The Risk for Schizophrenia-Bipolar Spectrum: Does the Apple Fall Close to the Tree? A Narrative Review.
Giulia CattarinussiAlessio A GugliottaFabio SambataroPublished in: International journal of environmental research and public health (2023)
Schizophrenia (SCZ) and bipolar disorder (BD) are severe psychiatric disorders that share clinical features and several risk genes. Important information about their genetic underpinnings arises from intermediate phenotypes (IPs), quantifiable biological traits that are more prevalent in unaffected relatives (RELs) of patients compared to the general population and co-segregate with the disorders. Within IPs, neuropsychological functions and neuroimaging measures have the potential to provide useful insight into the pathophysiology of SCZ and BD. In this context, the present narrative review provides a comprehensive overview of the available evidence on deficits in neuropsychological functions and neuroimaging alterations in unaffected relatives of SCZ (SCZ-RELs) and BD (BD-RELs). Overall, deficits in cognitive functions including intelligence, memory, attention, executive functions, and social cognition could be considered IPs for SCZ. Although the picture for cognitive alterations in BD-RELs is less defined, BD-RELs seem to present worse performances compared to controls in executive functioning, including adaptable thinking, planning, self-monitoring, self-control, and working memory. Among neuroimaging markers, SCZ-RELs appear to be characterized by structural and functional alterations in the cortico-striatal-thalamic network, while BD risk seems to be associated with abnormalities in the prefrontal, temporal, thalamic, and limbic regions. In conclusion, SCZ-RELs and BD-RELs present a pattern of cognitive and neuroimaging alterations that lie between patients and healthy individuals. Similar abnormalities in SCZ-RELs and BD-RELs may be the phenotypic expression of the shared genetic mechanisms underlying both disorders, while the specificities in neuropsychological and neuroimaging profiles may be associated with the differential symptom expression in the two disorders.
Keyphrases
- working memory
- bipolar disorder
- end stage renal disease
- mild cognitive impairment
- newly diagnosed
- ejection fraction
- genome wide
- major depressive disorder
- poor prognosis
- chronic kidney disease
- healthcare
- traumatic brain injury
- transcranial direct current stimulation
- attention deficit hyperactivity disorder
- prognostic factors
- peritoneal dialysis
- patient reported outcomes
- gene expression
- patient reported
- parkinson disease
- early onset
- long non coding rna
- transcranial magnetic stimulation
- bioinformatics analysis