Publications by authors named "Piotr M Czerski"

Article Synopsis
  • Lithium is the primary treatment for bipolar disorder (BD), but how it works and predicts outcomes is not fully understood.
  • A previous study identified key cellular pathways linked to lithium response, including focal adhesion and PI3K-Akt signaling.
  • In this new study, researchers confirmed these pathways in a larger group of 2039 patients but found no connection with the extracellular matrix, suggesting that issues with neuronal growth signaling may impact lithium effectiveness.
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Rationale: In bipolar disorder (BD), immunological factors play a role in the pathogenesis and treatment of the illness. Studies showed the potential link between Abelson Helper Integration Site 1 (AHI1) protein, behavioural changes and innate immunity regulation. An immunomodulatory effect was suggested for lithium, a mood stabilizer used in BD treatment.

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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.

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Response to lithium varies widely between individuals with bipolar disorder (BD). Polygenic risk scores (PRSs) can uncover pharmacogenomics effects and may help predict drug response. Patients ( = 2,510) with BD were assessed for long-term lithium response in the Consortium on Lithium Genetics using the Retrospective Criteria of Long-Term Treatment Response in Research Subjects with Bipolar Disorder score.

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Background: Response to lithium in patients with bipolar disorder is associated with clinical and transdiagnostic genetic factors. The predictive combination of these variables might help clinicians better predict which patients will respond to lithium treatment.

Aims: To use a combination of transdiagnostic genetic and clinical factors to predict lithium response in patients with bipolar disorder.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study investigates the genetic and phenotypic traits associated with age at onset (AAO) and polarity at onset (PAO) in bipolar disorder to enhance understanding of the illness and develop screening tools.
  • Results indicate that an earlier AAO is linked to more severe symptoms, such as psychosis and suicidality, as well as variations in educational success and living situations.
  • The research reveals a significant relationship between higher polygenic risk scores for other mental disorders and earlier AAO, although no significant associations were found for PAO, highlighting considerable variability across different cohorts.
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Lithium is the gold standard therapy for Bipolar Disorder (BD) but its effectiveness differs widely between individuals. The molecular mechanisms underlying treatment response heterogeneity are not well understood, and personalized treatment in BD remains elusive. Genetic analyses of the lithium treatment response phenotype may generate novel molecular insights into lithium's therapeutic mechanisms and lead to testable hypotheses to improve BD management and outcomes.

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Bipolar affective disorder (BD) is a severe psychiatric illness, for which lithium (Li) is the gold standard for acute and maintenance therapies. The therapeutic response to Li in BD is heterogeneous and reliable biomarkers allowing patients stratification are still needed. A GWAS performed by the International Consortium on Lithium Genetics (ConLiGen) has recently identified genetic markers associated with treatment responses to Li in the human leukocyte antigens (HLA) region.

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Article Synopsis
  • Bipolar disorder has a genetic basis and complex causes; a large study compared nearly 42,000 bipolar patients with over 371,000 healthy controls, revealing 64 genomic regions linked to the disorder.
  • The findings showed that risk-related genes are heavily associated with brain functions, particularly in areas like the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus, and they include targets for various medications.
  • The research also distinguished between bipolar disorder types I and II, revealing a close genetic relationship and highlighting 15 specific genes that could lead to new treatment options and further investigations.
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Lithium is a first-line medication for bipolar disorder (BD), but only one in three patients respond optimally to the drug. Since evidence shows a strong clinical and genetic overlap between depression and bipolar disorder, we investigated whether a polygenic susceptibility to major depression is associated with response to lithium treatment in patients with BD. Weighted polygenic scores (PGSs) were computed for major depression (MD) at different GWAS p value thresholds using genetic data obtained from 2586 bipolar patients who received lithium treatment and took part in the Consortium on Lithium Genetics (ConLiGen) study.

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Article Synopsis
  • * The analysis discovered 30 significant genetic loci linked to bipolar disorder, including 20 that hadn't been previously identified, which involve genes related to ion channels and neurotransmitter systems.
  • * The study also showed that Bipolar I disorder has a genetic connection to schizophrenia, particularly linked to psychosis, while Bipolar II disorder is more closely related to major depressive disorder, shedding light on potential biological mechanisms and clinical implications.
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Background: Previous research has shown that polymorphisms in the gene are related to some psychiatric conditions, including alcohol dependence. These relationships are moderated by the level of adverse childhood experiences that one has undergone. Maladaptive metacognition, associated with symptoms of psychiatric disorders and disturbed emotional self-regulation, is also a strong predictor of problematic alcohol use.

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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.

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Article Synopsis
  • A study investigated the genetic overlap between 25 brain disorders using data from over 1.2 million individuals, finding that psychiatric disorders share more genetic risk compared to neurological disorders, which seem more distinct.
  • The research identified significant relationships between these disorders and various cognitive measures, suggesting shared underlying traits.
  • Simulations were conducted to understand how factors like sample size and diagnosis accuracy influence genetic correlations, emphasizing the role of common genetic variations in the risk of brain disorders.
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Bipolar disorder (BD) is a common, highly heritable neuropsychiatric disease characterized by recurrent episodes of mania and depression. Lithium is the best-established long-term treatment for BD, even though individual response is highly variable. Evidence suggests that some of this variability has a genetic basis.

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Background: Bipolar disorder (BD) is a common and highly heritable disorder of mood. Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified several independent susceptibility loci. In order to extract more biological information from GWAS data, multi-locus approaches represent powerful tools since they utilize knowledge about biological processes to integrate functional sets of genes at strongly to moderately associated loci.

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Importance: Lithium is a first-line mood stabilizer for the treatment of bipolar affective disorder (BPAD). However, the efficacy of lithium varies widely, with a nonresponse rate of up to 30%. Biological response markers are lacking.

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Background: Recent studies revealed the role of the () gene variability in vulnerability to posttraumatic stress disorder in women. Due to the relatively high comorbidity of posttraumatic stress disorder and substance use disorder, we hypothesized about possible associations between gene and problematic alcohol use.

Method: The sample studied consisted of 491 women aged 18-28 years (mean age =21.

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Article Synopsis
  • Bipolar disorder (BD) is a highly hereditary mental illness marked by alternating episodes of mania and depression, sharing significant genetic and clinical traits with schizophrenia (SCZ).
  • A study involving a large dataset of BD patients and controls found that 22 out of 107 genetic variants (SNPs) identified in SCZ research showed a link to BD, indicating shared genetic risk factors.
  • Notably, one significant SNP was near the TRANK1 gene, known to be associated with BD; this study also highlighted potential disease pathways involving calcium and glutamate signaling, which could lead to new treatment strategies for both disorders.
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Background: Major depressive disorder (MDD) has a high personal and socio-economic burden and >60% of patients fail to achieve remission with the first antidepressant. The biological mechanisms behind antidepressant response are only partially known but genetic factors play a relevant role. A combined predictor across genetic variants may be useful to investigate this complex trait.

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