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In this project, we recruited a sample of 150 patients with first episode of psychosis with schizophrenia features (FEP) and 100 healthy controls. We assessed the differences between these two groups, as well as the changes between the acute phase of illness and subsequent remission among patients over 18-month longitudinal follow-up. The assessments were divided into four work packages (WP): WP1- psychopathological status, neurocognitive functioning and emotional recognition; WP2- stress response measured by saliva cortisol during a stress paradigm; cerebral blood perfusion in the resting state (with single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) and during activation paradigm (with Transcranial Ultrasonography Doppler (TCD); WP3-post mortem analysis in histologically prepared human cortical tissue of post mortem samples of subjects with schizophrenia in the region that synaptic alteration was suggested by WP1 and WP2; WP4- pharmacogenetic analysis (single gene polymorphisms and genome wide association study (GWAS). We expect that the analysis of these data will identify a set of markers that differentiate healthy controls from patients with FEP, and serve as an additional diagnostic tool in the first episode of psychosis, and prediction tool which can be then used to help tailoring individualized treatment options. In this paper, we describe the project protocol including aims and methods and provide a brief description of planned post mortem studies and pharmacogenetic analysis.

Background: Changes in cerebral hemodynamics have been reported in schizophrenia and proposed as underlying the cognitive deficits seen in patients. The objective of our study was to compare changes of the cerebral blood flow velocity (BFV) during neurocognitive tasks between the patients with the first episode of psychosis and healthy controls. Subjects and methods: We recruited 46 patients with the first episode of psychosis (FEP), admitted to the University Hospital Centre Zagreb during 2016-2017 and 41 control subjects. Transcranial Doppler ultrasonography monitoring of BFV in both middle cerebral arteries was recorded during 25-minute long neurocognitive assessment with Phonemic Verbal Fluency test, Trial Making Test B and Stroop test. Between every consecutive test resting periods were recorded. Results: After the adjustment for age, sex and education by quantile regression, patients with FEP had significantly lower BFV in middle cerebral arteries during the 3rd (

Background: To summarize all available evidence from systematic reviews about the impact of stress response in development of first-episode psychosis (FEP) in schizophrenia. Methods: An overview of systematic reviews of any type of primary studies was performed. An electronic search of five databases was conducted in February 2017 (CDSR, DARE, Embase, MEDLINE and PsychINFO). Quality of included systematic reviews was assessed using the AMSTAR checklist. Results: Eight systematic reviews were included. The main findings of the included reviews point out a possible alteration of the stress response in a subgroup of persons with proneness to psychosis. However, the evidence is limited by the inadequate quality of studies, as well as lack of standardization of outcomes and assessment methods. Conclusions: Given the heterogeneity of current results, there is no solid evidence for uniform alterations of stress response found in persons with FEP in suggestive of schizophrenia that may serve as a marker of vulnerability to stress and possibly proneness to psychotic state in response to daily hassles.