Dear Colleagues,
It is my pleasure to welcome you to the third issue of 2011.
I am delighted to present to you the WFSBP Guidelines for Biological Treatment of Substance Use and Related Disorders, Part 2: Opioid Dependence. With this comprehensive manual which includes numerous recommendations, the WFSBP aims to provide up-to-date treatment options and thus to further improve treatment for patients world-wide and to spread knowledge also in countries with limited continuing education possibilities. I wish to thank Michael Soyka, secretary of the WFSBP Task Force on Addiction Disorders, and the entire taskforce for their superb work.
Wolfgang Huf and colleagues present a review article on meta-anaylsis and how to interpret such conclusions based on increasingly complex statistical methods. The authors address the challenge to assess meta-anaylses and provide practically relevant quality criteria for readers when dealing with meta-analytic publications in a ten-point checklist. Also data quality problems and publication bias are discussed along with methods how to identify them.
Andrea Schmitt and international colleagues present a genome-wide microarray study on the regulation of immune-modulatory genes in left superior temporal cortex in post-mortem brains of schizophrenia patients. Array data have been analyzed by gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) and further confirmed with selected genes by real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR). The findings support a brain-specific view of the role immune-modulatory genes may play in the left superior temporal cortex in schizophrenia, because immune functions in the patients are not disturbed. In keeping with comparable, previous studies supporting the notion that schizophrenia is a disease of the synapse, the authors hypothesize that dysregulation of immune-related genes modifies synaptic functions and stability in this region.
Increased GSK3B activity has been reported as a state marker of major affective episodes in patients with depression and bipolar disorder. The aim of the study by Breno Satler Diniz and Brazilian colleagues was to determine GSK3B activity in platelets of elderly patients with major depression, and the association between GSK3B activity and the severity of depressive symptoms and cognitive impairment. The finding of this study which included 40 drug-free elderly patients with major depressive episode and 13 healthy older adults provide additional evidence of the involvement of GSK3B in the pathophysiology of late-life major depression. Higher GSK3B activity may be more relevant in those patients with more severe depressive symptoms and cognitive impairment.
Oxidative stress (OS) plays an important role in the pathogenesis of multiple sclerosis (MS). In MS patients depression is often observed. Cryotherapy might have an effect on OS. Elzbieta Miller and colleagues from Poland compared the effects of whole body cryotherapy (WBCT) on changes in total antioxidative status (TAS) of plasma and activities of antioxidative enzymes in erythrocytes from depressive and non-depressive MS patients. The results indicate that WBCT suppresses OS in MS patients, especially in patients with depression.
Izabela Guimarães Barbosa and colleagues evaluated the plasma levels of nerve growth factor (NGF) by ELISA in patients diagnosed with bipolar disorder (BD) in comparison with control subjects. Forty-nine BD type-I patients (30 with mania and 19 with euthymia) and 36 healthy controls were assessed by Mini-plus, Young Mania and Hamilton Depression Rating scales. The study provides further support to the hypothesis of impaired neuro-plasticity in BD, suggesting that NGF measurement could be used as a biological marker for the manic state.
Peng Chen and colleagues from China present a brief report on a large-scale case–control study to test the association between colony stimulating factor 2 receptor, beta (CSF2RB), and three major mental disorders in the Chinese Han population. Seven single nucleotide polymorphisms were genotyped in 1140 bipolar affective disorder patients (including 645 type I bipolar affective disorder patients), 1140 schizophrenia patients, 1139 major depressive disorder patients and 1140 healthy controls. The findings support CSF2RB as a risk factor common to both schizophrenia and major depression in the Chinese Han population.