Clinical Staging of Alcohol Use Disorder: Proposal of a New Stratified Approach.

Introduction: Clinical staging is widely applied in various fields of Medicine. Staging makes it possible to constitute early diagnoses and interventions, improving prognosis and preventing disease progression. In relation to Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD), staging is still an underdeveloped subject in the scientific literature.

Adjunctive tianeptine treatment for bipolar disorder: A 24-week randomized, placebo-controlled, maintenance trial.

Objective: The purpose of this study was to assess the efficacy and tolerability of tianeptine as an adjunctive maintenance treatment for bipolar depression.

Methods: This is a multicenter double-blind randomized placebo-controlled maintenance trial of adjunctive tianeptine 37.5 mg/day.

White matter volume is decreased in bipolar disorder at early and late stages.

Introduction: Bipolar disorder (BD) is a debilitating mood condition that affects approximately 1.3% of people worldwide, although some studies report up to 3.9% lifetime prevalence and 4-6% in adults when broad diagnostic criteria are applied.

Volumetric brain magnetic resonance imaging predicts functioning in bipolar disorder: A machine learning approach.

Neuroimaging studies have been steadily explored in Bipolar Disorder (BD) in the last decades. Neuroanatomical changes tend to be more pronounced in patients with repeated episodes. Although the role of such changes in cognition and memory is well established, daily-life functioning impairments bulge among the consequences of the proposed progression.

Accumbens volumes are reduced among crack-cocaine users.

The brain reward system is known to be the neuroanatomical basis of addictive behaviors. Systemic, cognitive and functional consequences of crack-cocaine addiction are clinically evident, but the neuroanatomical underpinnigs are not yet well understood. We aim to assess the neuroanatomical differences between crack-cocaine patients and paired healthy controls.

Pharmacological treatment and staging in bipolar disorder: evidence from clinical practice.

Objectives: Staging models for medical diseases are widely used to guide treatment and prognosis. Bipolar disorder (BD) is a chronic condition and it is among the most disabling disorders in medicine. The staging model proposed by Kapczinski in 2009 presents four progressive clinical stages of BD.

Verbal episodic memory along the course of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder: a new perspective.

Impairment on episodic memory (EM) has been strongly correlated with psychiatric disorders, including schizophrenia (SZ) and bipolar disorder (BD). Morevover, the effects of course and progression of the illness on cognitive functioning have not been well established. The aim of the present study is to assess performance of episodic memory in BD and SZ according to their clinical stages.

Clinical staging in bipolar disorder: focus on cognition and functioning.

Objective: Clinical staging has increasingly been considered suitable for psychiatric disorders such as bipolar disorder. A staging model of bipolar disorder could help clinicians understand the mechanisms underlying the course of the illness and guide prognosis and therapy. This study aimed to investigate differences in functional status and cognitive functioning in patients in different clinical stages of bipolar disorder.

Evaluating psychiatric case-control studies using the STROBE (STrengthening the Reporting of OBservational Studies in Epidemiology) statement.

Context And Objective: Case-control studies are important in developing clinical and public health knowledge. The STROBE statement (STrengthening the Reporting of OBservational Studies in Epidemiology) was developed to establish a checklist of items that should be included in articles reporting observational studies. Our aim was to analyze whether the psychiatric case-control articles published in Brazilian journals with CAPES Qualis rating B1/B2 in 2009 conformed with the STROBE statement.

Bipolar disorder affects behavior and social skills on the Internet.

Background: Bipolar disorder (BD) is a significant cause of functional, cognitive, and social impairment. However, classic studies of functioning and social skills have not investigated how BD may impact behavior on the Internet. Given that the digital age has been changing the way people communicate, this study aims to investigate the pattern of Internet use in patients with BD.

Verbal memory impairment in healthy siblings of patients with schizophrenia.

Cognitive deficits have been recognized as a core feature of schizophrenia (SZ) and are present in most patients. Verbal memory (VM), working memory (WM), and executive function (EF) are domains commonly impaired in patients with SZ. These latter domains have been related to the genetic risk of the disorder characterizing as possible endophenotypes.

Serum levels of IL-6, IL-10 and TNF-α in patients with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia: differences in pro- and anti-inflammatory balance.

Objective: Previous reports suggest that cytokines act as potential mediators of the interaction between the immune and neuroendocrine systems, and that a proinflammatory state may be associated with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. The aim is to compare cytokine levels in both disorders.

Method: Twenty euthymic bipolar disorder patients, 53 chronic stabilized schizophrenia patients and 80 healthy controls were recruited.