Schizophrenia News

Study data showed that switching antipsychotic medications did not improve clinical outcomes in patients with first-episode schizophrenia who had not achieved remission.

Patients with schizophrenia taking a combination of at least three different classes of psychiatric drugs had a higher risk for developing type 2 diabetes compared with those taking first-generation antipsychotics alone, findings published in BMC Psychiatry showed.

A study published in the American Journal of Human Genetics found that changes in the structure and sequence of nucleotide arrays of tandem repeats may have contributed to changes in the human calcium channel gene CACNA1C during human evolution and may modulate risk for schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and other neuropsychiatric diseases in modern populations.

Using machine learning, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania found that four dimensions of psychopathology — mood, psychosis, fear and disruptive externalizing behavior — were linked to distinct patterns of connectivity in the brain.

An international consensus panel offered guidance on the most appropriate treatment approaches for managing behavioral and psychological symptoms — and agitation and psychosis — related to dementia, as well as the most promising treatments for the future in International Psychogeriatrics.

Teenagers with elevated levels of psychotic-like experiences while engaging in a reward processing task showed differential activation in frontostriatal brain areas compared with control adolescents, data published in JAMA Psychiatry revealed.

Young people at very high risk for psychosis seemed to show cognitive deficits, study findings published in JAMA Psychiatry revealed.

Researchers identified first-episode drug-naive schizophrenia patients with an accuracy of 78.6% and predicted their responses to antipsychotic treatment with an 82.5% accuracy at the individual level using machine-learning algorithms and the functional connections of the superior temporal cortex, according to study findings.

Adjunctive treatment with a standardized extract of Withania somnifera, a medicinal herb known commonly as ashwagandha, provided benefits for patients with schizophrenia experiencing an exacerbation of symptoms and stress, according to study findings.

No evidence supported a link between antipsychotic medications and increased short-term mortality, according to findings from a systematic review and meta-analysis of placebo-controlled randomized trials.