Brief Report: Genetic Links Between Autism and Suicidal Behavior-A Preliminary Investigation.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: DiBlasi E
PROVIDER: S-EPMC7483143 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:In the present study, we examine the unique and interactive effects of race (African American or European American) and depression on suicidal ideation, controlling for poverty, within a representative sample of adolescent girls. A community sample of 2450 girls (43.9% African American) participating in the longitudinal Pittsburgh Girls Study (PGS) was interviewed annually about depression symptoms and suicidal ideation, from ages 10-15 years. Caregivers reported on the girls' racial/ethnic background and the family's receipt of public assistance. Race and depression scores explained unique variance in suicidal ideation; receipt of public assistance did not. Endorsement and recurrence of suicidal ideation was more likely for African American than European American girls: there was a nearly two-fold increase in the likelihood of reporting frequent thoughts of death or suicide as a function of race. Of the 255 girls reporting recurrent suicidal ideation, 65.9% were African American. An interaction effect between race and depression symptoms was observed, such that African American girls were more likely to report suicidal ideation at lower levels of depression severity. The findings indicate that race is a critical factor for understanding, preventing, and treating suicidal ideation in girls.
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Project description:ObjectiveResearch on suicide contagion has suggested that exposure to suicide-related thoughts and behaviors of others promotes one's personal risk for suicide. However, our understanding of the role suicidal exposure plays in the development of suicide risk is underdeveloped. This limited understanding may be due, in part, to the lack of a validated measure of exposure to suicidal behavior. The present study aimed to develop and validate a comprehensive self-report instrument of exposure to suicidal behaviors.MethodUsing two independent convenience samples of undergraduate students, exploratory structural equation modeling (ESEM) was performed on a newly developed measure of suicidal exposure.ResultsData supported a three-factor model of suicidal exposure: exposure to suicidal communication, direct exposure to suicide deaths and attempts, and indirect exposure to suicide deaths and attempts. Each factor demonstrated positive bivariate associations with depressive symptoms, posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms, suicide ideation, and suicide attempt history, suggesting convergent validity. Analyses demonstrated generally acceptable internal consistency.ConclusionThis instrument will facilitate the study of suicidal exposure. Further validation of this scale, with attention to its reliability and invariance across gender and other demographic variables in clinically relevant samples, will be important for advancing the assessment of suicidal exposure and understanding its relation to suicide risk.
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Project description:Background: Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by primary difficulties in social function. Individuals with ASD display slowed neural processing of faces, as indexed by the latency of the N170, a face-sensitive event-related potential. Currently, there are no objective biomarkers of ASD useful in clinical care or research. Efficacy of behavioral treatment is currently evaluated through subjective clinical impressions. To explore whether the N170 might have utility as an objective index of treatment response, we examined N170 before and after receipt of an empirically validated behavioral treatment in children with ASD. Method: Electroencephalography (EEG) data were obtained on a preliminary cohort of preschool-aged children with ASD before and after a 16-week course of PRT and in a subset of participants in waitlist control (16-weeks before the start of PRT) and follow-up (16-weeks after the end of PRT). EEG was recorded while participants viewed computer-generated faces with neutral and fearful affect. Results: Significant reductions in N170 latency to faces were observed following 16 weeks of PRT intervention. Change in N170 latency was not observed in the waitlist-control condition. Conclusions: This exploratory study offers suggestive evidence that N170 latency may index response to behavioral treatment. Future, more rigorous, studies in larger samples are indicated to evaluate whether the N170 may be useful as a biomarker of treatment response.
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Project description:BackgroundPrevious studies have demonstrated substantial associations between substance use disorders (SUD) and suicidal behavior. The current study empirically assesses the extent to which shared genetic and/or environmental factors contribute to associations between alcohol use disorders (AUD) or drug use disorders (DUD) and suicidal behavior, including attempts and death.MethodsThe authors used Swedish national registry data, including medical, pharmacy, criminal, and death registrations, for a large cohort of twins, full siblings, and half siblings (N = 1 314 990) born 1960-1980 and followed through 2017. They conducted twin-sibling modeling of suicide attempt (SA) or suicide death (SD) with AUD and DUD to estimate genetic and environmental correlations between outcomes. Analyses were stratified by sex.ResultsGenetic correlations between SA and SUD ranged from rA = 0.60-0.88; corresponding shared environmental correlations were rC = 0.42-0.89 but accounted for little overall variance; and unique environmental correlations were rE = 0.42-0.57. When replacing attempt with SD, genetic and shared environmental correlations with AUD and DUD were comparable (rA = 0.48-0.72, rC = 0.92-1.00), but were attenuated for unique environmental factors (rE = -0.01 to 0.31).ConclusionsThese findings indicate that shared genetic and unique environmental factors contribute to comorbidity of suicidal behavior and SUD, in conjunction with previously reported causal associations. Thus, each outcome should be considered an indicator of risk for the others. Opportunities for joint prevention and intervention, while limited by the polygenic nature of these outcomes, may be feasible considering moderate environmental correlations between SA and SUD.
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Project description:Social dysfunction is a hallmark of schizophrenia. Social isolation may increase individuals' risk for psychotic symptom exacerbation and relapse. Monitoring and timely detection of shifts in social functioning are hampered by the limitations of traditional clinic-based assessment strategies. Ubiquitous mobile technologies such as smartphones introduce new opportunities to capture objective digital indicators of social behavior. The goal of this study was to evaluate whether smartphone-collected digital measures of social behavior can provide early indication of relapse events among individuals with schizophrenia. Sixty-one individuals with schizophrenia with elevated risk for relapse were given smartphones with the CrossCheck behavioral sensing system for a year of remote monitoring. CrossCheck leveraged the device's microphone, call record, and text messaging log to capture digital socialization data. Relapse events including psychiatric hospitalizations, suicidal ideation, and significant psychiatric symptom exacerbations were recorded by trained assessors. Exploratory mixed effects models examined relationships of social behavior to relapse, finding that reductions in number and duration of outgoing calls, as well as number of text messages were associated with relapses. Number and duration of incoming phone calls and in-person conversations were not. Smartphone enabled social activity may provide an important metric in determining relapse risk in schizophrenia and provide access to sensitive, meaningful and ecologically valid data streams never before available in routine care.
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Project description:Recently the DRD3 gene has been associated with ASD in two independent samples. Follow up analysis of the risk allele of the SNP rs167771 in 91 subjects revealed a significant association with a specific type of repetitive behavior: the factor "insistence on sameness" (IS) derived from the Autism Diagnostic Interview. This risk allele was associated with a decreased risk for IS, but not with any other symptomatology. Further study and replication of this finding is necessary, bearing in mind that these results would not be statistically significant if corrected for multiple testing.
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Project description:Suicide is a significant public health issue and a major cause of death throughout the world. According to WHO it accounts for almost 2% of deaths worldwide. The etiology of suicidal behavior is complex but the results of many studies suggest that genetic determinants are of significant importance. In our study,--we have analyzed selected SNPs polymorphisms in the DRD2 and ANKK1 genes in patients with alcohol dependence syndrome (169 Caucasian subjects) including a subgroup of individuals (n = 61) who have experienced at least one suicide attempt. The aim of the study was to verify if various haplotypes of selected genes, comprising Taq1A, Taq1B, and Taq1D single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP), play any role in the development of alcohol dependence and suicidal behavior. The control group comprised 157 unrelated individuals matched for ethnicity, gender,- and age and included no individuals with mental disorders. All subjects were recruited in the North West region of Poland. The study showed that alcohol dependent subjects with a history of at least one suicidal attempt were characterized by a significantly higher frequency of the T-G-A2 haplotype when compared to individuals in whom alcohol dependence was not associated with suicidal behavior (p = 0.006). It appears that studies based on identifying correlation between SNPs is the future for research on genetic risk factors that contribute to the development of alcohol addiction and other associated disorders. To sum up, there is a necessity to perform further research to explain dependencies between the dopaminergic system, alcohol use disorders and suicidal behavior.
| S-EPMC4240548 | biostudies-literature
Project description:ObjectiveThe authors report on a pilot study of an inpatient intervention for suicidal adolescents, As Safe as Possible (ASAP), supported by a smartphone app (BRITE) to reduce suicide attempts following hospital discharge.MethodAcross two sites, 66 adolescents hospitalized for suicidal ideation (N=26) or a recent suicide attempt (N=40) were randomly assigned to the ASAP intervention program plus treatment as usual or to treatment as usual alone. ASAP, which focuses on emotion regulation and safety planning, is a 3-hour intervention delivered on the inpatient unit. The BRITE app prompted participants to rate their level of emotional distress on a daily basis and provided personalized strategies for emotion regulation and safety planning. A blind, independent evaluator assessed suicide attempts following hospital discharge and suicidal ideation at 4, 12, and 24 weeks after discharge.ResultsThe ASAP intervention did not have a statistically significant effect on suicide attempt, although findings were in the hypothesized direction for occurrence of an attempt (16% compared with 31%; χ2=1.86, df=1, g=-0.36) and time to an attempt (hazard ratio=0.49, 95% CI=0.16, 1.47). Past history of a suicide attempt was a significant moderator of treatment outcome, with a stronger, albeit nonsignificant, effect of the ASAP intervention among participants with a history of suicide attempt (hazard ratio=0.23, 95% CI=0.05, 1.09). There were no treatment effects on suicidal ideation. The majority of participants (70%) used the BRITE app (median usage, 19 times). Participants reported high satisfaction with both the intervention and the app.ConclusionsThe ASAP intervention program shows promise in reducing the incidence of postdischarge suicide attempts among adolescents hospitalized for suicidality and merits further study.
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Project description:Autism is a heterogeneous neurodevelopmental disorder with a 3-4 times higher sex ratio in males than females. X chromosome genes may contribute to this higher sex ratio through unusual skewing of X chromosome inactivation. We studied X chromosome skewness in 30 females with classical autism and 35 similarly aged unaffected female siblings as controls using the polymorphic androgen receptor (AR) gene. Significantly, increased X chromosome skewness (e.g., >80:20%) was detected in our autism group (33%) compared to unaffected females (11%). X chromosome skewness was also seen in 50% of the mothers with autistic daughters. No mutation was seen in the promoter region of the XIST gene reported to be involved in X chromosome inactivation in our subjects. X chromosome skewness has been reported in female carriers of other neurological disorders such as X-linked mental retardation, adrenoleukodystrophy and Rett syndrome.
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