Dose-dependent effects of oral cannabidiol and delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol on serum anandamide and related N-acylethanolamines in healthy volunteers.

Background: The mental health benefits of cannabidiol (CBD) are promising but can be inconsistent, in part due to challenges in defining an individual's effective dosage. In schizophrenia, alterations in anandamide (AEA) concentrations, an endocannabinoid (eCB) agonist of the eCB system, reflect positively on treatment with CBD. Here, we expanded this assessment to include eCBs alongside AEA congeners, comparing phytocannabinoids and dosage in a clinical setting.

Does the Augmentation of Trauma Informed Hatha Yoga Increase the Effect of Dialectical Behavior Therapy for Substance Use Disorders on Psychopathological Strain of Patients with Borderline Personality Disorder and Comorbid Substance Use Disorder? Results of a Quasi-Experimental Study.

Background: Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is one of the most common personality disorders among persons with substance use disorders (SUDs) and is characterized by severe clinical symptoms. The aim of this study was to investigate if the effect of dialectical behavior therapy for substance use disorders (DBT-S) inpatient treatment on psychopathological symptom load in patients suffering from both BPD and SUD can be augmented by weekly 60-min "Trauma Informed Hatha Yoga" sessions.

Materials And Methods: Thirty-nine patients suffering from comorbid BPD and SUD were consecutively in time included in this quasi-experimental pilot study (first intervention then control group).

[Treatment of disorders of emotion regulation in the Adolescents Center at the Central Intitute of Mental Health].

Severe disorders of emotion regulation, e.g. in the context of mental illnesses, such as borderline disorders, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and complex posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), often begin in childhood and adolescence and influence the psychosocial development of those affected, often into adulthood.

[DBT-PTSD-EA: treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder after interpersonal traumatization in childhood in adolescents with borderline personality disorders : A pilot study].

Background: Recent meta-analyses have shown that posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in adolescents and young adults can be effectively treated; however, there is a lack of studies that investigated the efficacy of psychotherapy in the clinically important group of adolescents with PTSD related to childhood sexual and/or physical abuse and co-occurring symptoms of borderline personality disorder (BPD).

Objective: The aim of this study was a first evaluation of the efficacy of a specifically developed trauma-focused treatment (DBT-PTSD-EA) for adolescent patients with PTSD and BPD symptoms after interpersonal violence in childhood and adolescence.

Methods: Validated questionnaires including the Davidson trauma scale (DTS), the borderline symptom list (BSL-23) and the Beck depression inventory (BDI-II) were used to assess treatment-related changes in psychopathology in 39 treatment-seeking adolescents with a diagnosis of PTSD and symptoms of BPD after childhood sexual and/or physical abuse.

Differential melatonin alterations in cerebrospinal fluid and serum of patients with major depressive disorder and bipolar disorder.

Background: Melatonin, which plays an important role for regulation of circadian rhythms and the sleep/wake cycle has been linked to the pathophysiology of major depressive and bipolar disorder. Here we investigated melatonin levels in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and serum of depression and bipolar patients to elucidate potential differences and commonalities in melatonin alterations across the two disorders.

Methods: Using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays, CSF and serum melatonin levels were measured in 108 subjects (27 healthy volunteers, 44 depressed and 37 bipolar patients).

Drug repurposing and emerging adjunctive treatments for schizophrenia.

Introduction: Schizophrenia is a frequent disorder, which substantially impairs patients' quality of life. Moreover, the burden of illness for patients, their families and for the society, in general, is substantial. Nevertheless, the understanding of the pathophysiology of this syndrome, concise diagnostic methods and more effective and tolerable treatments are still lacking.

IgG dynamics of dietary antigens point to cerebrospinal fluid barrier or flow dysfunction in first-episode schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia is a complex brain disorder that may be accompanied by idiopathic inflammation. Classic central nervous system (CNS) inflammatory disorders such as viral encephalitis or multiple sclerosis can be characterized by incongruent serum and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) IgG due in part to localized intrathecal synthesis of antibodies. The dietary antigens, wheat gluten and bovine milk casein, can induce a humoral immune response in susceptible individuals with schizophrenia, but the correlation between the food-derived serological and intrathecal IgG response is not known.

Source-reconstruction of event-related fields reveals hyperfunction and hypofunction of cortical circuits in antipsychotic-naive, first-episode schizophrenia patients during Mooney face processing.

Schizophrenia is characterized by dysfunctions in neural circuits that can be investigated with electrophysiological methods, such as EEG and MEG. In the present human study, we examined event-related fields (ERFs), in a sample of medication-naive, first-episode schizophrenia (FE-ScZ) patients (n = 14) and healthy control participants (n = 17) during perception of Mooney faces to investigate the integrity of neuromagnetic responses and their experience-dependent modification. ERF responses were analyzed for M100, M170, and M250 components at the sensor and source levels.

Pineal gland volume in primary insomnia and healthy controls: a magnetic resonance imaging study.

Little is known about the relation between pineal volume and insomnia. Melatonin promotes sleep processes and, administered as a drug, it is suitable to improve primary and secondary sleep disorders in humans. Recent magnetic resonance imaging studies suggest that human plasma and saliva melatonin levels are partially determined by the pineal gland volume.

Hypocretin in cerebrospinal fluid is positively correlated with Tau and pTau.

It has been suggested that sleep-wake regulation as well as hypocretins play a role in the pathophysiology of Alzheimer's disease. We analyzed Aβ40, Aβ42, Tau protein, phosphorylated Tau (pTau) protein as well as hypocretin-1 concentrations in the CSF of a detection sample of 10 patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) as well as 10 age- and gender-matched patients with major depression as a comparison group of different pathology. In order to replicate the findings, we used a confirmation sample of 17 AD patients and 8 patients with major depression.

Fatty acid ethanolamide levels are altered in borderline personality and complex posttraumatic stress disorders.

Borderline personality (BPD) and complex posttraumatic stress disorders (PTSD) are both powerfully associated with the experience of interpersonal violence during childhood and adolescence. The disorders frequently co-occur and often result in pervasive problems in, e.g.

Repurposed drugs for the treatment of schizophrenia and bipolar disorders.

Characteristic symptoms of schizophrenia and bipolar disorders have been described and classified about a century ago. Each of these disorders may cause considerable impairment reflecting substantial alterations in cognition, perception, and mood. Though both disease concepts are well established, psychopharmacological treatment strategies, involving first- and second-generation antipsychotics, benzodiazepines and mood stabilizing drugs, often fail to keep their purported alleviating effects on respective characteristic symptom spectra, producing unsatisfactory patient responses.

Increased ventral striatal CB1 receptor binding is related to negative symptoms in drug-free patients with schizophrenia.

Increasing animal genetic, post-mortem and pharmacological evidence supports a role for the cerebral type 1 cannabinoid (CB1) receptor in the pathogenesis of schizophrenia (SCZ) and/or neural circuit dysfunctions responsible for its symptomatology. Moreover, since important interspecies differences are present in CB1 receptor expression, in vivo human data are of direct interest. We investigated an in vivo CB1 receptor expression in SCZ patients compared to healthy controls (CON), and in relation with psychopathological symptom severity using positron emission tomography (PET) and the selective high-affinity radioligand [(18)F]MK-9470.

Hypericum perforatum differentially affects corticosteroid receptor-mRNA expression in human monocytic U-937 cells.

A dysregulation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical (HPA) axis represents a prominent finding in major depression, possibly related to a dysfunction of the corticosteroid receptor system. Antidepressants are involved in the restoration of the altered feed-back mechanism of the HPA-axis, probably via normalization of corticosteroid receptor functions. Since Hypericum perforatum has antidepressive properties, we here examined its putative actions on glucocorticosteroid receptor mRNA levels in human blood cells as a peripheral model for neuroendocrine effects in human brain cells.

Quetiapine combined with amisulpride in schizophrenic patients with insufficient responses to quetiapine monotherapy.

Objectives: Treatment resistance often leads to combinations of second-generation antipsychotics. Well-designed trials evaluated add-on strategies involving clozapine, but also olanzapine and quetiapine (QTP) have pharmacodynamic properties that render supplementation with high-affinity antidopaminergic second-generation antipsychotics, for example, amisulpride (AMS), reasonable.

Methods: We report on 6 cases with partial response of psychotic positive symptoms to QTP despite sufficient dosage (mean, 783 mg/d) and serum levels (mean, 405 μg/L).

Augmentation with pregabalin in schizophrenia.

Anxiety is a core symptom of schizophrenia that elicits significant subjective burden of disease and contributes to treatment resistance in schizophrenia. Anxious syndromes might be attributed to incompletely remitted delusions, the negative syndrome, depressive episodes, panic attacks, social phobia, avoidance after hospitalization, and down-tapering of benzodiazepine medication. Pregabalin, an antagonist at the alpha2delta subunit of voltage-gated Ca channels, modulates several neurotransmitter systems and was found to alleviate anxiety in different mental disorders.

Effects of haloperidol, clozapine and olanzapine on the survival of human neuronal and immune cells in vitro.

Cytotoxic effects on neuronal as well as on immune cells have been reported for both typical and atypical antipsychotic drugs. We evaluated the effects of different concentrations of a typical (haloperidol) and two atypical (clozapine, olanzapine) antipsychotics on the survival of human neuronal (SH-SY5Y cells) and immune cells (U937 cells) by determining the metabolic activity after 24 h of incubation by the modified tetrazolium method. The dopaminergic neuroblastoma SH-SY5Y and the lymphoma U-937 cell line are well established models for in vitro investigations.