Enrico Collantoni

Prevalence, incidence and mortality from cardiovascular disease in patients with pooled and specific severe mental illness: a large‐scale meta‐analysis of 3,211,768 patients and 113,383,368 controls

People with severe mental illness (SMI) – schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major depressive disorder – appear at risk for cardiovascular disease (CVD), but a comprehensive meta‐analysis is lacking. We conducted a large‐scale meta‐analysis assessing the prevalence and incidence of CVD; coronary heart disease; stroke, transient ischemic attack or cerebrovascular disease; congestive heart failure; peripheral vascular disease; and CVD‐related death in SMI patients (N=3,211,768) versus controls (N=113,383,368) (92 studies). The pooled CVD prevalence in SMI patients (mean age 50 years) was 9.9% (95% CI: 7.4‐13.3). Adjusting for a median of seven confounders, patients had significantly higher odds of CVD versus controls in cross‐sectional studies (odds ratio, OR=1.53, 95% CI: 1.27‐1.83; 11 studies), and higher odds of coronary heart disease (OR=1.51, 95% CI: 1.47‐1.55) and cerebrovascular disease (OR=1.42, 95% CI: 1.21‐1.66). People with major depressive disorder were at increased risk for coronary heart disease, while those with schizophrenia were at increased risk for coronary heart disease, cerebrovascular disease and congestive heart failure. Cumulative CVD incidence in SMI patients was 3.6% (95% CI: 2.7‐5.3) during a median follow‐up of 8.4 years (range 1.8‐30.0). Adjusting for a median of six confounders, SMI patients had significantly higher CVD incidence than controls in longitudinal studies (hazard ratio, HR=1.78, 95% CI: 1.60‐1.98; 31 studies). The incidence was also higher for coronary heart disease (HR=1.54, 95% CI: 1.30‐1.82), cerebrovascular disease (HR=1.64, 95% CI: 1.26‐2.14), congestive heart failure (HR=2.10, 95% CI: 1.64‐2.70), and CVD‐related death (HR=1.85, 95% CI: 1.53‐2.24). People with major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia were all at increased risk of CVD‐related death versus controls. CVD incidence increased with antipsychotic use (p=0.008), higher body mass index (p=0.008) and higher baseline CVD prevalence (p=0.03) in patients vs. controls. Moreover, CVD prevalence (p=0.007), but not CVD incidence (p=0.21), increased in more recently conducted studies. This large‐scale meta‐analysis confirms that SMI patients have significantly increased risk of CVD and CVD‐related mortality, and that elevated body mass index, antipsychotic use, and CVD screening and management require urgent clinical attention.

Functional connectivity correlates of response inhibition impairment in anorexia nervosa

Anorexia nervosa (AN) is a disorder characterized by high levels of cognitive control and behavioral perseveration. The present study aims at exploring inhibitory control abilities and their functional connectivity correlates in patients with AN. Inhibitory control - an executive function that allows the realization of adaptive behavior according to environmental contingencies - has been assessed by means of the Stop-Signal paradigm. The study involved 155 patients with lifetime AN and 102 healthy women. A subsample underwent resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging and was genotyped for COMT and 5-HTTLPR polymorphisms. AN patients showed an impaired response inhibition and a disruption of the functional connectivity of the ventral attention circuit, a neural network implicated in behavioral response when a stimulus occurs unexpected. The 5-HTTLPR genotype appears to significantly interact with the functional connectivity of ventral attention network in explaining task performance in both patients and controls, suggesting a role of the serotoninergic system in mechanisms of response selection. The disruption of the ventral attention network in patients with AN suggests lower efficiency of bottom-up signal filtering, which might be involved in difficulties to adapt behavioral responses to environmental needs. Our findings deserve further research to confirm their scientific and therapeutic implications.

The relationships of personal resources with symptom severity and psychosocial functioning in persons with schizophrenia: results from the Italian Network for Research on Psychoses study

The relationships of personal resources with symptom severity and psychosocial functioning have never been tested systematically in a large sample of people with schizophrenia. We applied structural equation models to a sample of 921 patients with schizophrenia collected in a nationwide Italian study, with the aim to identify, among a large set of personal resources, those that may have an association with symptom severity or psychosocial functioning. Several relevant demographic and clinical variables were considered concurrently. Poor service engagement and poor recovery style, as well as older age and younger age at onset, were related to greater symptom severity and poorer social functioning. Higher resilience and higher education were related to better social functioning only. Poor problem-focused coping and internalized stigma, as well as male gender and depression, were related to symptom severity only. The explored variables showed distinctive and partially independent associations with symptom severity and psychosocial functioning. A deeper understanding of these relationships may inform treatment decisions.

Serotonin transporter gene polymorphism in eating disorders: Data from a new biobank and META-analysis of previous studies

Objectives Growing interest focuses on the association between 5-HTTLPR polymorphism and eating disorders (ED), but published findings have been conflicting. Methods The Italian BIO.VE.D.A. biobank provided 976 samples (735 ED patients and 241 controls) for genotyping. We conducted a literature search of studies published up to 1 April 2015, including studies reporting on 5HTTLPR genotype and allele frequencies in obesity and/or ED. We ran a meta-analysis, including data from BIO.VE.D.A. – comparing low and high-functioning genotype and allele frequencies in ED vs. controls. Results Data from 21 studies, plus BIO.VE.D.A., were extracted providing information from 3,736 patients and 2,707 controls. Neither low- nor high-functioning genotype frequencies in ED patients, with both bi- and tri-allelic models, differed from controls. Furthermore, neither low- nor high-functioning allele frequencies in ED or in BN, in both bi- and triallelic models, differed from control groups. After sensitivity analysis, results were the same in AN vs. controls. Results remained unaltered when investigating recessive and dominant models. Conclusions 5HTTLPR does not seem to be associated with ED in general, or with AN or BN in particular. Future studies in ED should explore the role of ethnicity and psychiatric comorbidity as a possible source of bias.

Clinical and genetic correlates of decision making in anorexia nervosa

ABSTRACT Introduction: Decision-making (DM) abilities have been found to be impaired in anorexia nervosa (AN), but few data are available about the characteristics and correlates of this cognitive function. The aim of the present study was to provide data on DM functioning in AN using both veridical and adaptive paradigms. While in veridical DM tasks, the individual’s ability to predict a true/false response is measured, adaptive DM is the ability to consider both internal and external demands in order to make a good choice, in the absence of a single true “correct” answer. Method: The participants were 189 women, of whom 91 were eating-disordered patients with a lifetime diagnosis of anorexia nervosa, and 98 were healthy women. All the participants underwent clinical, neuropsychological, and genetic assessment. The cognitive evaluation included a set of neuropsychological tasks and two decision-making tests: The Iowa Gambling Task and the Cognitive Bias Task. Results: Anorexia nervosa patients showed significantly poorer performances on both decision-making tasks than healthy women. The Cognitive Bias Task revealed that anorexia nervosa patients employed significantly more context-independent decision-making strategies, which were independent from diagnostic subtype, handedness, education, and psychopathology. In the whole sample (patients and controls), Cognitive Bias Task performance was independently predicted by lifetime anorexia nervosa diagnosis, body mass index at assessment, and 5-HTTLPR genotype. Conclusions: Patients displayed poor decision-making functioning in both veridical and adaptive situations. The difficulties detected in anorexia nervosa individuals may affect not only the ability to consider the future outcomes of their actions (leading to “myopia for the future”), but also the capacity to update and review one’s own mindset according to new environmental stimuli.

Personal resources and depression in schizophrenia: The role of self-esteem, resilience and internalized stigma

Depression in schizophrenia represents a challenge from a diagnostic, psychopathological and therapeutic perspective. The objective of this study is to test the hypothesis that resilience and self-stigma affect depression severity and to evaluate the strength of their relations in 921 patients with schizophrenia. A structural equation model was tested where depression is hypothesized as affected by resilience, internalized stigma, gender and negative symptoms, with the latter two variables used as exogenous covariates and the former two as mediators. The analysis reveals that low resilience, high negative symptoms, female gender were directly associated with depression severity, and internalized stigma acted only as a mediator between avolition and resilience, with similar magnitude. The cross-sectional study design and the variable selection limit the generalizability of the study results. The model supports a complex interaction between personal resources and negative symptoms in predicting depression in schizophrenia. The clinical implication of these findings is that personal resources could be a significant target of psychosocial treatments.

Network analysis of specific psychopathology and psychiatric symptoms in patients with eating disorders

BACKGROUND Network analysis of psychiatric symptoms describes reciprocal relationships of individual symptoms, beyond categorical diagnoses. Those with eating disorders (EDs) frequently have complex patterns of comorbid symptoms and the transdiagnostic theory includes shared common core features across diagnoses. We aim to test whether general psychiatric symptoms comprise components of these transdiagnostic features. METHODS Network analysis was applied on 2068 patients with EDs (955 anorexia nervosa [AN], 813 bulimia nervosa [BN], and 300 binge-eating disorder [BED]). All patients underwent clinical interviews and some self-reported questionnaires, such as the Symptom Check-List 90 (SCL-90) to measure psychiatric symptoms, the Eating Disorder Inventory (EDI) to measure ED-specific symptoms, and the Tridimensional Personality Questionnaire (TPQ) for personality traits. RESULTS Across EDs and within each ED, SCL-90 scores of depression, anxiety and interpersonal sensitivity, EDI ineffectiveness, interoceptive awareness, interpersonal distrust, and drive for thinness had high centrality. Notably, body mass index (BMI) and EDI bulimia played a central role when considering the whole group, whereas they did not in individual EDs. DISCUSSION The shared centrality of identified nodes in both individual and merged groups supported the transdiagnostic theory of EDs (diagnoses share core ED features), with a central role of BMI. Moreover, the most central nodes were general psychiatric symptoms, interpersonal domain, and self-efficacy. These findings suggest that-in addition to ED-core symptoms and BMI-depressive and anxiety symptoms, interpersonal sensitivity and ineffectiveness may be important targets to provide effective treatments across AN, BN, and BED.

Decision-making impairment in anorexia nervosa: New insights into the role of age and decision-making style

OBJECTIVE Patients with anorexia nervosa (AN) often report difficulties in decision making, which may interfere with treatment. The aim of this study was to investigate decision making in a large sample of adolescent and adult patients with AN, by using the Iowa gambling task. METHOD Participants were 611 female individuals (310 patients and 301 controls) who underwent neuropsychological and clinical assessment. RESULTS Significantly poorer decision-making performance was observed in adult patients, whereas no difference emerged between affected and nonaffected adolescents. Both adolescent and adult patients were characterized by trends for higher levels of attention to losses in comparison with healthy controls. Although healthy adult women exhibited better decision-making performance than healthy adolescents, in AN, there was no improvement of decision making with age. A cluster analysis identified 2 different styles of decision making in both patients and controls: a conservative style and an impulsive style. DISCUSSION Our study provides evidence of dysfunctional decision making in adult patients with AN and reveals an association between poor decision making and excessive punishment sensitivity in AN. The clinical and scientific implications of these findings merit further exploration.

Network analysis of specific psychopathology and psychiatric symptoms in patients with anorexia nervosa

BACKGROUND Network analysis is increasingly applied to psychiatric populations to understand relationships among symptoms. METHODS Network analysis was applied on 955 patients with anorexia nervosa (AN; 631 restricting-type [ANR] and 324 binge eating-/purging-type [ANBP]), assessed with Symptom Check-List 90 (SCL-90), Eating Disorder Inventory (EDI), and Tridimensional Personality Questionnaire. RESULTS Depression, anxiety, interpersonal sensitivity (SCL-90), and ineffectiveness (EDI) had the highest centrality (strength from 1.19 to 1.35 in ANBP, and from 1.15 to 1.51 in ANR). Body mass index (BMI) had low centrality (0.14 ANBP and 0.41 ANR). Drive for thinness showed the strongest correlation with central nodes in ANBP (correlation around 0.44) and ANR (correlation range 0.38-0.47), and drive for thinness had higher centrality in ANR (1.15) than in ANBP (0.81), whereas body dissatisfaction in ANBP (0.73) than in ANR (0.61). DISCUSSION In addition to ED-core symptoms, psychiatric comorbid symptoms should be the focus of specific treatments in patients with AN, independently from BMI.

Eating disorders symptoms in sexual minority women: A systematic review

BACKGROUND Although the literature consistently shows increased levels of psychological distress in the gay population, less evidence-and with contrasting findings-is available with regard to lesbian women. The aim of the present study is to review the literature in the eating disorders (EDs) field in order to provide further data on the frequency of EDs symptoms in sexual minority women. METHOD A systematic review of the studies identified by electronic database search (PubMed, Ovid, ScienceDirect, and Google Scholar) up to August 2017. RESULTS Fourty-five studies were found, conducted on 372,256 women. Only 7 studies investigated patients with lifetime diagnosis of ED. As for the symptomatology of EDs, 39 studies were found, which presented huge differences in the scales used for the assessment (e.g., Eating Disorders Inventory and Eating Attitudes Test-26). CONCLUSIONS A higher number of diagnoses of EDs were found in sexual minority women, with a symptomatology characterized by higher occurrence of binge eating and purging, as well as lower body dissatisfaction and drive for thinness, compared with heterosexual peers.