Symptomatological and neuropsychological hints can be used to predict psychosis, attending psychiatrist at National Taiwan University Hospital Liu Chen-chung (劉震鐘) said yesterday.
Liu made the remarks at this year’s International Symposium on Brain and Mind Sciences in Taipei, which focused on early detection and treatment of schizophrenia.
In his presentation on the neuropsychological study of early schizophrenia, Liu made public the results of a follow-up study on the psychopathological progress of early schizophrenia-like disorders, a five-year project sponsored by the National Health Research Institute from 2006 to 2010.
Led by National Taiwan University professor emeritus of psychiatry Hwu Hai-gwo (胡海國), the project aimed to follow not only participants with first-episode psychosis (FEP) or ultra-high-risk (UHR) for psychosis, now also called attenuated psychosis syndrome (APS), but also those at intermediate risk and marginal risk of psychosis.
“It echoes a recent proposal that if you want to monitor the pathogenesis of schizophrenia, [you should] not only focus on the late prodromal state like APS,” but also the earlier stages, Liu said.
By conducting a combination of neuropsychological tests, besides the FEP group, putative pre-psychotic participants were categorized into a UHR group, intermediate risk group (IRG) and marginal risk group, with the UHR group divided into those who transitioned into full-blown psychosis during the follow-up (UHR positive) and those who did not (UHR negative).
A total of 318 participants, divided into five groups, including the four mentioned above and a control group, were given baseline assessments, Liu said.
Liu said that although it was expected that there would be a gradient in the wellbeing of neurocognitive function among the groups, the result “was not so clear.”
The FEP, UHR and IRG groups all manifested verbal memory and processing speed deficits.
“Even [the participants who had been categorized to be at] a very early stage, the MR stage … showed some cognitive declines,” Liu said.
And while the FEP group performed worse among the clinical subjects, in terms of the test results, “the difference among the other three groups was not so significant,” Liu added.
“In some indicators, the UHR negative performed even worse than the UHR positive,” Liu added. “The baseline neurocognitive function of UHR subjects [thus] provided limited evidence to differentiate those who converted to FEP from those who did not later on.”
“And this is why we need to dig into other biomarkers,” such as the underlying neural mechanism causing the emergence of psychosis, “to get stronger predictors,” Liu said.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS