Christiaan Vinkers

• MD PhD
• Researcher at Amsterdam University Medical Center

Background Early detection of elevated acute stress is necessary if we aim to reduce consequences associated with prolonged or recurrent stress exposure. Stress monitoring may be supported by valid and reliable machine-learning algorithms. However, investigation of algorithms detecting stress severity on a continuous scale is missing due to high de...

Health care workers (HCWs) faced more stressors during the COVID-19 pandemic, potentially increasing depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Insight into mental health dynamics and determinants in HCWs during the pandemic could help to maintain and improve mental health and resilience in future pandemics. In this longitudinal...

Childhood trauma (CT), conceptualized as emotional, physical or sexual abuse or emotional or physical neglect before the age of 18, is a risk factor for the emergence and poorer course of many mental and somatic disorders. The mechanisms underlying the impact of CT range from (neuro)biological changes (e.g., epigenetics, hypothalamic–pituitary–adre...

Antidepressant (ad) discontinuation in long‐term users can be challenging for both patients and healthcare providers (HCPs). Better understanding of how HCPs handle this challenge is needed to improve discontinuation care. Therefore, we identified ad discontinuation barriers and facilitators from the viewpoint of community pharmacists (CPs), genera...

Background Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has been associated with advanced epigenetic age cross-sectionally, but the association between these variables over time is unclear. This study conducted meta-analyses to test whether new-onset PTSD diagnosis and changes in PTSD symptom severity over time were associated with changes in two metrics o...

Background: Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has been associated with advanced epigenetic age cross-sectionally, but the association between these variables over time is unclear. This study conducted meta-analyses to test if new-onset PTSD diagnosis and change in PTSD symptom severity over time was associated with changes in two metrics of epig...

Background The occurrence of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) following a traumatic event is associated with biological differences that can represent the susceptibility to PTSD, the impact of trauma, or the sequelae of PTSD itself. These effects include differences in DNA methylation (DNAm), an important form of epigenetic gene regulation, at...

Growing interest in interindividual differences in stress neuroendocrinology has created a need to combine data from multiple laboratory acute stress induction studies to allow large-scale individual participant data (IPD) meta-analyses. However, established cortisol stress response indicators such as area under the curve (AUC) are inherently affec...

Study objectives Narcolepsy type 1 (NT1) is a chronic sleep-wake disorder, characterized by a loss of hypocretin production. Unexpectedly, in post-mortem tissue of people with NT1 there is a loss of corticotrophin-releasing hormone (CRH) in the paraventricular nucleus. CRH is known as activator of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis in re...

Importance: Schizophrenia is associated with increased age-related morbidity, mortality, and frailty, which are not entirely explained by behavioral factors. Prior studies using epigenetic clocks have suggested that schizophrenia is associated with accelerated aging, however these studies have primarily used unidimensional clocks that summarize agi...

Background and Objectives Patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) often experience cognitive impairment, and this is related to structural disconnection and subsequent functional reorganization. It is unclear how specific patterns of functional reorganization might make it harder for cognitively impaired (CI) patients with MS to dynamically adapt how...

Background Incorporating genomic data into risk prediction has become an increasingly popular approach for rapid identification of individuals most at risk for complex disorders such as PTSD. Our goal was to develop and validate Methylation Risk Scores (MRS) using machine learning to distinguish individuals who have PTSD from those who do not. Met...

Effective personalized well-being interventions require the ability to predict who will thrive or not, and the understanding of underlying mechanisms. Here, using longitudinal data of a large population cohort (the Netherlands Twin Register, collected 1991–2022), we aim to build machine learning prediction models for adult well-being from the expos...

Stress, encompassing psychological, physical, and physiological challenges, is an important factor affecting an individual's well-being and potentially leading to psychiatric, neurodegenerative, immune, and metabolic disorders. However, not everyone exposed to stress develops these conditions, highlighting the concept of resilience. Resilience is a...

Background The occurrence of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) following a traumatic event is associated with biological differences that can represent the susceptibility to PTSD, the impact of trauma, or the sequelae of PTSD itself. These effects include differences in DNA methylation (DNAm), an important form of epigenetic gene regulation, at...

Despite the availability of various treatment approaches for patients with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), some patients do not respond to these therapies, and novel treatment approaches are needed. This study investigated the efficacy of mifepristone, a glucocorticoid receptor antagonist, in treatment-resistant PTSD patients. Three patients...

Background and objectives. Patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) often experience cognitive impairment, and this is related to structural disconnection and subsequent functional reorganization. It is not clear how specific patterns of functional reorganization might make it harder for cognitively impaired (CI) MS patients to dynamically adapt how b...

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) genetics are characterized by lower discoverability than most other psychiatric disorders. The contribution to biological understanding from previous genetic studies has thus been limited. We performed a multi-ancestry meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies across 1,222,882 individuals of European anc...

Introduction: The brain forms a complex functional brain network. This network is dynamically reconfigured to support various cognitive processes. Research on brain network dynamics in patients with alcohol use disorder (AUD) or bulimia nervosa (BN), two highly comorbid psychiatric disorders, remains limited. Previous studies showed altered static...

Stress, encompassing psychological, physical, and physiological challenges, is an important factor affecting an individual's well-being and potentially leading to psychiatric, neurodegenerative, immune, and metabolic disorders. However, not everyone exposed to stress develops these conditions, highlighting the concept of resilience. Resilience is a...

Pharmacotherapy is an effective treatment modality across psychiatric disorders. Nevertheless, many patients discontinue their medication at some point. Evidence-based guidance for patients, clinicians, and policymakers on rational discontinuation strategies is vital to enable the best, personalized treatment for any given patient. Nonetheless, the...

Background Incorporating genomic data into risk prediction has become an increasingly useful approach for rapid identification of individuals most at risk for complex disorders such as PTSD. Our goal was to develop and validate Methylation Risk Scores (MRS) using machine learning to distinguish individuals who have PTSD from those who do not. Meth...

Background The causal effects of gut microbiome and the development of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are still unknown. This study aimed to clarify their potential causal association using mendelian randomization (MR). Methods The summary-level statistics for gut microbiome were retrieved from a genome-wide association study (GWAS) of the M...

Our current understanding of the human stress response and its role in health, resilience, and (psycho)pathology stems largely from acute stress studies in controlled laboratory settings. Comparability of findings across these individual studies is comprised, as sample size are often small, between-individual variation in the stress response is lar...

Background Synthetic glucocorticoids are widely used among patients suffering from a wide range of diseases. Glucocorticoids are very efficacious, but can be accompanied by neuropsychiatric adverse effects. This systematic review and meta-analysis assesses and quantifies the proportion of different neuropsychiatric adverse effects in patients using...

Background Childhood maltreatment (CM) is a strong risk factor for psychiatric disorders but serves in its current definitions as an umbrella for various fundamentally different childhood experiences. As first step toward a more refined analysis of the impact of CM, our objective is to revisit the relation of abuse and neglect, major subtypes of CM...

Background Childhood trauma (CT) has been cross-sectionally associated with metabolic syndrome (MetS), a group of biological risk factors for cardiometabolic disease. Longitudinal studies, while rare, would clarify the development of cardiometabolic dysregulations over time. Therefore, we longitudinally investigated the association of CT with the 9...

Using longitudinal data of a large population cohort (Netherlands Twin Register; collected 1991-2022), we build machine learning prediction models for adult wellbeing on three data modalities (Ns between 702and 5874). The phenome was captured by parent-and self-reports of psychosocial factors from childhood to adulthood, the genome by polygenic sco...

Background Childhood trauma (CT) may increase vulnerability to psychopathology through affective dysregulation (greater variability, autocorrelation, and instability of emotional symptoms). However, CT associations with dynamic affect fluctuations while considering differences in mean affect levels across CT status have been understudied. Methods...

Evidence-based medicine relies on systematic reviews of randomized controlled trials and other clinical intervention studies to synthesize the latest and most valid estimates of treatment effects. However, conducting these systematic reviews is time-consuming and labor-intensive, requiring careful design of sensitive search queries and manual ident...

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) genetics are characterized by lower discoverability than most other psychiatric disorders. The contribution to biological understanding from previous genetic studies has thus been limited. We performed a multi-ancestry meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies across 1,222,882 individuals of European ance...

Objective: To describe randomized controlled trial (RCT) methodology reporting over time. Study design and setting: We used a deep learning-based sentence classification model based on the CONSORT Statement, considered minimum requirements for reporting RCTs. We included 176,469 RCT reports published between 1966 and 2018. We analyzed the report...

Hedonic (happiness) and eudaimonic (meaning in life) well-being are negatively related to depressive symptoms. Genetic variants play a role in this association, reflected in substantial genetic correlations. We investigated the overlap and differences between well-being and depressive symptoms, using results of Genome-Wide Association studies (GWAS...

ARTIKEL Intensivering van de behandeling bij depressie op basis van cognitieve gedragstherapie Opzet, patiëntkenmerken en klinische effectiviteit van een tweedaagse groepsbehandeling Samenvatting Bij chronische en/of therapieresistente depressie is er consensus om de behandeling te intensiveren. Er zijn echter in de literatuur relatief weinig gedet...

The delayed and incomplete availability of historical findings and the lack of integrative and user-friendly software hampers the reliable interpretation of new clinical data. We developed a free, open, and user-friendly clinical trial aggregation program combining a large and representative sample of existing trial data with the latest classical a...

Background: The ability to individually predict disease course of major depressive disorder (MDD) is essential for optimal treatment planning. Here, we use a data-driven machine learning approach to assess the predictive value of different sets of biological data (whole-blood proteomics, lipid-metabolomics, transcriptomics, genetics), both separat...

Climate change may bring about anxiety, which may be referred to as eco-anxiety. Commonly accepted conceptual or diagnostic criteria for eco-anxiety are currently lacking. Here, we briefly summarize the current literature on climate change and mental illness. We suggest dividing the concept of eco-anxiety into adaptive eco-anxiety and an anxiety di...

Background Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a heterogeneous psychiatric disorder. Childhood trauma (CT, emotional/physical/sexual abuse or neglect before the age of 18) is one of the largest and most consistent risk factors for development and poor course of MDD. Overactivity of the HPA-axis and the stress hormone cortisol is thought to play a ro...

Background Childhood maltreatment is associated with depression and cardiometabolic disease in adulthood. However, the relationships with these two diseases have so far only been evaluated in different samples and with different methodology. Thus, it remains unknown how the effect sizes magnitudes for depression and cardiometabolic disease compare...

Individuals with psychiatric disorders are at increased risk of age-related diseases and early mortality. Recent studies demonstrate that this link between mental health and aging is reflected in epigenetic clocks, aging biomarkers based on DNA methylation. The reported relationships between epigenetic clocks and mental health are mostly correlatio...

The olfactory bulbectomized (OBX) rat is extensively used as an animal model to detect putative antidepressant drugs. The model has some unusual characteristics, as it detects antidepressant activity of drugs only after medium to long-term administration, thereby reflecting the human situation, as antidepressants do not work acutely but only after...

Key PointsQuestion: Do psychotropic drug concentrations in surface water pose a risk for the environment?Findings: In this in-depth study examining over a thousand water samples collected across the Netherlands we found that surface water concentrations of oxazepam and carbamazepine are above acceptable limits in some locations. Households were est...

Background Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a common, recurrent mental disorder and a leading cause of disability worldwide . A large part of adult MDD patients report a history of childhood trauma (CT). Patients with MDD and CT are assumed to represent a clinically and neurobiologically distinct MDD subtype with an earlier onset, unfavorable dis...

The ability to individually predict disease course of major depressive disorder (MDD) is essential for optimal treatment planning. Here, we use a data-driven machine learning approach to assess the predictive value of different sets of biological data (whole-blood proteomics, lipid-metabolomics, transcriptomics, genetics), both separately and added...

Background Hedonic (e.g., happiness) and eudaimonic (e.g., meaning in life) well-being are negatively related to depressive symptoms. Genetic variants play a role in this association, reflected in substantial genetic correlations. We investigated the (genetic) overlap and differences between well-being and depressive symptoms. Methods We used resul...

Objective To explore indicators of the following questionable research practices (QRPs) in randomized controlled trials (RCTs): (1) risk of bias in four domains (random sequence generation, allocation concealment, blinding of participants and personnel, and blinding of outcome assessment); (2) modifications in primary outcomes that were registered...

Introduction As the role of (neuro)inflammation in depression pathophysiology is emerging, augmentation of antidepressant treatments with anti-inflammatory drugs have shown beneficial results, but not consistently across all studies. Inconsistencies may be due to depression biological and clinical heterogeneity. Immuno-Metabolic Depression (IMD) ha...

Each day, many thousands of new studies are published. Identifying specific study types with high sensitivity and specificity may improve searchability and accelerate updating systematic reviews and meta-analyses. Machine learning transformer models could facilitate this identification process if sufficient training data is available. We used an ac...

The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has threatened global mental health, both indirectly via disruptive societal changes and directly via neuropsychiatric sequelae after SARS-CoV-2 infection. Despite a small increase in self-reported mental health problems, this has (so far) not translated into objectively measurable increased rates of...

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a heritable (h² = 24–71%) psychiatric illness. Copy number variation (CNV) is a form of rare genetic variation that has been implicated in the etiology of psychiatric disorders, but no large-scale investigation of CNV in PTSD has been performed. We present an association study of CNV burden and PTSD symptoms...