Background: Neuropsychiatric symptoms in SLE and other systemic autoimmune rheumatic diseases (SARDs) are challenging to diagnose, attribute and manage. We investigated the timings of onset of a broad range of neuropsychiatric (NP) symptoms in relation to timing of SLE onset. In addition, we explored whether NP symptoms may be a prodrome to SARD onset and to subsequent flares.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe spectrum, pathophysiology and recovery trajectory of persistent post-COVID-19 cognitive deficits are unknown, limiting our ability to develop prevention and treatment strategies. We report the 1-year cognitive, serum biomarker and neuroimaging findings from a prospective, national study of cognition in 351 COVID-19 patients who required hospitalization, compared with 2,927 normative matched controls. Cognitive deficits were global, associated with elevated brain injury markers and reduced anterior cingulate cortex volume 1 year after COVID-19.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLancet Psychiatry
October 2024
Background: Antibodies against the N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor (NMDAR) have been described in the serum of people with schizophrenia spectrum disorders (schizophrenia). However, the prevalence and clinical relevance of these antibodies in schizophrenia is unclear. This knowledge gap includes the possibility of such antibodies being associated with a distinct clinical profile, which in turn might warrant a distinct treatment approach.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFReproducible and standardised neurological assessment scales are important in quantifying research outcomes. These scales are often performed by non-neurologists and/or non-clinicians and must be robust, quantifiable, reproducible and comparable to a neurologist's assessment. COVID-CNS is a multi-centre study which utilised the Neurological Impairment Scale (NIS) as a core assessment tool in studying neurological outcomes following COVID-19 infection.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThere is growing evidence suggesting that immunological mechanisms play a significant role in the development of psychiatric symptoms in certain patient subgroups. However, the relationship between clinical red flags for suspected autoimmune psychiatric disease and signs of central nervous system (CNS) pathology (e.g.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Bipolar disorders (BD) are chronic, debilitating disorders. The blood-brain barrier (BBB) has been increasingly investigated in BD. This systematic review aimed to assess the available evidence on the relationship between BD and markers of BBB dysfunction.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Attribution of neuropsychiatric symptoms in systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) relies heavily on clinician assessment. Limited clinic time, variable knowledge, and symptom under-reporting contributes to discordance between clinician assessments and patient symptoms. We obtained attributional data directly from patients and clinicians in order to estimate and compare potential levels of direct attribution to SLE of multiple neuropsychiatric symptoms using different patient-derived measures.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Acad Consult Liaison Psychiatry
June 2024
Background: Anti-N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor encephalitis (ANMDARE) is a neuroimmunological disorder that frequently improves with immunotherapy. Symptomatic treatment with antipsychotics is common in the early stages when psychiatric symptoms predominate, and their use has been associated with serious side effects including neuroleptic malignant syndrome (NMS). The observation of an adverse response to antipsychotics, raising the suspicion of NMS, has been included as a criterion for possible autoimmune psychosis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Neuropsychiatric lupus (NPSLE) is challenging to diagnose. Many neuropsychiatric symptoms, such as headache and hallucinations, cannot be verified by tests or clinician assessment. We investigated prioritisations of methods for diagnosing NPSLE and attributional views.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground And Hypothesis: Use of clozapine in treatment-resistant schizophrenia is often limited due to risk of adverse effects. Cross-sectional associations between clozapine treatment and low immunoglobulin levels have been reported, however prospective studies are required to establish temporal relationships. We tested the hypothesis that reductions in immunoglobulin levels would occur over the first 6 months following initiation of clozapine treatment.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground And Purpose: Acute encephalitis is associated with psychiatric symptoms. Despite this, the extent of mental health problems following encephalitis has not been systematically reported.
Methods: We recruited adults who had been diagnosed with encephalitis of any aetiology to complete a web-based questionnaire.
Importance: Individuals presenting with first-episode psychosis (FEP) may have a secondary ("organic") etiology to their symptoms that can be identified using neuroimaging. Because failure to detect such cases at an early stage can have serious clinical consequences, it has been suggested that brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) should be mandatory for all patients presenting with FEP. However, this remains a controversial issue, partly because the prevalence of clinically relevant MRI abnormalities in this group is unclear.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIndividuals at clinical high risk (CHR) for psychosis have been found to have altered cytokine levels, but whether these changes are related to clinical outcomes remains unclear. We addressed this issue by measuring serum levels of 20 immune markers in 325 participants (n = 269 CHR, n = 56 healthy controls) using multiplex immunoassays, and then followed up the CHR sample to determine their clinical outcomes. Among 269 CHR individuals, 50 (18.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground And Hypothesis: Treatment response to specific antipsychotic medications is difficult to predict on clinical grounds alone. The current study hypothesizes that the baseline complement pathway activity predicts the treatment response and investigates the relationship between baseline plasma biomarkers with treatment response to antipsychotic medications.
Study Design: Baseline plasma samples were collected from first episode of psychosis patients (n = 243) from a multi-center clinical trial.
J Neuropsychiatry Clin Neurosci
July 2023
Objective: -methyl-d-aspartate receptor (NMDAR) encephalitis is an autoantibody-mediated neurological syndrome with prominent cognitive and neuropsychiatric symptoms. The clinical relevance of NMDAR antibodies outside the context of encephalitis was assessed in this study.
Methods: Plasma from patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) (N=108) and healthy control subjects (N=89) was screened at baseline for immunoglobulin A (IgA), IgM, and IgG NMDAR antibodies, phosphorylated tau 181 (p-tau181), and the neuroaxonal injury marker neurofilament light (NfL).
Background: Neuropsychiatric presentations of monkeypox (MPX) infection have not been well characterised, despite evidence of nervous system involvement associated with the related smallpox infection.
Methods: In this pre-registered (PROSPERO ID 336649) systematic review and meta-analysis, we searched MEDLINE, EMBASE, PsycINFO, AMED and the preprint server MedRxiv up to 31/05/2022. Any study design of humans infected with MPX that reported a neurological or psychiatric presentation was included.
Catatonia is a neuropsychiatric disorder characterised by altered movement, speech, and behaviour. Clozapine is an established therapy for treatment-resistant schizophrenia, but its role in catatonia has not been systematically examined. In this systematic review, we aimed to assess the evidence for clozapine as a treatment for catatonia.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Neuropsychiatry Clin Neurosci
January 2023
Encephalopathy, a common condition among patients hospitalized with COVID-19, can be a challenge to manage and negatively affect prognosis. While encephalopathy may present clinically as delirium, subsyndromal delirium, or coma and may be a result of systemic causes such as hypoxia, COVID-19 has also been associated with more prolonged encephalopathy due to less common but nevertheless severe complications, such as inflammation of the brain parenchyma (with or without cerebrovascular involvement), demyelination, or seizures, which may be disproportionate to COVID-19 severity and require specific management. Given the large number of patients hospitalized with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 infection, even these relatively unlikely complications are increasingly recognized and are particularly important because they require specific management.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Neuropsychiatric symptoms are common and important to people with Parkinson's disease (PD), but their etiology is poorly understood. Plasma neurofilament light (NfL) and p-tau181 are biomarkers of neuro-axonal degeneration and tau pathology respectively, which have yet to be explored in association with the affective and psychotic symptoms in PD.
Objective: To investigate the relationship between plasma NfL and p-tau181 with the affective and psychotic symptoms in PD.
Objective: Catatonia is a debilitating psychomotor disorder. Previous neuroimaging studies have used small samples with inconsistent results. The authors aimed to describe the structural neuroradiological abnormalities in clinical magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) brain scans of patients with catatonia, comparing them with scans of psychiatric inpatients without catatonia.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSevere acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the aetiologic agent of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), is now rapidly disseminating throughout the world with 147,443,848 cases reported so far. Around 30-80% of cases (depending on COVID-19 severity) are reported to have neurological manifestations including anosmia, stroke, and encephalopathy. In addition, some patients have recognised autoimmune neurological disorders, including both central (limbic and brainstem encephalitis, acute disseminated encephalomyelitis [ADEM], and myelitis) and peripheral diseases (Guillain-Barré and Miller Fisher syndrome).
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