Publications by authors named "Pedro Gomes de Alvarenga"
Article Synopsis
- Environmental factors play a crucial role in developing obsessive-compulsive symptoms (OCS) alongside genetic influences, highlighting the need for further research on these factors.
- A study of 1,877 children and adolescents explored various potential risk factors, measuring impacts over a 3-year period, with an average participant age of 10.2 years initially.
- Key predictors for increased OCS at follow-up included lower socioeconomic status, lower IQ, younger age, higher maternal stress during pregnancy, lack of breastfeeding, parental baseline OCS, and youth's baseline anxiety and OCS scores.
Reduced prefrontal activation in pediatric patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder during verbal episodic memory encoding.
J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry
October 2015
Objective: Patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) often present with deficits in episodic memory, and there is evidence that these difficulties may be secondary to executive dysfunction, that is, impaired selection and/or application of memory-encoding strategies (mediation hypothesis). Semantic clustering is an effective strategy to enhance encoding of verbal episodic memory (VEM) when word lists are semantically related. Self-initiated mobilization of this strategy has been associated with increased activity in the prefrontal cortex, particularly the orbitofrontal cortex, a key region in the pathophysiology of OCD.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: A small proportion of individuals with Tourette syndrome (TS) have a lifelong course of illness that fails to respond to conventional treatments. Open label studies have suggested that low frequency (1-Hz) repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) targeting the supplementary motor area (SMA) may be effective in reducing tic severity.
Objective/hypothesis: To examine the efficacy of rTMS over the SMA for TS in a randomized double-blind sham-controlled trial (RCT).
Objective: To evaluate the clinical features of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) patients with comorbid tic disorders (TD) in a large, multicenter, clinical sample.
Method: A cross-sectional study was conducted that included 813 consecutive OCD outpatients from the Brazilian OCD Research Consortium and used several instruments of assessment, including the Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale, the Dimensional Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale, the Yale Global Tic Severity Scale (YGTSS), the USP Sensory Phenomena Scale, and the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Axis I Disorders.
Results: The sample mean current age was 34.
Background: Although knowledge on developmental psychiatry is fundamental for the early recognition, treatment, and prevention of mental disorders, this subject has not been incorporated into the medical curriculum or psychiatric practice in Brazil.
Objective: To evaluate the effect of a short course on developmental psychiatry for undergraduate students and to expand education policies concerning developmental psychiatry in Brazil.
Methods: Before and after attending an extracurricular 12-hour, 4-day course on the fundamentals of developmental psychiatry, undergraduate health sciences students were tested regarding their knowledge of the subject.
Objective: The objective is to evaluate the prevalence and associated clinical characteristics of eating disorders (ED) in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).
Method: This is a cross-sectional study comparing 815 patients with OCD. Participants were assessed with structured interviews and scales: SCID-I, Y-BOCS, Dimensional Y-BOCS, BABS, Beck Depression and Anxiety Inventories.
Objective: This study aims to compare the prevalence of obsessive-compulsive spectrum disorders (OCSD) in psychiatric outpatients with and without a history of rheumatic fever (RF).
Methods: An analytical cross-sectional study assessing a large sample of consecutive psychiatric outpatients at a Brazilian private practice was conducted during a 10-year period. Psychiatric diagnoses were made by a senior psychiatrist based on Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition.
Refractory psychotic symptoms in a patient with homozygous sickle cell disease: a 24-month follow-up.
Prog Neuropsychopharmacol Biol Psychiatry
January 2008
The present report describes a case of a 33-year old male patient with homozygous sickle cell disease (SCD) with comorbid psychotic symptoms. The systematical evaluation revealed an intimate association between acute SCD complications, associated with hematological abnormalities, and psychotic symptoms worsening. Clozapine was effective in controlling psychotic symptoms refractory to previous antipsychotic trials.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Recent findings suggest that acute-phase rheumatic fever (RF) patients present with higher frequencies of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and tic disorders. Until now, there have been no such studies in RF in non-acute phases.
Objective: To verify whether patients with a history of RF with or without Sydenham's chorea (SC) present with higher rates of OCD, tic disorders, and other obsessive-compulsive (OC) spectrum disorders (such as body dysmorphic disorder [BDD]) than controls.