Detlef E Dietrich

AMEOS Klinikum Hildesheim und Hameln

Background Employment and relationship are crucial for social integration. However, individuals with major psychiatric disorders often face challenges in these domains. Aims We investigated employment and relationship status changes among patients across the affective and psychotic spectrum – in comparison with healthy controls, examining whether...

Older Adults with Bipolar Disorder (OABD) represent a heterogeneous group, including those with early and late onset of the disorder. Recent evidence shows both groups have distinct clinical, cognitive, and medical features, tied to different neurobiological profiles. This study explored the link between polygenic risk scores (PRS) for bipolar diso...

Introduction In severe cases, an infection with the Borna Disease Virus 1 (BoDV-1), the causative agent of Borna disease in horses, sheep, and other domestic mammals, was reported to be accompanied by cognitive dysfunctions, seizures, deep coma, or severe to fatal encephalitis in humans. In addition, asymptomatic or mild courses of BoDV-1 infection...

Introduction: Emerging studies highlight the telomere system as an aging mechanism underlying the association between exposure to psychological trauma and the development of a wide range of physical and mental disorders, including major depressive disorder (MDD). Here, we investigated associations of circulating levels of the steroid hormone dehydr...

Micro RNAs (miRNAs) play a crucial role as regulators of various biological processes and have been implicated in the pathogenesis of mental disorders such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorders. In this study, we investigate the expression patterns of miRNAs in the PsyCourse Study (n=1,786), contrasting three broad diagnostic groups: Psychotic (Sc...

Lithium is regarded as the first-line treatment for bipolar disorder (BD), a severe and disabling mental health disorder that affects about 1% of the population worldwide. Nevertheless, lithium is not consistently effective, with only 30% of patients showing a favorable response to treatment. To provide personalized treatment options for bipolar pa...

Existing guidelines recommend psychopharmacological treatment for the management of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder as part of holistic treatment concepts. About half of the patients do not take their medication regularly, although treatment adherence can prevent exacerbations and re-hospitalizations. To date, the relationship between medication...

Lithium is regarded as the first-line treatment for bipolar disorder (BD), a severe and disabling mental disorder that affects about 1% of the population worldwide. Nevertheless, lithium is not consistently effective, with only 30% of patients showing a favorable response to treatment. To provide personalized treatment options for bipolar patients,...

As core symptoms of schizophrenia, cognitive deficits contribute substantially to poor outcomes. Early life stress (ELS) can negatively affect cognition in patients with schizophrenia and healthy controls, but the exact nature of the mediating factors is unclear. Therefore, we investigated how ELS, education, and symptom burden are related to cogni...

Background: Mitochondria generate energy through oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS). The function of key OXPHOS proteins can be altered by variation in mitochondria-related genes, which may increase the risk of mental illness. We investigated the association of mitochondria-related genes and their genetic risk burden with cognitive performance. M...

Background Borna disease virus 1 (BoDV-1) is a non-segmented, negative-strand RNA virus that persistently infects mammals including humans. BoDV-1 worldwide occurring strains display highly conserved genomes with overlapping genetic signatures between those of either human or animal origin. BoDV-1 infection may cause behavioral and cognitive distur...

Depression and suicidal behavior are interrelated, stress-associated mental health conditions, each lacking biological verifiability. Concepts of predictive, preventive, and personalized medicine (3PM) are almost completely missing for both conditions but are of utmost importance. Prior research reported altered levels of the stress hormone cortiso...

Existing guidelines recommend psychopharmacological treatment for the management of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder as part of holistic treatment concepts. About half of patients do not take their medication regularly, although treatment adherence can prevent exacerbations and re-hospitalizations. To date, the relationship of medication adherenc...

Depression and suicidal behaviour are interrelated, stress-associated mental health conditions, each lacking biological verifiability. Concepts of predictive, preventive and personalised medicine (3PM) are almost completely missing for both conditions but are of utmost importance. Research reported altered levels of the stress hormone cortisol in t...

Biological research and clinical management in psychiatry face two major impediments: the high degree of overlap in psychopathology between diagnoses and the inherent heterogeneity with regard to severity. Here, we aim to stratify cases into homogeneous transdiagnostic subgroups using psychometric information with the ultimate aim of identifying in...

Amantadine (1-amino-adamantane) is a versatile antiviral compound which has been licensed for decades against influenza viruses. During the Corona pandemic, its effect to inhibit SARS-CoV-2 in vitro has been investigated. However, an in vivo oral inapplicability was concluded due to ID50 doses exceeding eight times the estimated maximum tolerable p...

Introduction According to the World Health Organization, medication adherence is defined as the extent to which a person's behavior corresponds with an agreed recommendation from a healthcare provider. Approximately 50% of patients do not take their medication as prescribed, and non-adherence can contribute to the progress of a disease. For patient...

As early detection of symptoms in the subclinical to clinical psychosis spectrum may improve health outcomes, knowing the probabilistic susceptibility of developing a disorder could guide mitigation measures and clinical intervention. In this context, polygenic risk scores (PRSs) quantifying the additive effects of multiple common genetic variants...

Background The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic, with its impact on our way of life, is affecting our experiences and mental health. Notably, individuals with mental disorders have been reported to have a higher risk of contracting SARS-CoV-2. Personality traits could represent an important determinant of preven...

Background: Depression and suicidal behaviour are two interrelated, stress-associated mental health conditions, each lacking robust biological verifiability. While alterations in the stress hormone cortisol were found in the hair of depressed patients, data on hair cortisol concentrations (HCC) for suicide completers (SC) are missing. Compared to c...

Background The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, with all its impacts on our way of life, is affecting our experiences and mental health. Notably, individuals with mental disorders have been reported to have a higher risk of contracting SARS-CoV-2. Personality traits could represent an important determinant of preventative health behavior and, therefore, the ri...

An increasing interest in a healthy lifestyle raises questions about optimal body weight. Evidently, it should be clearly discriminated between the standardised “normal” body weight and individually optimal weight. To this end, the basic principle of personalised medicine “one size does not fit all” has to be applied. Contextually, “normal” but e.g...

Executive functions are metacognitive capabilities that control and coordinate mental processes. In the transdiagnostic PsyCourse Study, comprising patients of the affective-to-psychotic spectrum and controls, we investigated the genetic basis of the time course of two core executive subfunctions: set-shifting (Trail Making Test, part B (TMT-B)) an...

Introduction: A disturbed sense of self is frequently discussed as an etiological factor for delusion symptoms in psychosis. Phenomenological approaches to psychopathology posit that lacking the sense that the self is localized within one's bodily boundaries (disembodiment) is one of the core features of the disturbed self in psychosis. The presen...

Background: Whether Borna disease virus (BDV-1) is a human pathogen remained controversial until recent encephalitis cases showed BDV-1 infection could even be deadly. This called to mind previous evidence for an infectious contribution of BDV-1 to mental disorders. Pilot open trials suggested that BDV-1 infected depressed patients benefitted from...

Background: Stressful life events influence the course of affective disorders, however, the mechanisms by which they bring about phenotypic change are not entirely known. Methods: We explored the role of DNA methylation in response to recent stressful life events in a cohort of bipolar patients from the longitudinal PsyCourse study (n = 96). Per...

Importance Identifying psychosis subgroups could improve clinical and research precision. Research has focused on symptom subgroups, but there is a need to consider a broader clinical spectrum, disentangle illness trajectories, and investigate genetic associations. Objective To detect psychosis subgroups using data-driven methods and examine their...

Goal: The study’s goal was the qualitative evaluation of a new variant of the mental health intervention “psychosomatic consultation in the workplace” from the perspective of participating firms and individuals. Methods: The study data encompassed group discussions with workplace actors based on open-ended interview questions about their experienc...

Cognitive deficits are a core feature of psychiatric disorders like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Evidence supports a genome-wide polygenic score (GPS) for educational attainment (GPSEDU) can be used to explain variability in cognitive performance. We aimed to identify different cognitive domains associated with GPSEDU in a transdiagnostic cl...

Background: Religious delusions are a common symptom in patients experiencing psychosis, with varying prevalence rates of religious delusions across cultures and societies. To enhance our knowledge of this distinct psychotic feature, we investigated the mutually-adjusted association of genetic and environmental factors with occurrence of religious...

selecting FS affected individuals at early stage of the phenotype development in teenagers

The cover image is based on the Research Article A longitudinal approach to biological psychiatric research: The PsyCourse study by Monika Budde et al., DOI: 10.1002/ajmg.b.32639.

In current diagnostic systems, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are still conceptualized as distinct categorical entities. Recently, both clinical and genomic evidence have challenged this Kraepelinian dichotomy. There are only few longitudinal studies addressing potential overlaps between these conditions. Here, we present design and first resul...

Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) has been associated with telomere dysfunction and alterations in mitochondrial activity, which seem to be co-regulated in human cells. To investigate this co-regulation in MDD, we assessed telomere length (TL) in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) and selected immune cell subsets by quantitative fluorescence i...

Objectives Bipolar disorder (BD) with early disease onset is associated with an unfavorable clinical outcome and constitutes a clinically and biologically homogenous subgroup within the heterogeneous BD spectrum. Previous studies have found an accumulation of early age at onset (AAO) in BD families and have therefore hypothesized that there is a la...

Background: Glycans are short chains of saccharides linked to glycoproteins that are known to be involved in a wide range of inflammatory processes. As depression has been consistently associated with chronic low-grade inflammation, we asked whether patients with Major Depressive Disorder show alterations in the N-glycosylation pattern of serum pr...

In current diagnostic systems, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are still conceptualized as distinct categorical entities. Recently, both clinical and genetic evidence have challenged this Kraepelinian dichotomy. There are only few longitudinal studies addressing the potential overlaps between these conditions. Here, we present design and first r...

Significance Early life stress (ELS) is an important risk factor for schizophrenia. Our study shows that ELS in mice increases the levels of histone-deacetylase (HDAC) 1 in brain and blood. Although altered Hdac1 expression in response to ELS is widespread, increased Hdac1 levels in the prefrontal cortex are responsible for the development of schiz...

Inflammatory processes are supposed to play an integral role in the pathophysiology of Major Depressive Disorder (MD). Chronically elevated levels of CRP, IL-6 and TNF-alpha may contribute to the high prevalence of secondary diseases observed with MD (e.g. autoimmune diseases, cardiovascular diseases, and cancer). Besides poor health outcomes, MD p...

Intuitions play a central role in every-day life decision-making but little is known regarding this capacity during depression. Thus, in Study 1, N = 39 depressed in-patients completed two well-established tasks, assessing intuitions of visual and semantic coherence. In the semantic coherence task patients judged whether presented words triads were...

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a mood disorder of multifactorial origin affecting millions of people worldwide. The alarming estimated rates of prevalence and relapse make it a global public health concern. Moreover, the current setback of available antidepressants in the clinical setting is discouraging. Therefore, efforts to eradicate depress...

Objectives: In daily life, many decisions of minor and major importance have to be made. Thereby, intuitive judgments serve as useful guides and help us to adapt to our environment. People with major depressive disorder (MDD) often have difficulties to come to decisions. Is their intuition impaired? Since this question has not been addressed until...

Background Telomere shortening is a normal age-related process. However, premature shortening of telomeres in leukocytes – as has been reported in depression – may increase the risk for age-related diseases. While previous studies investigated telomere length in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) as a whole, this study investigated specific...

Mitochondrial dysfunction might have a central role in the pathophysiology of depression. Phenotypically, depression is characterized by lack of energy, concentration problems and fatigue. These symptoms might be partially explained by reduced availability of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) as a consequence of impaired mitochondrial functioning. This...

Fragestellung: Prävalenzen von negativen Antwortverzerrungen verdeutlichen, dass Aggrava­tion und Simulation in verschiedenen klinischen Kontexten auftreten. In der vorliegenden Studie wurde untersucht, inwiefern sich das Antwortverhalten von depressiven Patienten und instruierten Simulanten in den Symptomskalen ‚Depressivität‘, ‚somatoforme Beschw...

The German Association for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy (DGPPN) has committed itself to establish a prospective national cohort of patients with major psychiatric disorders, the so-called DGPPN-Cohort. This project will enable the scientific exploitation of high-quality data and biomaterial from psychiatric patients for research. It will be set up...

This study was designed to investigate to what extent guidelines regarding the pharmacological treatment of patients suffering from schizophrenia-like psychosis are adopted in a naturalistic treatment setting. Medical records of n=819 patients undergoing inpatient treatment for schizophrenia-like psychosis in 11 psychiatric hospitals in northwester...

Zusammenfassung Borna Disease Virus (BDV) wird seit mehr als 20 Jahren als potenzieller kausaler Co-Faktor insbesondere bei affektiven Erkrankungen diskutiert. Die folgende Kasuistik demonstriert die erste antivirale Behandlung einer BDV-infizierten Patientin mit einer bipolaren affektiven Störung, die bei sonst therapieresistentem Verlauf mit klas...

It was the aim of this study to estimate effects of depression on permanent disability and death in a statutory health insurance population. Data from 128,001 clients were used with a mean follow up of 6.4 years. Excess risks were calculated with Cox regression models adjusted for age, gender, education and job classification. Outpatient treatment...

Objective: Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is increasingly diagnosed in adults. In this study we address the question whether there are impairments in recognition memory. Methods: In the present study 13 adults diagnosed with ADHD according to DSM-IV and 13 healthy controls were examined with respect to event-related potentials (ERP...

Illusions provide a useful tool to study the mechanisms by which top-down and bottom-up processes interact in perception. Patients suffering from schizophrenia are not as subject to the hollow-mask illusion as healthy controls, since studies have shown that controls perceive a hollow mask as a normal face, while patients with schizophrenia do not....

Perception is not simply based on a hierarchical organization of the brain; it arises from an interplay between inputs from the environment and internal predictions of these inputs. It is an active process which involves an interaction between bottom-up information coming from the senses and feedback connections coming from higher-order cortical ar...

Zusammenfassung Obwohl in allgemeinpsychiatrischen Tageskliniken Patienten mit bipolarer Störung versorgt werden, ist die tagesklinische Behandlung dieser Klientel noch nicht spezifiziert beschrieben worden. Im klinischen Alltag imponieren auffällige Unterschiede hinsichtlich des psychopathologischen Bildes und Verlaufs bei Patienten mit der Diagno...

Der Begriff des Querulanten leitet sich vom Wort queri (lat.) ab und bedeutet so viel wie „vor Gericht klagen“. Die Psychiatrie übernahm diesen Begriff aus dem juristischen Denken. Gemeint sind Menschen, die unbeirrbar und zäh einen Rechtskampf führen (Tölle u. Windgassen 2005). Der Querulantenwahn war einst von besonderem klinischen und akademisch...

Die Lykanthropie (griech. lycos = Wolf, anthropos = Mensch), auch Zooanthropismus genannt bedeutet das Erleben einer Verwandlung vom Mensch zum Tier. Nach Keck et al. (1988) ist die Lykanthropie folgendermaßen definiert: Der Patient berichtet in einem Moment der Klarheit oder zurückblickend, dass er sich als Tier fühlt oder gefühlt hat. Das Verha...

Even though patients suffering from bipolar disorder are treated in day hospitals, recommendations for day hospital treatment of these patients has not been precisely described yet. Obvious differences related to the psychopathological picture and the course of illness can be noticed in that group. The following three case reports show the differen...

The study aimed to explore by means of single-trial event-related potentials (ERPs), whether and how the medication change from older neuroleptics to quetiapine in schizophrenic patients led to a significant cognitive enhancement. This single-trial ERP analysis helps to investigate attention and memory processes in the single patient before and aft...

Speech perception is an essential part of social interaction. Visual information (lip movements, facial expression) may supplement auditory information in particular under inadvertent listening situations. Schizophrenia patients have been shown to have a deficit in integrating articulatory motions with the auditory speech input. The goal of this st...

Patients suffering from schizophrenia are less susceptible to various visual illusions. For example, healthy participants perceive a hollow mask as a normal face, presumably due to the strength of constraining top-down influences, while patients with schizophrenia do not (Schneider, U., Leweke, F.M., Sternemann, U., Weber, M.M., Emrich, H.M., 1996....

Memory processes, as reflected by 'old/new' effects of event-related potentials (ERPs), have been shown to be impaired in depressed patients. This variability might be partly explained by biological factors. S100B is a glial calcium-binding protein with neuroplastic properties; S100B serum levels have been shown to be increased in depressive patien...

Memory disturbances found in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) may partially be related to dysfunction of cortico-subcortical circuits. However, it is still unknown how OCD symptomatology is related to memory processing. To explore this question, event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded in a continuous word-recognition paradigm in OCD patien...

Schizophrenia is a serious and disabling mental disorder with symptoms such as auditory hallucinations, disordered thinking and delusions, avolition, anhedonia, blunted affect and apathy. In this review article we seek to present the current scientific findings from linkage studies and susceptible genes and the pathophysiology of white matter in sc...

Patients with affective disorders show an enhanced prevalence of Borna disease virus (BDV)-infection. Furthermore, BDV causes latent infection preferably in limbic central nervous structures and is suggested to be causally related to subtypes of affective disorders, especially with melancholic clinical features or bipolarity. Such a possible link w...

This chapter introduces an unique RNA virus, Borna disease virus (BDV), into biological psychiatry, thereby summarizing current knowledge on the agent's unusual properties, diagnosis, therapy, and animal models, with respect to BDV's potential impact on psychiatric disorders. BDV preferentially infects the limbic system of the brain of animals as w...