Daria Smirnova

Medical University REAVIZ

Background: Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a complex neurodevelopmental disorder that affects a significant proportion of the world's population, particularly children and adolescents. The sensory processing issues can be an evidence-based target for therapeutic/corrective interventions by controlling the intensity and targeted replacement of m...

Objectives: Alzheimer's disease (AD) presents a major global health issue of significant socio-economic impact. Pharmacological treatments for AD have limited efficacy, prompting the exploration of alternative therapies, such as repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS), a promising non-invasive technique to enhance cognitive function in...

Background: There is a broad appreciation that a diagnosis of depression (D) in the elderly is a strong risk factor for incident dementia, particularly Alzheimer's disease (AD). Indeed, the two disorders might constitute a dyad, although their causal relationship is uncertain, given the likely bidirectional and compounding effects of social withdr...

Introduction: In this study we examine the issue of employee burnout, caused by long-term exposure to workplace stressors, considering its complex phenomenology in the context of contemporary psychological and psychiatric views. Towards the development of innovative technologies to correct burnout in the context of psychosocial rehabilitation, we...

Background: Suicide is a major global health concern, particularly among young people. This study evaluates an online suicide risk calculator based on the Risk Assessment of Suicidality Scale (RASS), which is designed to enhance accessibility and early detection of suicide risk. Methods: The study involved 444 participants who completed the RASS...

Background: The dissolution of the Soviet Union brought economic instability and variety of social changes, resulting in fluctuating suicide rates and highlighting the national phenomenon of a melancholy cultural trait across the general population. The socio-political changes in Russia post-1991 led to increased rates of depressive and stress-rel...

Introduction: Self-harm behavior is a significant global concern, with Russia among the countries with high prevalence rates. Adolescents and young adults (15-29 years old) are particularly vulnerable, with suicide being the fourth leading cause of death in this age group. Our objective was to present statistics on suicidality and non-suicidal sel...

Aim – Our goal is to pinpoint genetic markers that could increase the risk of developing PTSD. Identifying these markers can guide future research aimed at creating preventive measures and treatments for PTSD. Material and methods. We searched the PubMed database and found 623 articles. After screening, 20 articles met our criteria: they were publi...

Background The prevalence of medical illnesses is high among patients with psychiatric disorders. The current study aimed to investigate multi-comorbidity in patients with psychiatric disorders in comparison to the general population. Secondary aims were to investigate factors associated with metabolic syndrome and treatment appropriateness of ment...

Introduction The aim of the study was to search rates of depression and mental health in university students, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Materials and methods This is an observational cross-sectional study. A protocol gathering sociodemographic variables as well as depression, anxiety and suicidality and conspiracism was assembled, and data wer...

Presented clinical observation of anti-NMDA-receptor encephalitis, which was first described in 2007, is rare and to date has not been sufficiently studied. The disease often manifests with psychopathological symptoms and catatonia, so patients are transferred into a mental healthcare institution and often require intensive care and resuscitation,...

Introduction: Schizophrenia is a severe mental illness causing significant impairment in personal, family, social, educational, occupational, and other important areas of life. While there is no widely accepted endophenotype, peripheral blood cells may serve as an accessible model of intracellular changes in schizophrenia. Methods: We reviewed the...

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has had significant impacts on the child and adolescent population, with long-term consequences for physical health, socio-psychological well-being, and cognitive development, which require further investigation. We herein describe a study design protocol for recognizing neuropsychiatric complications associated w...

Background: Depression is a common mental illness, with around 280 million people suffering from depression worldwide. At present, the main way to quantify the severity of depression is through psychometric scales, which entail subjectivity on the part of both patient and clinician. In the last few years, deep (machine) learning is emerging as a m...

Background: Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is one of the most effective treatments for depressive disorders. However, ECT has a number of limitations, such as significant side effects in the neurocognitive domain and the requirement for general anesthesia. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is an intervention that applies electric stimulatio...

Cellular and molecular processes that are of key importance in the development of neuroinflammation and increased cytokine response, activation of microglia and astrogliosis, contributing to the accumulation of metabolites and aberrant proteins in the brain tissue due to their overproduction and insufficient clearance, concomitant disturbance of ar...

Introduction: Schizophrenia is a severe mental illness causing significant impairment in personal, family, social, educational, occupational, and other important areas of life. While there is no widely accepted endophenotype, peripheral blood cells may serve as an accessible model of intracellular changes in schizophrenia. Methods: We reviewed t...

Background: The objective of this study was to investigate self-reported changes in mental health and their association with various sociodemographic factors and beliefs in conspiracy theories among university and college students in Latvia during the second state of emergency caused by COVID-19. Subjects and methods: This cross-sectional study...

Background: Mixed affective states (MS) are often misdiagnosed by the clinicians and lead to the inappropriate treatment strategies contributing to the severe forms, poor outcome with higher rates of comorbid conditions and worse remission quality in affective and bipolar disorders, as well as to a decreased psychosocial functioning of these patie...

Elderly Russian people face a double burden in the COVID-19 pandemic, being at higher risk for serious infection, and vulnerable to psychiatric consequences of social isolation measures. To assess the latter phenomenon, we managed a number of studies. We undertook a number of studies. First, we enrolled a group of 456 elderly patients from general...

Neuropathic pain affects 7 % of the general population worldwide, it is often resistant to analgesic treatments and is complicated with depressive states in 57–65 % of this patients’ cohort. Ongoing research of current therapeutic approaches, including repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) use in neuropathic pain and depression, grant...

The COVID-19 pandemic, which has spread across the world, has made an impact on every student’s ordinary life and mental health, from studying conditions, internship, employment to freedom of movement. This was a cross-sectional study where Latvian university and college students were asked to fill the self-report online questionnaire developed as...

Introduction The current study aimed to investigate the rates of anxiety, clinical depression, and suicidality and their changes in health professionals during the COVID-19 outbreak. Materials and methods The data came from the larger COMET-G study. The study sample includes 12,792 health professionals from 40 countries (62.40% women aged 39.76 ±...

Introduction The current study aimed to investigate the rates of anxiety, clinical depression, and suicidality and their changes in health professionals during the COVID-19 outbreak. Materials and methods The data came from the larger COMET-G study. The study sample includes 12,792 health professionals from 40 countries (62.40% women aged 39.76 ±...

The SARS-CoV-2 virus brought dramatic changes into daily life, subjecting society to the new and unforeseen era. The COVID-19 pandemic introduced challenges to governments, healthcare systems (including mental healthcare services), clinicians, and researchers worldwide, including management of healthcare sector investigations and international mult...

Huntington’s disease (HD) is a steadily progressive neurodegenerative disease caused by a mutation in the huntingtin gene consisting of an excessive number of cytosine-adenine-guanine (CAG) repeats (McColgan & Tabrizi, 2018; Mills et al., 2020). The disease has an autosomal dominance inheritance mechanism with complete penetrance and manifests in p...

Violence against women (VAW) is a violation of human rights. The violence occurs as a form of physical, sexual, psychological, economic or sociocultural abuse and aggression. VAW is mostly a covert, complex and undetected phenomenon, making effective interventions challenging. In many cases, VAW does not occur in isolation but is tangled in a web o...

This chapter reviews the results of pharmacogenetic studies in the management of addictive disorders. A large body of research indicates the advantages with respect to prediction of treatment efficacy and tolerability using polygenic predictive systems based on pharmacogenetic markers. This approach to patient management is known as personalised ph...

Lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic had led to lifestyle changes among Malaysians. These changes were due to people being confined to work and study at home and stress due to the risk of COVID-19 transmission. Our study aimed to observe changes in the patterns of eating habits and physical activity during the pandemic of COVID-19 in Malaysia and...

Selective and progressive death of neurons is a characteristic feature of the process of neurodegeneration and leads to corresponding neuronal dysfunctions. Neurodegenerative diseases represent a heterogeneous group of clinically distinct disorders with similar molecular mechanisms of pathogenesis. They are based on the processes of abnormal aggreg...

Objective: To evaluate the modifiable daily behavior patterns associated with increased anxiety indicators in the general population in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Material and methods: The study examined the characteristics of the Russian population (n=7777) of the international multicenter project COMET-G. In particular, variables were...

Selective and progressive death of neurons is a characteristic feature of the process of neurodegeneration and leads to corresponding neuronal dysfunctions. Neurodegenerative diseases represent a heterogeneous group of clinically distinct disorders with similar molecular mechanisms of pathogenesis. They are based on the processes of abnormal aggreg...

Objectives: To determine the prevalence of depression and the sociodemographic factors associated with depression in Malaysia during the COVID-19 pandemic METHODS. This study is part of the COVID-19 Mental Health International Study to collect data on the impact of the pandemic on mental health through an online survey. People who were aged ≥18 ye...

About 20% of patients with depression are diagnosed with alcohol dependence, and alcohol dependent individuals are at a higher risk of developing depression. A number of authors point to the relationship of CLOCK gene activity with both affective disorders and alcohol use/dependence disorders; in particular, variations in the CLOCK gene at the evid...

During the COVID-19 pandemic, numerous social and life changes were implemented to curb the spread of the disease. The effect of lockdown and isolation predisposes the general population to various psychological health concerns. The existing determinants of suicidal behaviour were further added with social isolation, financial stress, depression, a...

INTRODUCTION: Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) is a rare hereditary disabling disease and the most common hereditary cause of infant deaths. The timely comprehensive diagnosis of SMA permits to plan therapeutic tactics and preserve the quality of patients’ life. One of the objectives of the given work is a review of the actual literature data on etiop...

Background: During the COVID-19 pandemic healthcare workers have been under pressure of high workload and an increased risk of contracting the SARS-Cov-2 virus, while confronting the most tragic and devastating aspects of the pandemic-related medical realities. These factors could lead to severe distress with potential consequences for productivit...

Background: Depression is ranked by the World Health Organization as the single largest contributor to global disability. The shortage of health care resources, conditions of social distancing during the present pandemic, and the continuing need of patients with subclinical depression and in remission for supportive therapies, all together motivat...

Background: During the COVID-19 pandemic as much as 40% of the global population reported deterioration in depressive mood, whereas 26% experienced increased need for emotional support. At the same time, the availability of on-site psychiatric care declined drastically because of the COVID-19 preventive social restriction measures. To address this...

Introduction During the COVID-19 pandemic various degrees of lockdown were applied by countries around the world. It is considered that such measures have an adverse effect on mental health but the relationship of measure intensity with the mental health effect has not been thoroughly studied. Here we report data from the larger COMET-G study perta...

Background: Quarantine measures with self-isolation of varying duration have been significant psychosocial stressors in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The serotonin selective reuptake inhibitor fluvoxamine has been considered as a prophylaxis against depression in early COVID-19 patients, with additional benefits apparently arising from its...

Background: Up to 45% of ischemic strokes are cryptogenic, which is an impediment to proposing preventative measures. In this investigation we aimed to study underlying heart arrhythmias in patients with cryptogenic stroke, taking into consideration the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and stressful lockdown conditions. Subjects and methods: In...

Background: Individuals who have suffered from novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) are at risk for developing post-COVID neuropsychiatric disorders, which are an integral part of the Long COVID syndrome. Depression and/or anxiety are considered the most common psychiatric disorders after experiencing COVID-19. Certain antiepileptic drugs, notably...

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic brought challenges to governments, healthcare systems (including, mental healthcare services), clinicians and researchers in the EU and worldwide. A range of neurological (e.g., brain fog, encephalitis, myalgia) and psychiatric (e.g., affective disorders, delirium, cognitive disturbances) complications of a novel...

Background: rTMS is an adequately safe intervention that is approved for treatment of various neuropsychiatric conditions. There is ongoing research on the application of rTMS for the treatment of resistant auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH) in schizophrenia (SZ), and also for alleviating negative and cognitive symptoms in patients with chronic...

Background: The stigmatization by healthcare professionals (HP) of patients suffering from mental disorders is an important problem that interferes with the delivery of medical assistance. Social distancing by HP is an integral part of stigmatization, which differs between various mental disorders, as well as between psychiatrists (PSY) versus non...

Background: Neuropathic pain (NP) affects approximately 7% of the general population and is often accompanied by depressive symptoms with up to 85% of NP patients are suffering from comorbid depression (CD). The noninvasive neuromodulation technique of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is an established proven clinically effective nonpharmac...

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic brought along a new situation for the population worldwide. The most important safety measures and lockdown expected extreme adaptability and flexibility impacting mental well-being. The aim of our study was to identify associations between changes in lifestyle and circadian rhythm and depression during the pandem...

Background: The features of bipolar affective disorder (BAD) include mood swings, recurring episodes of mania, depression, and mixed states. Numerous studies of people living with BAD have found the presence of cognitive impairments that affect patients' daily social functioning and quality of life. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is a non...

COVID-19 has created a situation that has never been experienced before, challenging the mobilization of adaptive coping strategies. There has been a marked increase in suicides and suicidal ideation following the onset of COVID-19 likely reflecting the toll of the pandemic on mental health. The aim of our study to investigate the associations betw...

Introduction COVID-19 has enormous impacts on each individual. The goals of our study were (1) to assess the rate of internet and psychoactive substance use, clinical depression and anxiety in a French population during the lockdown (2) to study the role of clinical and socio-demographic variables (especially, gender). Materials and methods During...

Among neurological adverse reactions in patients with schizophrenia treated with antipsychotics (APs), drug-induced parkinsonism (DIP) is the most common motility disorder caused by drugs affecting dopamine receptors. One of the causes of DIP is the disruption of neurotransmitter interactions that regulate the signaling pathways of the dopaminergic...

Metabolic syndrome (MetS) is a clustering of at least three of the following five medical conditions: abdominal obesity, high blood pressure, high blood sugar, high serum triglycerides, and low serum high-density lipoprotein (HDL). Antipsychotic (AP)-induced MetS (AIMetS) is the most common adverse drug reaction (ADR) of psychiatric pharmacotherapy...

Objectives The study aims to investigate the rate of clinical depression in the adult population during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the changes in anxiety, distress, suicidal ideation, and their relations with several personal and interpersonal/social variables. Methods This is an epidemiological, non-interventional study. It is part of an i...

Rare (orphan) diseases have a prevalence ranging one patient per 10,000 population in the Russian Federation to one per 2000 individuals in Australia and the USA. Many orphan diseases lead to a severe decrease in quality of life and high mortality. In this article, we discuss the problem of the problem of early diagnosis in orphan diseases in the R...

BACKGROUND: Suicidality is a complex clinical phenomenon reflecting vulnerability to suicidal behavior which can be explained via the biopsychosocial paradigm and in relationship with a variety of country-specific factors. Data on suicides within the Russian population are inconsistent (from 11.7 up to 25.1 per 100.000), whereas the population’s su...

Background The COVID-19 pandemic and its restrictive public health measures have seriously affected mental health of society. Social, psychological, and health-related factors have been linked to anxiety in the general population. Aim We investigate the association of various sociopsychological and health-related determinants of anxiety and identi...

Aims We aimed to identify the prevalence of anxiety, depression, and suicidality and identify relevant risk and protecting factors among university students during the COVID-19 pandemic in Georgia. Materials and methods We conducted an anonymous online survey ( n = 984, convenience sample by approaching all universities in Georgia and some student...

Background Suicidality is a serious public health concern at a global scale. Suicide itself is considered to be preventable death; worldwide, suicide rates and their trends are under constant scrutiny. As part of the international COMET-G cross-sectional study, we conducted a national level investigation to examine the individual disturbances (such...

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic brought about great uncertainty and significant changes in our people's everyday lives. In times of such crises, it is natural to seek explanations to overcome our fears and uncertainties, contributing to an increase to believe in conspiracy theories which, by yielding explanations, decrease uncertainty and ambigui...

Introduction: There are few published empirical data on the effects of COVID‐19 on mental health, and until now, there is no large international study. Material and Methods: During the COVID-19 pandemic, an online questionnaire gathered data from 55,589 participants from 40 countries (64.85% females aged 35.80 ±13.61; 34.05% males aged 34.90±13.29...

Dementia syndromes can include language impairments (LIs) of severity extending from lexical access difficulties within anomic aphasia to non-fluent effortful speech and semantic aphasia, depending on the stage and etiology of the underlying disease. Relevant etiologies include neurodegenerative Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and non-AD dementias, such a...

Background: Antidepressants (AD) are widely used in the treatment of mood disorders and administered for mental disorders coded across other diagnostic categories. However, inaccuracy in AD prescription may lead to unresponsive cases, decreased compliance, and treatment discontinuation. Following a one-way cross-sectional study design, we aimed to...

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has substantially contributed to increased anxiety rates among the general population worldwide. Pandemic-related health anxiety and worries about getting COVID-19 can lead to generalized anxiety and anxiety somatization, which, together with insalubrious daily life habits, are risk factors of worsening somatic he...

Background The aim of the current study was to explore the effect of gender, age at onset, and duration on the long-term course of schizophrenia. Methods Twenty-nine centers from 25 countries representing all continents participated in the study that included 2358 patients aged 37.21 ± 11.87 years with a DSM-IV or DSM-5 diagnosis of schizophrenia;...

Background: While COVID-19 has rapidly spread around the world, and vaccines are not widely available to the general population, the World Health Organization outlines preventive behavior as the most effective way to limit the rapid spread of the virus. Preventive behavior is associated with a number of factors that both encourage and discourage pr...

Catatonia is a rare neuropsychiatric syndrome that can accompany various medical conditions, including schizophrenia, autoimmune encephalitis, and infectious diseases. We present two cases of catatonia in males aged 12 and 17 years from Central Asia who tested positive for SARS-Cov-2 antibodies. Detailed medical assessments declined other potential...

Purpose Evidence suggests that the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic might have deleterious effects on the population’s mental health and psychiatric outcomes. We examined the prevalence of depression, distress, and suicidal thoughts and their association with social and economic factors during the state of emergency in a nationwide representative sample of t...