Continuous Monitoring of Psychosocial Stress by Non-Invasive Volatilomics.

Stress is becoming increasingly commonplace in modern times, making it important to have accurate and effective detection methods. Currently, detection methods such as self-evaluation and clinical questionnaires are subjective and unsuitable for long-term monitoring. There have been significant studies into biomarkers such as HRV, cortisol, electrocardiography, and blood biomarkers, but the use of multiple electrodes for electrocardiography or blood tests is impractical for real-time stress monitoring. To this end, there is a need for non-invasive sensors to monitor stress in real time. This study looks at the possibility of using breath and skin VOC fingerprinting as stress biomarkers. The Trier social stress test (TSST) was used to induce acute stress and HRV, cortisol, and anxiety levels were measured before, during, and after the test. GC-MS and sensor array were used to collect and measure VOCs. A prediction model found eight different stress-related VOCs with an accuracy of up to 78%, and a molecularly capped gold nanoparticle-based sensor revealed a significant difference in breath VOC fingerprints between the two groups. These stress-related VOCs either changed or returned to baseline after the stress induction, suggesting different metabolic pathways at different times. A correlation analysis revealed an association between VOCs and cortisol levels and a weak correlation with either HRV or anxiety levels, suggesting that VOCs may include complementary information in stress detection. This study shows the potential of VOCs as stress biomarkers, paving the way into developing a real-time, objective, non-invasive stress detection tool for well-being and early detection of stress-related diseases.

Blocking the ErbB pathway during adolescence affects the induction of anxiety-like behavior in young adult maternal immune activation offspring.

Epidemiological and experimental evidence demonstrates that maternal exposure to infection during gestation increases the offspring's risk of developing schizophrenia and other neurodevelopmental disorders. In addition, the NRG-ErbB4 signaling pathway is involved in brain development and neuropsychiatric disorders. Specifically, this pathway modulates the dopaminergic and GABAergic systems and is expressed in the early stages of prenatal development. We recently demonstrated that maternal immune activation (MIA) at late gestation altered the expression of NRG1, its receptor ErbB4, and the dopamine D2 receptor four hours post-injection of viral or LPS in the fetal brain. We also reported that blocking the ErbB pathway during adolescence resulted in increased striatal DA content and reduced preference for sweetness and alcohol that persists into adulthood. However, the combined effects of MIA, re-activation of the immune system, and disruption of the ErbB signaling during adolescence would affect young adult mice's behavioral phenotype is unknown. Here, we report that the expression levels of the NRG1, ErbB4, GAD67, and BDNF were changed as responses to MIA and blocked the ErbB signaling in the frontal cortex of adolescent mice. MIA-Offspring during late gestation and immune system re-activation during adolescence spent less time in the open arms of the elevated plus-maze in adulthood. At the same time, MIA-offspring administrated with the pan-ErbB inhibitor during adolescence spent the same amount of time in the opened arm as the control mice. Combining the ErbB signaling disruption during adolescence leads to a social interaction impairment in female offspring, but not male, without affecting the offspring's motor activity, long-term recognition, and working memory. These results imply that blocking the ErbB signaling during adolescence prevents the development of anxiety-like behavior of the MIA offspring later in life and suggest that this interaction does not reduce the risk of female MIA offspring developing impaired social behavior.

[ISRAELI MILITARY PSYCHIATRY: CHALLENGES AND ACHIEVEMENTS].

INTRODUCTION: In this article, we have attempted to summarize the achievements and the challenges of the mental health department (MHD) of the IDF Medical Core from the past four decades, since its initiation. We approach this wide scope question through the investigation of the MHD according to the perspective of its main fields of endeavor. These domains are widely arrayed. In this paper, we chose to focus on the following: the unique training of the mental health officers; the initial psychological screening of soldiers - from recruitment to discharge; the mental health treatment of soldiers and officers, and the life-time treatment of combat post traumatic (PTSD) patients; the development of combat PTSD diagnosis, treatment and prevention; the continuous prevention of soldiers' suicides; the prevention of psychiatric hospitalizations; and the participation of the MHD in research and in the development of new treatment modalities. In the writing of this paper we relied on the accumulative experience of the MHD and the historic perspective of the last four commanders of the Mental Health Department of the IDF.

Developmental Trajectories of Impaired Community Functioning in Schizophrenia.

IMPORTANCE: Community functioning is a core component of the functional deficits in schizophrenia, yet little systematic research on the origins of these functional deficits has been performed. OBJECTIVES: To examine 3 key domains of community functioning--social activity, independent behavior, and functioning in school or work--before first hospitalization for schizophrenia and to determine whether these domains are familial. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS: In this population-based, prospective study that included a sibling-control comparison, data from the Israeli National Draft Board Registry were linked with data from the Israeli Psychiatric Hospitalization Case Registry. The merged file included data for all male adolescents who visited the draft board and were followed up for as much as 25.4 years from draft board assessment (through the end of 2010). The 3 functional domains for cases, their unaffected siblings, and controls were compared by time between assessment and time to hospitalization. Analyses were conducted from March 13, 2014, to October 19, 2014. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES: The trajectories and familiality of 3 key components of community functioning--social activity, independent behavior, and functioning in school or work--in the years preceding hospitalization for schizophrenia. RESULTS: Participants included 723,316 Israeli male adolescents who underwent a mandatory behavioral assessment to determine eligibility for military service. Linkage identified 3929 individuals hospitalized for schizophrenia. Data for 338,550 sibling pairs, 1659 hospitalized with schizophrenia, were similarly ascertained. Among those with schizophrenia, impairments in social activity (effect size [d], 0.55) and functioning in school or work (d = 0.37) were recognizable up to 15 years before hospitalization. Independent behavior seemed preserved until the few years before first admission. For social activity, differences between cases and controls were progressively greater for patients admitted closer to time of testing (F = 115.33, P < .001). Unaffected siblings had small impairments compared with controls in social activity (F = 28.25, P < .001) and functioning in school or work scales (F = 14.77, P < .001). Group familial (sibling) correlations were relatively high for social activity (r = 0.40; 95% CI, 0.39-0.41) and functioning in school or work (r = 0.50; 95% CI, 0.49-0.51) but nil for independent behavior (r = 0; 95% CI, -0.01 to -0.01). Impairments in siblings had no progressive increase and were unrelated to their affected sibling's time of illness onset (time trend: social activity: F = 5.463, P = .02; independent behavior: F = 0.908, P = .34; and functioning in school or work: F = 1.386, P = .24). CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE: Various components of impaired community functioning in schizophrenia followed different developmental trajectories. Our results indicate that impairments in social activity and functioning in school or work are familial.

Discontinuity in the genetic and environmental causes of the intellectual disability spectrum.

Intellectual disability (ID) occurs in almost 3% of newborns. Despite substantial research, a fundamental question about its origin and links to intelligence (IQ) still remains. ID has been shown to be inherited and has been accepted as the extreme low of the normal IQ distribution. However, ID displays a complex pattern of inheritance. Previously, noninherited rare mutations were shown to contribute to severe ID risk in individual families, but in the majority of cases causes remain unknown. Common variants associated with ID risk in the population have not been systematically established. Here we evaluate the hypothesis, originally proposed almost 1 century ago, that most ID is caused by the same genetic and environmental influences responsible for the normal distribution of IQ, but that severe ID is not. We studied more than 1,000,000 sibling pairs and 9,000 twin pairs assessed for IQ and for the presence of ID. We evaluated whether genetic and environmental influences at the extremes of the distribution are different from those operating in the normal range. Here we show that factors influencing mild ID (lowest 3% of IQ distribution) were similar to those influencing IQ in the normal range. In contrast, the factors influencing severe ID (lowest 0.5% of IQ distribution) differ from those influencing mild ID or IQ scores in the normal range. Taken together, our results suggest that most severe ID is a distinct condition, qualitatively different from the preponderance of ID, which, in turn, represents the low extreme of the normal distribution of intelligence.

Threat-Related Attention Bias Variability and Posttraumatic Stress.

OBJECTIVE: Threat monitoring facilitates survival by allowing one to efficiently and accurately detect potential threats. Traumatic events can disrupt healthy threat monitoring, inducing biased and unstable threat-related attention deployment. Recent research suggests that greater attention bias variability, that is, attention fluctuations alternating toward and away from threat, occurs in participants with PTSD relative to healthy comparison subjects who were either exposed or not exposed to traumatic events. The current study extends findings on attention bias variability in PTSD. METHOD: Previous measurement of attention bias variability was refined by employing a moving average technique. Analyses were conducted across seven independent data sets; in each, data on attention bias variability were collected by using variants of the dot-probe task. Trauma-related and anxiety symptoms were evaluated across samples by using structured psychiatric interviews and widely used self-report questionnaires, as specified for each sample. RESULTS: Analyses revealed consistent evidence of greater attention bias variability in patients with PTSD following various types of traumatic events than in healthy participants, participants with social anxiety disorder, and participants with acute stress disorder. Moreover, threat-related, and not positive, attention bias variability was correlated with PTSD severity. CONCLUSIONS: These findings carry possibilities for using attention bias variability as a specific cognitive marker of PTSD and for tailoring protocols for attention bias modification for this disorder.