Potential for prediction of psychosis and bipolar disorder in Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services: a longitudinal register study of all people born in Finland in 1987.

Current strategies to predict psychosis identify only a small proportion of individuals at risk. Additional strategies are needed to increase capacity for pre-diction and prevention of serious mental illness, ideally during childhood and adolescence. One possible approach would be to investigate systems in which psychosis risk factors are concentrated during childhood.

Systematic Review and Meta-analysis: Psychosis Risk in Children and Adolescents With an At-Risk Mental State.

Objective: The "At Risk Mental State" (ARMS) approach to psychosis, also called "Clinical/Ultra High Risk," has had a major impact on psychosis services internationally. Despite well-established developmental differences in the prevalence and expression of psychotic symptoms from childhood into adulthood, there has been no systematic review of psychosis transitions specifically in children and adolescents up to age of 18 years. Evidence for this age group is crucial for developmentally appropriate clinical decisions by child and adolescent psychiatrists.

Maternal smoking during pregnancy and offspring psychiatric disorder: a longitudinal birth cohort study.

Background: There is evidence that prenatal stress and smoking during pregnancy both independently increase the risk of offspring psychopathology. Here we examine whether increased levels of self-reported stress is associated with increased smoking in a population of pregnant women, and whether prenatal smoking is associated with offspring psychiatric diagnoses independent of prenatal stress exposure.

Method: Using a longitudinal birth cohort, we used ordered logistic regressions to examine associations between maternal stress and smoking during pregnancy.

Childhood temperament and its association with adult psychiatric disorders in a prospective cohort study.

Background: Childhood temperament and its component factors have previously been shown to be associated with depression and anxiety disorders in later life. Studies have also suggested possible links between childhood temperament and later psychosis.

Aims: To investigate the association between childhood temperament and its individual component factors, measured at age 5, and later psychiatric disorders.

Fitting Marginal Structural and G-Estimation Models Under Complex Treatment Patterns: Investigating the Association Between De Novo Vitamin D Supplement Use After Breast Cancer Diagnosis and All-Cause Mortality Using Linked Pharmacy Claim and Registry Data.

Studies have shown that accounting for time-varying confounding through time-dependent Cox proportional hazards models may provide biased estimates of the causal effect of treatment when the confounder is also a mediator. We explore 2 alternative approaches to addressing this problem while examining the association between vitamin D supplementation initiated after breast cancer diagnosis and all-cause mortality. Women aged 50-80 years were identified in the National Cancer Registry Ireland (n = 5,417) between 2001 and 2011.

The role of prenatal stress as a pathway to personality disorder: longitudinal birth cohort study.

Background: Many studies have reported associations between prenatal stress and the development of psychotic, anxiety and depressive disorders; however, to date no studies have investigated potential associations with personality disorders.

Aims: This study investigated potential associations between exposure to prenatal stress and personality disorder in offspring.

Method: In a subsample (N = 3626) of a large Finnish birth cohort, we used logistic regression models to examine associations between self-reported maternal stress during pregnancy, collected monthly during antenatal clinic appointments, and personality disorder in offspring.

The Effectiveness of α2 Agonists As Sedatives in Pediatric Critical Care: A Propensity Score-Matched Cohort Study.

Objectives: There is limited evidence supporting the widespread use of α2 agonists (clonidine and dexmedetomidine) in pediatric critical care sedation. This study sought to test the association between the use of α2 agonists and enhanced sedation.

Design: A retrospective observational cohort study was conducted.

Evaluation of the effect of insulin sensitivity-enhancing lifestyle- and dietary-related adjuncts on antidepressant treatment response: protocol for a systematic review and meta-analysis.

Background: Depression is the leading cause of disability worldwide and is known to be associated with insulin resistance (IR). Insulin resistance worsens the symptoms of depression and reduces the effectiveness of antidepressant medications in some depressed patients. Many studies have assessed the effect of adjunctive exercise, vitamin D supplementation, zinc supplementation, magnesium, probiotics, unsaturated fatty acids, and hygienic-dietary recommendations (sleep hygiene, healthy diet, physical activity, and sunlight exposure, combined or singly used), individually, on antidepressant treatment response.

Canonical Causal Diagrams to Guide the Treatment of Missing Data in Epidemiologic Studies.

With incomplete data, the "missing at random" (MAR) assumption is widely understood to enable unbiased estimation with appropriate methods. While the need to assess the plausibility of MAR and to perform sensitivity analyses considering "missing not at random" (MNAR) scenarios has been emphasized, the practical difficulty of these tasks is rarely acknowledged. With multivariable missingness, what MAR means is difficult to grasp, and in many MNAR scenarios unbiased estimation is possible using methods commonly associated with MAR.

On the use of the not-at-random fully conditional specification (NARFCS) procedure in practice.

The not-at-random fully conditional specification (NARFCS) procedure provides a flexible means for the imputation of multivariable missing data under missing-not-at-random conditions. Recent work has outlined difficulties with eliciting the sensitivity parameters of the procedure from expert opinion due to their conditional nature. Failure to adequately account for this conditioning will generate imputations that are inconsistent with the assumptions of the user.

Effectiveness of αagonists for sedation in paediatric critical care: study protocol for a retrospective cohort observational study.

Introduction: Mechanically ventilated children in paediatric intensive care units are commonly administered analgesics and sedative agents to minimise pain and distress and facilitate cooperation with medical interventions. Opioids and benzodiazepines are the most common analgesic and sedative agents but have safety concerns. The α agonists clonidine and dexmedetomidine are alternative sedatives in use despite neither having robust evidence to support their use.

Analyses of Sensitivity to the Missing-at-Random Assumption Using Multiple Imputation With Delta Adjustment: Application to a Tuberculosis/HIV Prevalence Survey With Incomplete HIV-Status Data.

Multiple imputation with delta adjustment provides a flexible and transparent means to impute univariate missing data under general missing-not-at-random mechanisms. This facilitates the conduct of analyses assessing sensitivity to the missing-at-random (MAR) assumption. We review the delta-adjustment procedure and demonstrate how it can be used to assess sensitivity to departures from MAR, both when estimating the prevalence of a partially observed outcome and when performing parametric causal mediation analyses with a partially observed mediator.

Germline MC1R status influences somatic mutation burden in melanoma.

The major genetic determinants of cutaneous melanoma risk in the general population are disruptive variants (R alleles) in the melanocortin 1 receptor (MC1R) gene. These alleles are also linked to red hair, freckling, and sun sensitivity, all of which are known melanoma phenotypic risk factors. Here we report that in melanomas and for somatic C>T mutations, a signature linked to sun exposure, the expected single-nucleotide variant count associated with the presence of an R allele is estimated to be 42% (95% CI, 15-76%) higher than that among persons without an R allele.

On the joint use of propensity and prognostic scores in estimation of the average treatment effect on the treated: a simulation study.

Propensity and prognostic score methods seek to improve the quality of causal inference in non-randomized or observational studies by replicating the conditions found in a controlled experiment, at least with respect to observed characteristics. Propensity scores model receipt of the treatment of interest; prognostic scores model the potential outcome under a single treatment condition. While the popularity of propensity score methods continues to grow, prognostic score methods and methods combining propensity and prognostic scores have thus far received little attention.

Prognostic score-based balance measures can be a useful diagnostic for propensity score methods in comparative effectiveness research.

Objective: Examining covariate balance is the prescribed method for determining the degree to which propensity score methods should be successful at reducing bias. This study assessed the performance of various balance measures, including a proposed balance measure based on the prognostic score (similar to a disease risk score), to determine which balance measures best correlate with bias in the treatment effect estimate.

Study Design And Setting: The correlations of multiple common balance measures with bias in the treatment effect estimate produced by weighting by the odds, subclassification on the propensity score, and full matching on the propensity score were calculated.