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.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the