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Background: While accumulating evidence suggests that vitamin D deficiency may be involved in the risk to develop schizophrenia and its outcome, there are no studies on vitamin D supplementation in this context. We sought to assess the effect of vitamin D supplementation on psychiatric, cognitive and metabolic parameters in chronic clozapine-treated schizophrenia patients., Methods: This eight-week, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial, recruited schizophrenia patients who had been maintained on clozapine treatment for at least 18weeks and had low levels of vitamin D (<75nmol/l) and total PANSS scores >70 (to ascertain the presence of residual symptoms). Patients were randomly allocated to either weekly oral drops of vitamin D (14,000IU) or placebo and subsequently assessed at two-week intervals for psychosis severity, mood, cognition and metabolic profile., Results: Twenty four patients were randomly assigned to vitamin D (aged 39.4±9.6years, 75% males) and the other 23 patients to the placebo arm (aged 42.5±11.2years, 60.9% males). After eight weeks, the vitamin D group exhibited a significant increase in vitamin D levels (31.4 vs -0.4nmol/l, p<0.0001). There was no significant effect of vitamin D on psychotic, depressive or metabolic parameters. However, in the vitamin D group, there was a trend towards improved cognition (effect size=0.17, significance lost following Bonferroni correction)., Conclusions: Vitamin D supplementation was associated with a trend towards improved cognition, but did not affect psychosis, mood or metabolic status. It is possible that the robust decrease in the PANSS scores in both groups may have obscured an effect of vitamin D supplementation., (Copyright © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Previous studies demonstrated levels of serum CK (sCK) in the majority of patients undergoing acute psychosis. Records of 1054 patients hospitalized in Geha Mental Health Center during the study period were analyzed. Of them, 743 have been diagnosed with schizophrenia (Sz), 170 with schizoaffective disorder (SzA), and 158 with bipolar disorder (BP-I). Baseline sCK and PANSS values were obtained from each patient upon admission. Our results show that LnsCK is higher in patients with BP-I in comparison with patients with SZ, but not significantly different compared to patients with SzA. A multivariate analysis using linear regression model in which LnsCK was predicted by factors such as PANSS-total and sub-scores, IM injection, BMI, gender, and age among patients at each admission, revealed that PANSS-depression was inversely associated with LnsCK level in SzA and BP-I and not in SZ. A positive association was found between PANSS-total and sCK in SzA and BP-I; however, PANSS-positive scores correlated with sCK only in SzA. After controlling for confounders, it seems that sCK level is associated with the both affective and psychotic components. Serum CK may serve as a biomarker for affective exacerbation rather than psychosis., (Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.)