Hypothalamic subunit volumes and relations to violence and psychopathy in male offenders with or without a psychotic disorder.

The hypothalamus is key to body homeostasis, including regulating cortisol, testosterone, vasopressin, and oxytocin hormones, modulating aggressive behavior. Animal studies have linked the morphology and function of the hypothalamus to aggression and affiliation, with a subregional pattern reflecting the functional division between the hypothalamic nuclei. We explored the relationship between hypothalamic subunit volumes in violent offenders with (PSY-V) and without (NPV) a psychotic disorder, and the association with psychopathy traits. 3T MRI scans (n = 628, all male 18-70 years) were obtained from PSY-V, n = 38, NPV, n = 20, non-violent psychosis patients (PSY-NV), n = 134, and healthy controls (HC), n = 436. The total hypothalamus volume and its eleven nuclei were delineated into five subunits using Freesurfer v7.3. Psychopathy traits were assessed with Psychopathy Checklist-revised (PCL-R). ANCOVAs and linear regressions were used to analyze associations with subunit volumes. Both groups with a history of violence exhibited smaller anterior-superior subunit volumes than HC (NPV Cohen's d = 0.56, p = 0.01 and PSY-V d = 0.38, p = 0.01). There were no significant differences between HC and PSY-NV. PCL-R scores were positively associated with the inferior tubular subunit on a trend level (uncorrected p = 0.045, Cohen's d = 0.04). We found distinct hypothalamic subunit volume reductions in persons with a history of violence independent of concomitant psychotic disorder but not in persons with psychosis alone. The results provide further information about the involvement of the hypothalamus in aggression, which ultimately may lead to the development of targeted treatment for the clinical and societal challenge of aggression and violent behavior.

Violent Offending in Males With or Without Schizophrenia: A Role for Social Cognition?

BACKGROUND AND HYPOTHESIS: Reduced social cognition has been reported in individuals who have committed interpersonal violence. It is unclear if individuals with schizophrenia and a history of violence have larger impairments than violent individuals without psychosis and non-violent individuals with schizophrenia. We examined social cognition in two groups with violent offenses, comparing their performance to non-violent individuals with schizophrenia and healthy controls. STUDY DESIGN: Two social cognitive domains were assessed in four groups: men with a schizophrenia spectrum disorder with (SSD-V, n = 27) or without (SSD-NV, n = 42) a history of violence, incarcerated men serving preventive detention sentences (V, n = 22), and healthy male controls (HC, n = 76). Theory of mind (ToM) was measured with the Movie for the Assessment of Social Cognition (MASC), body emotion perception with Emotion in Biological Motion (EmoBio) test. STUDY RESULTS: Kruskal-Wallis H-tests revealed overall group differences for social cognition. SSD-V had a global and clinically significant social cognitive impairment. V had a specific impairment, for ToM. Binary logistic regressions predicting violence category membership from social cognition and psychosis (SSD status) were conducted. The model with best fit, explaining 18%-25% of the variance, had ToM as the only predictor. CONCLUSIONS: Social cognitive impairment was present in individuals with a history of violence, with larger and more widespread impairment seen in schizophrenia. ToM predicted violence category membership, psychosis did not. The results suggest a role for social cognition in understanding interpersonal violence.

The development of an indel panel for microchimerism detection.

OBJECTIVES: The aim of the study was to create a simple assay for microchimerism detection independent of sex and without HLA genotyping. METHODS: The method is based on detection of insertion or deletions utilizing a multiplex PCR followed by fragment analysis by capillary electrophoresis, and probe-based qPCR assays. A total of 192 samples, taken either before pregnancy, during 1st trimester, or either during 2nd trimester or at miscarriage, obtained from a cohort of 97 female patients with either primary or secondary recurrent pregnancy loss, were screened for fetal microchimerism by the indel panel as well as an existing assay based on detection of the Y-chromosome marker; DYS14. RESULTS: The overall prevalence of DYS14 positive samples was 29% (55/192) whereas 32% (61/192) tested positive by the indel method. There was an overall agreement of 64% (122/192) between the results obtained by the two methods. A Fisher's Exact test showed no statistic significant difference in the prevalence of microchimerism detected by the two methods at any of the three times of sampling. The distribution of the number of positive wells detected by both methods were compared by a Mann-Whitney U test, which showed no statistically significant difference at any of the three times of sampling. CONCLUSION: The data indicates that microchimerism can be detected efficiently by the indel method. This makes it possible to detect both female and male cells without the need of HLA-genotyping. Furthermore, the indel method has potential to be implemented as a routine analysis. This will remove the sex bias in future explorations of the role microchimerism plays in health and disease.