Dear colleagues,
It is my great pleasure to welcome you to the fifth issue of 2012.
We begin the issue with the WFSBP Guidelines for Biological Treatment of Schizophrenia. These guidelines are an update of the first edition of the WFSBP Guidelines for Biological Treatment of Schizophrenia published in 2005. Since then a large number of studies have been published and discussed in the literature. It is evident that new treatment modalities are available and evidence-based practice recommendations for physicians diagnosing and treating patients with schizophrenia can be considered. The first part of the updated guidelines covers the description of antipsychotics and their side effects, the biological treatment of acute schizophrenia and the management of treatment-resistant schizophrenia. The guidelines on the long-term treatment of schizophrenia and on the management of special circumstances will follow thereafter.
I wish to thank the authors and the entire WFSBP Taskforce on Schizophrenia for their excellent work.
The second article I am delighted to present to you is a consensus report of the WFSBP Taskforce on Biological Markers that was obtained together with the World Federation of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) on the topic of biomarkers of ADHD. So far the diagnosis of ADHD is largely based on the clinical phenomenology using convention-based diagnostic systems that do not necessarily reflect the underlying neurobiological mechanism. Unfortunately, like in other psychiatric diseases no reliable ADHD-biomarkers have been described as yet. However, there are some promising candidates to be considered. As in other psychiatric diseases the combination of markers may help to reduce the heterogeneity and to identify more homogenous subtypes of ADHD. I would like to thank the authors and the entire WFSBP Taskforce on Biological Markers, which in collaboration with the World Federation of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) performed an outstanding work.
Yours sincerely,
Siegfried Kasper, MD
Chief Editor