Lost and found: dynamics of relationship and employment status over time in people with affective and psychotic spectrum disorders.

Background: Employment and relationship are crucial for social integration. However, individuals with major psychiatric disorders often face challenges in these domains.

Aims: We investigated employment and relationship status changes among patients across the affective and psychotic spectrum - in comparison with healthy controls, examining whether diagnostic groups or functional levels influence these transitions.

Contrasting genetic burden for bipolar disorder: Early onset versus late onset in an older adult bipolar disorder sample.

Older Adults with Bipolar Disorder (OABD) represent a heterogeneous group, including those with early and late onset of the disorder. Recent evidence shows both groups have distinct clinical, cognitive, and medical features, tied to different neurobiological profiles. This study explored the link between polygenic risk scores (PRS) for bipolar disorder (PRS-BD), schizophrenia (PRS-SCZ), and major depressive disorder (PRS-MDD) with age of onset in OABD.

Association of polygenic score and the involvement of cholinergic and glutamatergic pathways with lithium treatment response in patients with bipolar disorder.

Lithium is regarded as the first-line treatment for bipolar disorder (BD), a severe and disabling mental health disorder that affects about 1% of the population worldwide. Nevertheless, lithium is not consistently effective, with only 30% of patients showing a favorable response to treatment. To provide personalized treatment options for bipolar patients, it is essential to identify prediction biomarkers such as polygenic scores.

Association of Polygenic Score and the involvement of Cholinergic and Glutamatergic Pathways with Lithium Treatment Response in Patients with Bipolar Disorder.

Lithium is regarded as the first-line treatment for bipolar disorder (BD), a severe and disabling mental disorder that affects about 1% of the population worldwide. Nevertheless, lithium is not consistently effective, with only 30% of patients showing a favorable response to treatment. To provide personalized treatment options for bipolar patients, it is essential to identify prediction biomarkers such as polygenic scores.

Association between mitochondria-related genes and cognitive performance in the PsyCourse Study.

Background: Mitochondria generate energy through oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS). The function of key OXPHOS proteins can be altered by variation in mitochondria-related genes, which may increase the risk of mental illness. We investigated the association of mitochondria-related genes and their genetic risk burden with cognitive performance.

A novel longitudinal clustering approach to psychopathology across diagnostic entities in the hospital-based PsyCourse study.

Biological research and clinical management in psychiatry face two major impediments: the high degree of overlap in psychopathology between diagnoses and the inherent heterogeneity with regard to severity. Here, we aim to stratify cases into homogeneous transdiagnostic subgroups using psychometric information with the ultimate aim of identifying individuals with higher risk for severe illness. 397 participants of the PsyCourse study with schizophrenia- or bipolar-spectrum diagnoses were prospectively phenotyped over 18 months.

Medication Adherence in a Cross-Diagnostic Sample of Patients From the Affective-to-Psychotic Spectrum: Results From the PsyCourse Study.

Introduction: According to the World Health Organization, medication adherence is defined as the extent to which a person's behavior corresponds with an agreed recommendation from a healthcare provider. Approximately 50% of patients do not take their medication as prescribed, and non-adherence can contribute to the progress of a disease. For patients suffering from mental diseases non-adherence plays an important role.

Interplay between the genetics of personality traits, severe psychiatric disorders and COVID-19 host genetics in the susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Background: The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic, with its impact on our way of life, is affecting our experiences and mental health. Notably, individuals with mental disorders have been reported to have a higher risk of contracting SARS-CoV-2. Personality traits could represent an important determinant of preventative health behaviour and, therefore, the risk of contracting the virus.

A genome-wide association study of the longitudinal course of executive functions.

Executive functions are metacognitive capabilities that control and coordinate mental processes. In the transdiagnostic PsyCourse Study, comprising patients of the affective-to-psychotic spectrum and controls, we investigated the genetic basis of the time course of two core executive subfunctions: set-shifting (Trail Making Test, part B (TMT-B)) and updating (Verbal Digit Span backwards) in 1338 genotyped individuals. Time course was assessed with four measurement points, each 6 months apart.

An Investigation of Psychosis Subgroups With Prognostic Validation and Exploration of Genetic Underpinnings: The PsyCourse Study.

Importance: Identifying psychosis subgroups could improve clinical and research precision. Research has focused on symptom subgroups, but there is a need to consider a broader clinical spectrum, disentangle illness trajectories, and investigate genetic associations.

Objective: To detect psychosis subgroups using data-driven methods and examine their illness courses over 1.

The role of environmental stress and DNA methylation in the longitudinal course of bipolar disorder.

Background: Stressful life events influence the course of affective disorders, however, the mechanisms by which they bring about phenotypic change are not entirely known.

Methods: We explored the role of DNA methylation in response to recent stressful life events in a cohort of bipolar patients from the longitudinal PsyCourse study (n = 96). Peripheral blood DNA methylomes were profiled at two time points for over 850,000 methylation sites.

The genetic relationship between educational attainment and cognitive performance in major psychiatric disorders.

Cognitive deficits are a core feature of psychiatric disorders like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Evidence supports a genome-wide polygenic score (GPS) for educational attainment (GPS) can be used to explain variability in cognitive performance. We aimed to identify different cognitive domains associated with GPS in a transdiagnostic clinical cohort of chronic psychiatric patients with known cognitive deficits.

The influence of religious activity and polygenic schizophrenia risk on religious delusions in schizophrenia.

Background: Religious delusions are a common symptom in patients experiencing psychosis, with varying prevalence rates of religious delusions across cultures and societies. To enhance our knowledge of this distinct psychotic feature, we investigated the mutually-adjusted association of genetic and environmental factors with occurrence of religious delusions.

Methods: We studied 262 adult German patients with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder.

A longitudinal approach to biological psychiatric research: The PsyCourse study.

In current diagnostic systems, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are still conceptualized as distinct categorical entities. Recently, both clinical and genomic evidence have challenged this Kraepelinian dichotomy. There are only few longitudinal studies addressing potential overlaps between these conditions.

Investigating polygenic burden in age at disease onset in bipolar disorder: Findings from an international multicentric study.

Objectives: Bipolar disorder (BD) with early disease onset is associated with an unfavorable clinical outcome and constitutes a clinically and biologically homogenous subgroup within the heterogeneous BD spectrum. Previous studies have found an accumulation of early age at onset (AAO) in BD families and have therefore hypothesized that there is a larger genetic contribution to the early-onset cases than to late onset BD. To investigate the genetic background of this subphenotype, we evaluated whether an increased polygenic burden of BD- and schizophrenia (SCZ)-associated risk variants is associated with an earlier AAO in BD patients.

HDAC1 links early life stress to schizophrenia-like phenotypes.

Schizophrenia is a devastating disease that arises on the background of genetic predisposition and environmental risk factors, such as early life stress (ELS). In this study, we show that ELS-induced schizophrenia-like phenotypes in mice correlate with a widespread increase of histone-deacetylase 1 () expression that is linked to altered DNA methylation. overexpression in neurons of the medial prefrontal cortex, but not in the dorsal or ventral hippocampus, mimics schizophrenia-like phenotypes induced by ELS.

Self-regulation of frontal-midline theta facilitates memory updating and mental set shifting.

Frontal-midline (fm) theta oscillations as measured via the electroencephalogram (EEG) have been suggested as neural "working language" of executive functioning. Their power has been shown to increase when cognitive processing or task performance is enhanced. Thus, the question arises whether learning to increase fm-theta amplitudes would functionally impact the behavioral performance in tasks probing executive functions (EFs).

The morphology of midcingulate cortex predicts frontal-midline theta neurofeedback success.

Humans differ in their ability to learn how to control their own brain activity by neurofeedback. However, neural mechanisms underlying these inter-individual differences, which may determine training success and associated cognitive enhancement, are not well-understood. Here, it is asked whether neurofeedback success of frontal-midline (fm) theta, an oscillation related to higher cognitive functions, could be predicted by the morphology of brain structures known to be critically involved in fm-theta generation.

The "DGPPN-Cohort": A national collaboration initiative by the German Association for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy (DGPPN) for establishing a large-scale cohort of psychiatric patients.

The German Association for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy (DGPPN) has committed itself to establish a prospective national cohort of patients with major psychiatric disorders, the so-called DGPPN-Cohort. This project will enable the scientific exploitation of high-quality data and biomaterial from psychiatric patients for research. It will be set up using harmonised data sets and procedures for sample generation and guided by transparent rules for data access and data sharing regarding the central research database.