Clonidine augmentation in patients with schizophrenia: A double-blind, randomized placebo-controlled trial.

Introduction: Noradrenergic imbalance in the brain of schizophrenia patients may underlie both symptomatology and deficits in basic information processing. The current study investigated whether augmentation with the noradrenergic α2-agonist clonidine might alleviate these symptoms.

Methods: In a double-blind placebo-controlled randomized clinical trial, 32 chronic schizophrenia patients were randomly assigned to six-weeks augmentation with either 50 μg clonidine or placebo to their current medication.

Reduced Antibody Acquisition with Increasing Age following Vaccination with BNT162b2: Results from Two Longitudinal Cohort Studies in The Netherlands.

Vaccine-induced protection against severe COVID-19, hospitalization, and death is of the utmost importance, especially in the elderly. However, limited data are available on humoral immune responses following COVID-19 vaccination in the general population across a broad age range. We performed an integrated analysis of the effect of age, sex, and prior SARS-CoV-2 infection on Spike S1-specific (S1) IgG concentrations up to three months post-BNT162b2 (Pfizer/BioNTech; Comirnaty) vaccination.

Effects of clonidine on MMN and P3a amplitude in schizophrenia patients on stable medication.

Schizophrenia is a complex brain disease involving several neurotransmitter systems, including aberrant noradrenergic activity, which might underlie cognitive deficits. Clonidine is an α-agonist and previous research has demonstrated that single dosages of clonidine normalize sensori(motor) gating in schizophrenia. Currently, we investigated whether clonidine is able to normalize mismatch negativity (MMN) and P3a amplitude deficits in this same group of patients.

Associations between P3a and P3b amplitudes and cognition in antipsychotic-naïve first-episode schizophrenia patients.

Background: Cognitive deficits are already present in early stages of schizophrenia. P3a and P3b event-related potentials (ERPs) are believed to underlie the processes of attention and working memory (WM), yet limited research has been performed on the associations between these parameters. Therefore, we explored possible associations between P3a/b amplitudes and cognition in a large cohort of antipsychotic-naïve, first-episode schizophrenia (AN-FES) patients and healthy controls (HC).

The association of antipsychotic medication and lithium with brain measures in patients with bipolar disorder.

There is evidence that brain structure is abnormal in patients with bipolar disorder. Lithium intake appears to ׳normalise׳ global and local brain volumes, but effects of antipsychotic medication on brain volume or cortical thickness are less clear. Here, we aim to disentangle disease-specific brain deviations from those induced by antipsychotic medication and lithium intake using a large homogeneous sample of patients with bipolar disorder type I.