Search

Impulsivity has been proposed to have an impact on glycemic dysregulation. However, it remains uncertain whether an unfavorable glycemic status could also contribute to an increase in impulsivity levels. This study aims to analyze associations of baseline and time-varying glycemic status with 3-year time-varying impulsivity in older adults at high risk of cardiovascular disease. A 3-year prospective cohort design was conducted within the PREDIMED-Plus-Cognition substudy. The total population includes 487 participants (mean age = 65.2 years; female = 50.5%) with overweight or obesity and metabolic syndrome. Insulin resistance (HOMA-IR), glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c), presence of type 2 diabetes mellitus, and type 2 diabetes control were evaluated. Impulsivity was measured using the Impulsive Behavior Scale questionnaire and various cognitive measurements. Impulsivity z-scores were generated to obtain Global, Trait, and Behavioral Impulsivity domains. Linear mixed models were used to study the longitudinal associations across baseline, 1-year, and 3-year follow-up visits. HOMA-IR was not significantly related to impulsivity. Participants with higher HbA1c levels, type 2 diabetes, and poor control of diabetes showed positive associations with the Global Impulsivity domain over time, and those with higher HbA1c levels were further related to increases in the Trait and Behavioral Impulsivity domains over the follow-up visits. These results suggest a potential positive feedback loop between impulsivity and glycemic-related dysregulation., (© 2024 The Author(s). Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of The New York Academy of Sciences.)

Objective: Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is associated with conflicted parent-child relationships. The underlying mechanisms of this association are not yet fully understood. We investigated the cross-sectional and longitudinal relationships between externalizing psychopathology in children with ADHD, and expressed emotion (EE; warmth and criticism) and psychopathology in mothers., Method: In this 6-year follow-up study, 385 children with an ADHD combined subtype were included at baseline (mean, 11.5 years, 83.4% male), of which 285 children (74%) were available at follow-up (mean, 17.5 years, 83.5% male). At both time points, measures of child psychopathology (i.e., ADHD severity, oppositional, and conduct problems), maternal EE, and maternal psychopathology (i.e., ADHD and affective problems) were obtained., Results: EE was not significantly correlated over time. At baseline, we found a nominally negative association (p ≤ .05) between maternal warmth and child ADHD severity. At follow-up, maternal criticism was significantly associated with child oppositional problems, and nominally with child conduct problems. Maternal warmth was nominally associated with child oppositional and conduct problems. These associations were independent of maternal psychopathology. No longitudinal associations were found between EE at baseline and child psychopathology at follow-up, or child psychopathology at baseline and EE at follow-up., Conclusions: The results support previous findings of cross-sectional associations between parental EE and child psychopathology. This, together with the finding that EE was not stable over 6 years, suggests that EE is a momentary state measure varying with contextual and developmental factors. EE does not appear to be a risk factor for later externalizing behavior in children with ADHD., (Copyright © 2014 American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

OBJECTIVE The authors investigated the effects of recently identified genome-wide significant schizophrenia genetic risk variants on cognition and brain structure. METHOD A panel of six single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) was selected to represent genome-wide significant loci from three recent genome-wide association studies (GWAS) for schizophrenia and was tested for association with cognitive measures in 346 patients with schizophrenia and 2,342 healthy comparison subjects. Nominally significant results were evaluated for replication in an independent case-control sample. For SNPs showing evidence of association with cognition, associations with brain structural volumes were investigated in a large independent healthy comparison sample. RESULTS Five of the six SNPs showed no significant association with any cognitive measure. One marker in the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) region, rs6904071, showed independent, replicated evidence of association with delayed episodic memory and was significant when both samples were combined. In the combined sample of up to 3,100 individuals, this SNP was associated with widespread effects across cognitive domains, although these additional associations were no longer significant after adjusting for delayed episodic memory. In the large independent structural imaging sample, the same SNP was also associated with decreased hippocampal volume. CONCLUSIONS The authors identified a SNP in the MHC region that was associated with cognitive performance in patients with schizophrenia and healthy comparison subjects. This SNP, rs6904071, showed a replicated association with episodic memory and hippocampal volume. These findings implicate the MHC region in hippocampal structure and functioning, consistent with the role of MHC proteins in synaptic development and function. Follow-up of these results has the potential to provide insights into the pathophysiology of schizophrenia and cognition.

Objectives: Evidence suggests the involvement of the dopamine D4 receptor gene (DRD4) in the pathogenesis of ADHD, but the exact mechanism is not well understood. Earlier reports on the effects of DRD4 polymorphisms on neurocognitive and neuroimaging measures are inconsistent. This study investigated the functional consequences of the 7-repeat allele of DRD4 on neurocognitive endophenotypes of ADHD in the Dutch subsample of the International Multicenter ADHD Genetics study., Methods: Participants were 350 children (5-11.5 years) and adolescents (11.6-19 years) with ADHD and their 195 non-affected siblings. An overall measure of neuropsychological functioning was derived by principal component analysis from five neurocognitive and five motor tasks. The effects of DRD4 and age were examined using Linear Mixed Model analyses., Results: The analyses were stratified for affected and non-affected participants after finding a significant three-way interaction between ADHD status, age and the 7-repeat allele. Apart from a main effect of age, a significant interaction effect of age and DRD4 was found in non-affected but not in affected participants, with non-affected adolescent carriers of the 7-repeat allele showing worse neuropsychological performance. In addition, carrying the 7-repeat allele of DRD4 was related to a significantly worse performance on verbal working memory in non-affected siblings, independent of age., Conclusions: These results might indicate that the effect of the DRD4 7-repeat allele on neuropsychological functioning is dependent on age and ADHD status.

Background: The estrogen receptor alpha (ESR1) is a mediator of estrogen response in the breast. The most studied variants in this gene are the PvuII and XbaI polymorphisms, which have been associated to lower sensitivity to estrogen. We evaluated whether these polymorphisms were associated with breast cancer risk by means of an association study in a population of Caucasian postmenopausal women from the Rotterdam study and a meta-analysis of published data., Methods: The PvuII and XbaI polymorphisms were genotyped in 3,893 women participants of the Rotterdam Study. Baseline information was obtained through a questionnaire. We conducted logistic regression analyses to assess the risk of breast cancer by each of the ESR1 genotypes. Meta-analyses of all publications on these relations were done by retrieving literature from Pubmed and by further checking the reference lists of the articles obtained., Results: There were 38 women with previously diagnosed breast cancer. During follow-up, 152 were additionally diagnosed. The logistic regression analyses showed no difference in risk for postmenopausal breast cancer in carriers of the PvuII or XbaI genotypes neither in overall, incident or prevalent cases. No further evidence of a role of these variants was found in the meta-analysis., Conclusions: Our results suggest that the ESR1 polymorphisms do not play a role in breast cancer risk in Caucasian postmenopausal women.