for major depressive disorder (MDD-PRS), bipolar disorder (BD-PRS) and schizophrenia (SZ-PRS); childhood adversity measured with the total score of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ); and positive, negative, depressive and manic psychopathological domains from a factor model of transdiagnostic dimensions. Genes and environment interactions were explored as a departure from a multiplicative effect of PRSs and total CTQ on each dimension.

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  • The study investigates how current cannabis use and high-potency cannabis affect DNA methylation patterns in individuals experiencing first-episode psychosis (FEP), comparing them to non-users.
  • Researchers analyzed blood samples from 682 participants, identifying a significant CpG site associated with cannabis use that could influence mental health through epigenetic changes.
  • Findings suggest cannabis use affects genes related to immune and mitochondrial functions, with implications for understanding how cannabis may impact mental health, especially in those with psychosis.
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Introduction: Negative symptoms (NS) include asociality, avolition, anhedonia, alogia, and blunted affect and are linked to poor prognosis. It has been suggested that they reflect two different factors: diminished expression (EXP) (blunted affect and alogia) and amotivation/pleasure (MAP) (anhedonia, avolition, asociality). The aim of this article was to examine potential sex differences among first-episode schizophrenia (FES) patients and analyze sex-related predictors of two NS symptoms factors (EXP and MAP) and functional outcome.

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Postamputation pain is currently managed unsatisfactorily with neuron-targeted pharmacological and interventional therapies. Non-neuronal pain mechanisms have emerged as crucial factors in the development and persistence of postamputation pain. Consequently, these mechanisms offer exciting prospects as innovative therapeutic targets.

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Background: Patients with schizophrenia exhibit a reduced life expectancy mainly due to medical-related pathologies which might have been initiated due to stressful events during fetal development. Indeed, intra-uterus growth patterns predict anthropometric measures in adulthood, describing risk factors for schizophrenia and metabolic disorders. We aim to evaluate anthropometric values in two cohorts of antipsychotic-naïve first-episode episode psychosis (FEP) and correlated them with surrogate markers of the fetal environment such as birth weight (BW) and season of birth.

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  • - The study investigates the variation of subclinical psychosis (SP) measures, such as schizotypy and psychotic-like experiences (PLEs), across different geographic regions and how this correlates with the incidence of first-episode psychosis (FEP) in those areas.
  • - Through analysis of data from 1497 controls in 16 sites across 6 countries, researchers found that schizotypy showed significant variation related to site characteristics, while PLEs exhibited less variation; local incidences of FEP were associated with reduced unexplained variance in schizotypy.
  • - Findings highlight that younger, migrant, unmarried, unemployed, and less educated individuals, along with factors like cannabis use and childhood adversity, are linked to SP
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Background: Polygenic risk scores for educational attainment (PRS), cognitive reserve (CR), and clinical symptoms are associated with functioning in first-episode psychosis (FEP). Nevertheless, the mechanisms underlying their complex interaction are yet to be explored. This study assessed the mediating role of CR and clinical symptoms, both negative (NS) and positive (PS), on the interrelationship between PRS and functionality, one year after a FEP.

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Patients diagnosed with schizophrenia are characterized by early mortality compared to the general population. The main cause of this premature death reflects medical complications linked to metabolic syndrome (MetS). The use of antipsychotics such as clozapine is associated with weight gain and metabolic disturbances in certain predisposed individuals.

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Background: This study investigates whether early clozapine use is associated with improved responses in different clinical domains, including positive and negative symptoms, functioning, and well-being.

Methods: Data from 254 clozapine-treated patients at Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust (CPFT) were analysed. Among them, 231 (90.

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  • This study examines the prevalence of predominant negative symptoms (PNS) in first-episode schizophrenia patients, noting that these individuals have distinct clinical and functional characteristics compared to those without PNS.
  • Among the 121 patients studied, 24.8% developed PNS within a year, with variations in rates between men (27.6%) and women (20%).
  • Key risk factors differ by sex; for women, poor premorbid adjustment is a significant predictor, while for men, factors like verbal memory performance and motivational alterations are more telling.
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  • Illegal stimulant use is linked to a higher risk of first-episode psychosis (FEP), with 14.5% of patients experiencing FEP reporting lifetime stimulant use compared to 10.8% of controls.
  • The study analyzed 1,130 FEP patients and 1,497 controls across Europe and Brazil, using logistic regression to determine the relationship between stimulant use and FEP risk.
  • Findings suggest that eliminating stimulant use could potentially prevent 3.35% to 7.61% of FEP cases, indicating a significant public health concern that varies by country.
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This study investigated if the association between childhood maltreatment and cognition among psychosis patients and community controls was partially accounted for by genetic liability for psychosis. Patients with first-episode psychosis (N = 755) and unaffected controls (N = 1219) from the EU-GEI study were assessed for childhood maltreatment, intelligence quotient (IQ), family history of psychosis (FH), and polygenic risk score for schizophrenia (SZ-PRS). Controlling for FH and SZ-PRS did not attenuate the association between childhood maltreatment and IQ in cases or controls.

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Background: A history of childhood adversity is associated with psychotic disorder, with an increase in risk according to the number of exposures. However, it is not known why only some exposed individuals go on to develop psychosis. One possibility is pre-existing polygenic vulnerability.

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Cannabis use is highly prevalent in first-episode psychosis (FEP) and plays a critical role in its onset and prognosis, but the genetic underpinnings promoting both conditions are poorly understood. Current treatment strategies for cannabis cessation in FEP are clearly inefficacious. Here, we aimed to characterize the association between cannabis-related polygenic risk scores (PRS) on cannabis use and clinical course after a FEP.

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Background: While cannabis use is a well-established risk factor for psychosis, little is known about any association between reasons for first using cannabis (RFUC) and later patterns of use and risk of psychosis.

Methods: We used data from 11 sites of the multicentre European Gene-Environment Interaction (EU-GEI) case-control study. 558 first-episode psychosis patients (FEPp) and 567 population controls who had used cannabis and reported their RFUC.

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Article Synopsis
  • Studies suggest that DNA-methylation (DNAm) may be influenced by childhood adversity (CA) and could play a role in the development of psychotic disorders, although the specific mediating effects remain unexplored.
  • Researchers conducted an epigenome-wide association study comparing first-episode psychosis patients (n=366) to healthy controls (n=517) using the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire to create adversity scores, but found that no specific CpG sites significantly mediated the relationship between CA and psychosis after statistical corrections.
  • While several genes showed differential methylation related to CA, and previous studies linked some of these genes to psychosis, the analysis did not identify conclusive biological pathways, hinting at potential factors such as mitochondrial
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  • The study explored the link between the exposome score for schizophrenia (ES-SCZ), which represents cumulative environmental exposures, and cognitive impairments in individuals with schizophrenia spectrum disorders (SSD), their unaffected siblings, and healthy controls.
  • Using assessments like the WAIS-III, DFAR, and BFR, researchers analyzed a sample of 1200 patients, 1371 siblings, and 1564 healthy subjects to evaluate cognitive performance across different domains.
  • The findings showed no significant relationship between ES-SCZ and cognitive abilities in SSD patients; however, siblings and healthy controls exhibited a negative correlation with cognitive scores, indicating that environmental factors may impact those without the disorder differently.
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Article Synopsis
  • - The study developed and validated a diagnostic model to quickly identify individuals at risk for first episode psychosis (FEP) by analyzing data from 2,627 participants across six countries.
  • - A binary logistic regression model was used, incorporating 22 predictor variables, and achieved high accuracy in distinguishing between individuals with FEP and controls, with specificity and sensitivity rates indicating strong overall performance.
  • - Despite showing some signs of overfitting in certain countries, the model demonstrated good discrimination and calibration, suggesting it could be broadly applicable in diverse ethnic settings.
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Despite the available knowledge on underlying mechanisms and the development of several therapeutic strategies, optimal management of postoperative pain remains challenging. This preclinical study hypothesizes that, by promoting an anti-inflammatory scenario, pre-emptive administration of IMT504, a noncoding, non-CpG oligodeoxynucleotide with immune modulating properties, will reduce postincisional pain, also facilitating therapeutic opioid-sparing. Male adult Sprague-Dawley rats with unilateral hindpaw skin-muscle incision received pre-emptive (48 and 24 hours prior to surgery) or postoperative (6 hours after surgery) subcutaneous vehicle (saline) or IMT504.

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First episode of psychosis (FEP) patients display a wide variety of metabolic disturbances at onset, which might underlie these patients' increased morbidity and early mortality. Glycemic abnormalities have been previously related to pharmacological agents; however, recent research highlights the impact of early life events. Birth weight (BW), an indirect marker of the fetal environment, has been related to glucose abnormalities in the general population over time.

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