Francois Herrmann

• MD, MPH
• Université de Genève at University of Geneva

Background The use of artificial nutrition in the last month of life raises many concerns for patients, relatives, and healthcare professionals. Aim To describe physicians and nurses’ beliefs, knowledge, and decision-making related to introducing and withdrawing artificial nutrition at the end-of-life. Physicians and nurses’ factors affecting thes...

Compulsory admission (CA) refers to the process of hospitalization of an individual to a psychiatric ward or hospital, without their consent, due to severe mental health conditions. While it is an established and legally framed practice in many countries, it raises a number of ethical issues in terms of personal liberty and risks of potential misus...

Background The cognitive trajectories in normal aging may be affected by medial temporal atrophy (MTA) and amyloid burden, as well as vascular pathologies such as cortical microbleeds (CMB) and white matter hyperintensities (WMH). Objective We addressed here the role of imaging markers in their prediction in a real-world situation. Methods We per...

More than 110,000 Europeans died as a result of the record-breaking temperatures of 2022 and 2023. A new generation of impact-based early warning systems, using epidemiological models to transform weather forecasts into health forecasts for targeted population subgroups, is an essential adaptation strategy to increase resilience against climate cha...

Background The reduction of violence risk and crime recidivism is the core marker of progress in forensic psychiatry treatment for mentally disordered offenders, and commonly used to decide prison release. While dynamic risk is expected to relate to treatment progress, static risk is expected to predict prison discharge. Integrated risk-protection...

Background Idiopathic normal pressure hydrocephalus (iNPH) can present with both episodic amnestic syndrome and biomarkers of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) pathology. Objective To examine the associations between amnestic syndrome and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) AD biomarkers in iNPH and the CSF tap test response in iNPH patients with amnestic syndrome....

Background Court-ordered forensic psychiatry treatments (COT) are specifically designed to reduce the risk of violence in mentally disordered offenders. Given their high costs and ethical issues, mental health professionals need admission criteria to be able to select those candidates with optimal benefit. This study analyses offender-related and t...

This EEG study aims at dissecting the differences in the activation of neural generators between borderline personality disorder patients with court-ordered measures (BDL-COM) and healthy controls in visual perspective taking. We focused on the distinction between mentalizing (Avatar) and non-mentalizing (Arrow) stimuli as well as self versus other...

Early diagnosis of late‐onset Alzheimer's disease (AD) by peripheral biomarkers remains a challenge; many have been proposed, but none have been evaluated in a prospective manner. CLUSTERIN (CLU), a chaperone protein expressed in the brain and found in relatively high concentrations in plasma, is a promising candidate. CLU contributes to the elimin...

Purpose To assess the long-term efficacy and safety of treatments for cystoid macular edema (CME) in birdshot retinochoroïditis (BRC) Methods Observational retrospective study of 142 HLA-A29 positive patients with CME; the main outcome was the optical coherence tomography intra-retinal cysts change. Results During the mean follow up of 75 months...

Introduction The gut barrier, comprising gut microbiota, plays a pivotal role in chronic kidney disease (CKD) progression and nutritional status. This study aimed to explore gut barrier alterations in hemodialyzed (HD) patients, non-HD (NHD) CKD patients, and healthy volunteers. Methods Our cross-sectional study enrolled 22 HD patients, 11 NHD pat...

Introduction Wide use of facemasks is one of the many consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods We used an established working memory n-back task in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to explore whether wearing a KN95/FFP2 facemask affects overall performance and brain activation patterns. We provide here a prospective crossover des...

Mentally disordered offenders may be convicted to court-ordered psychiatric-psychotherapeutic inpatient care. Based on the concept of a forensic therapeutic community, the treatments of 204 inmates of a medium-security hospital, who presented with psychosis, personality disorders or substance-use disorders, have been assessed. After a median stay o...

Compared to men inmates, women display decreased prevalence of severe mental disorder but increased occurrence of substance use disorders (SUD) and higher rates of previous contacts with mental health services. The group of women in detention is highly heterogeneous according to the status of incarceration (pre-trial detention (PTD), sentence execu...

Introduction The impact of COVID-19 pandemic on forensic service practice remains matter of debate. Increased rates of anxiety, depression, and exacerbation of psychotic symptoms were reported in the early phases of the pandemic among detained persons. However, longitudinal analyses in medium-security hospitals taking into account the whole pandemi...

Background Patients with idiopathic normal pressure hydrocephalus (p‐iNPH) present with balance impairment, which contribute to falls and could improve after cerebrospinal fluid shunting procedure. Structural brain correlates of balance in iNPH have not been investigated yet. Moreover, as gait, balance changes after shunting could be affected by Al...

The occurrence of significant Alzheimer’s disease (AD) pathology was described in approximately 30% of normal pressure hydrocephalus (NPH) cases, leading to the distinction between neurodegenerative and idiopathic forms of this disorder. Whether or not there is a specific MRI signature of NPH remains a matter of debate. The present study focuses on...

Background Daily time-series regression models are commonly used to estimate the lagged nonlinear relation between temperature and mortality. A major impediment to this type of analysis is the restricted access to daily health records. The use of weekly and monthly data represents a possible solution unexplored to date. Methods We temporally aggre...

Introduction In several European countries, offenders with decreased or abolished responsibility and high risk of recidivism due to long-lasting mental disorders are compulsory admitted for court-ordered treatments (COT) that take place in high and medium-security hospitals. As a rule, length of stay in these structures is very long implying major...

Background This study evaluates the impact of high risk of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) on coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) acute encephalopathy (AE). Methods Between 3/1/2020 and 11/1/2021, 97 consecutive patients were evaluated at the Geneva University Hospitals with a neurological diagnosis of COVID-19 AE. They were divided in two groups de...

Background: idiopathic normal pressure hydrocephalus (iNPH) can present with both an episodic amnestic syndrome (or so-called hippocampal profile) and biomarkers of Alzheimer’s pathology. However, it remains unknown if both are related and if an amnestic syndrome accounts for less reversibility after a cerebrospinal fluid derivation. Methods: we us...

Background Fear of falling is associated with numerous negative health outcomes in older adults and can limit the rehabilitation process. Hypnosis is now recognized as an effective treatment for a variety of conditions, especially anxiety and pain, which can be integrated safely with conventional medicine. The objective of this study was to assess...

INTRODUCTION As the chemokine receptor5 (CCR5) may play a role in ischemia, we studied the links between CCR5 deficiency, the sensitivity of neurons to oxidative stress, and the development of dementia. METHODS Logistic regression models with CCR5/apolipoprotein E (ApoE) polymorphisms were applied on a sample of 205 cognitively normal individuals...

Objectives and background: To validate a novel screening test for cognitive and functional decline in older patients rehabilitated with complete removable dental prostheses (CRDPs). Materials and methods: Edentate old in-patients rehabilitated with CRDPs were included in this study. Participants were requested to remove their prostheses before the...

Over 70,000 excess deaths occurred in Europe during the summer of 2003. The resulting societal awareness led to the design and implementation of adaptation strategies to protect at-risk populations. We aimed to quantify heat-related mortality burden during the summer of 2022, the hottest season on record in Europe. We analyzed the Eurostat mortalit...

This high density EEG report dissects the neural processing in the visual perspective taking using four experimental comparisons (Arrow, Avatar and Self, Other). Early activation differences occurred between the Avatar and the Arrow condition in primary visual pathways concomitantly with alpha and beta phase locked responses predominant in the Avat...

Previous studies showed that neurotypical adults are able to engage in unconscious analyses of others’ mental states in the context of automatic perspective taking and experience systematic difficulties when judging the conflicts between their own (Self) and another’s (Other) perspective. Several functional MRI (fMRI) studies reported widespread ac...

In this functional MRI (fMRI) study on 82 healthy adults using the dot perspective task, inconsistency of perspectives was associated with a significant increase of the mean reaction time and number of errors both in Self and Other conditions. Unlike the Arrow (non-mentalizing), the Avatar (mentalizing) paradigm was characterized by the recruitment...

Criminological and sociodemographic variables, such as previous criminal convictions, increased risk of violence, early onset of mental disorder, antisocial personality, psychosis and low social support, have all been related to longer length of stay (LoS) and poorer outcome in long stay forensic services. The factors impacting on LoS and clinical...

Background The European Working Group on Sarcopenia in Older People (EWGSOP2) recently revised its definition and diagnostic criteria for sarcopenia, placing muscle strength at the forefront. The pathogenesis of dynapenia (or low muscle strength) is still not fully understood, but there is emerging evidence that central neural factors constitute cr...

Background This study evaluates the impact of comorbid obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) on coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) acute encephalopathy (AE). Methods Between 3/1/2020 and 11/1/2021, 97 consecutive patients were evaluated at the Geneva University Hospitals with a neurological diagnosis of COVID-19 AE. They were divided in two groups dependi...

Introduction. As the chemokine receptor5 (CCR5) may play a role in ischemia, we studied the links between CCR5 deficiency, the sensitivity of neurons to oxidative stress, and the development of dementia. Methods. Logistic regression models with CCR5 and ApoE polymorphisms were applied to 205 cognitively normal and 189 dementia patients included in...

Background: Fear of falling is associated with numerous negative health outcomes in older adults and can limit the rehabilitation process. Hypnosis is now recognized as an effective treatment for a variety of conditions, especially anxiety and pain, which can be integrated safely with conventional medicine. The objective of this study was to assess...

Daylight saving time (DST) consists in a one-hour advancement of legal time in spring offset by a backward transition of the same magnitude in fall. It creates a minimal circadian misalignment that could disrupt sleep and homoeostasis in susceptible individuals and lead to an increased incidence of pathologies and accidents during the weeks immedia...

Objective To assess whether gait, neuropsychological, and multimodal MRI parameters predict short-term symptom reversal after cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) tap test in idiopathic normal pressure hydrocephalus (iNPH). Methods Thirty patients (79.3 ± 5.9 years, 12 women) with a diagnosis of probable iNPH and 46 healthy controls (74.7 ± 5.4 years, 35 wom...

Background: The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic was particularly devastating for elderly people, and the underlying mechanisms of the disease are still poorly understood. In this study, we investigated fusion inhibitory antibodies (fiAbs) in elderly and younger COVID-19 patients and analyzed predictive factors for their occurrence. Methods: Data and samples we...

Among detained persons, those incarcerated for the first time (FTI: first time incarceration) are known to present long-standing psychological vulnerability but also suffer significant deterioration of their mental health during the first year following imprisonment. Whether the patterns of psychiatric morbidity differ in FTI cases compared to case...

Previous studies using the dot-perspective task postulated that people automatically take into account others' perspective even when it prevents them from achieving their own goals. This human ability may be of key importance for the ascription of mental states and social interactions. The cognitive and emotional determinants of automatic perspecti...

Objectives: Established visual brain MRI markers for dementia include hippocampal atrophy (mesio-temporal atrophy MTA), white matter lesions (Fazekas score), and number of cerebral microbleeds (CMBs). We assessed whether novel quantitative, artificial intelligence (AI)-based volumetric scores provide additional value in predicting subsequent cogni...

Background Despite successful functional neurosurgery, patients suffering from epilepsy or Parkinson’s disease may experience postoperative psychological distress and social maladjustments. Difficulties in coping with postoperative changes, even positive ones, have shown to be related to patients’ presurgery cognitive representations (i.e., expecta...

Recently, we showed that DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) are increased by the Aβ42-amyloid peptide and decreased by all-trans retinoic acid (RA) in SH-SY5Y cells and C57BL/6J mice. The present work was aimed at investigating DSBs in cells and murine models of Alzheimer’s disease carrying the preseniline-1 (PS1) P117L mutation. We observed that DSBs...

Background Both the frequency of court-ordered treatments (COT) for offenders and prevalence of mental disorders among regular prison inmates steadily increased in most western countries. Whether there are major sociodemographic and clinical differences between these two populations is still matter of debate. Methods We compared the sociodemograph...

Background Several studies postulated that personality is an independent determinant of cognitive trajectories in old age. Objective This study explores the impact of personality on widely used Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and vascular imaging markers. Methods We examined the association between personality and three classical AD imaging markers (cen...

Rationale Risk factors for drug addiction include genetics, environment, and behavioral traits such as impulsivity and novelty preference (NP), which have been related to deficits in striatal dopamine (DA) D 2/3 -receptors (D 2/3 R) and heightened amphetamine (AMPH)-induced DA release. However, the influence of the early rearing environment on thes...

Introduction La plupart des interventions en cours de développement pour le traitement de la sarcopénie visent à améliorer la masse musculaire. Compte tenu des évidences croissantes en faveur d’un rôle clef du système nerveux central dans la sarcopénie, l’hypothèse peut être émise que certaines interventions spécifiques ciblant ce système pourraien...

The provision of high-quality palliative care in nursing homes (NHs) requires specific knowledge and skills among health professionals. The aims of the study were to assess quality of care during the dying process and quality of end-of-life of NH residents in the French and Italian parts of Switzerland. 90 residents died during the study period (me...

Background: Body weight (BW) loss is prevalent in patients with pancreatic cancer (PC). Gut microbiota affects BW and is known to directly shape the host immune responses and antitumor immunity. This pilot study evaluated the link between gut microbiota, metabolic parameters and inflammatory/immune parameters, through the fecal material transplant...

Background The determinants of the progressive decrement of cognition in normal aging are still a matter of debate. Alzheimer disease (AD)-signature markers and vascular lesions, but also psychological variables such as personality factors, are thought to have an impact on the longitudinal trajectories of neuropsychological performances in healthy...

Background We have previously shown that glycine increases fat-free mass in chronic haemodialysis patients with features of malnutrition as compared with branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs). This multicentre randomized double-blind crossover study evaluates the impact of these amino acids on the gut barrier and microbiota. Methods Haemodialysis pat...

Background Protein energy wasting is associated with negative outcome in patients under chronic haemodialysis (HD). Branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs) may increase the muscle mass. This post hoc analysis of a controlled double-blind randomized crossover study assessed the impact of BCAAs on nutritional status, physical function, and quality of life...

Background: One of the main challenges for clinicians is to ensure that alcohol withdrawal treatment is the most effective possible after discharge. To address this issue, we designed a pilot study to investigate the efficacy of the rehabilitation treatment on the main stages of information processing, using an electroencephalographic method. This...

Background Europe has emerged as a major climate change hotspot, both in terms of an increase in seasonal averages and climate extremes. Projections of temperature-attributable mortality, however, have not been comprehensively reported for an extensive part of the continent. Therefore, we aim to estimate the future effect of climate change on tempe...

Quantitative imaging processing tools have been proposed to improve clinic-radiological correlations but their added value at the initial stages of cognitive decline is still a matter of debate. We performed a longitudinal study in 90 community-dwelling elders with three neuropsychological assessments during a 4.5 year follow-up period, and visual...

Background: Despite successful functional neurosurgery, patients suffering from epilepsy or Parkinson’s disease may experience postoperative psychological distress and social maladjustments. Difficulties in coping with postoperative changes, even positive ones, have shown to be related to patients’ presurgery cognitive representations (i.e., expect...

Among the different types of heavy use of mental health services, frequent inpatient admission in acute care units of individuals unable to return to their usual environment refers to as revolving-door (RD). RD in prisoners is related to increased violence (acted and supported) and suicidal recidivism. We explored the determinants of RD in 200 inma...

COVER ILLUSTRATION Idiopathic Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus (iNPH), the leading cause of reversible dementia in ageing, is currently underdiagnosed and poorly understood. Using functional brain imaging and molecular data, Griffa et al. demonstrate an alteration of Default Mode Network resting‐state dynamics in iNPH patients compared to healthy cont...

Background & Aims: To investigate the association of nutritional risk at admission with the length of hospital stay (LOS) and mortality in older patients with COVID-19. Methods: Retrospective monocentric study in an acute geriatric hospital. Data were collected after an extensive review of medical records and the nutritional risk was assessed accor...

Background The severe acute respiratory coronavirus 2 (SARS‐CoV‐2) has been associated with neurological complications, including acute encephalopathy. In order to better understand the neuropathogenesis of this acute encephalopathy, we describe a series of patients with COVID‐19 encephalopathy, highlighting its phenomenology and its neurobiologica...

Background: Delirium prevalence increases with age and is associated with poor outcomes. We aimed to investigate the prevalence and risk factors for delirium in older patients hospitalized with COVID-19, as well as its association with length of stay and mortality. Methods: Retrospective study of patients aged ≥ 65 years hospitalized with COVID-19....

Background Stroke in the course of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has been shown to be associated with more severe respiratory symptoms and higher mortality, but little knowledge in this regard exists on older populations. We aimed to investigate the incidence, characteristics, and prognosis of acute stroke in geriatric patients hospitalized with C...

Background Compared to conventional transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), the triple stimulation technique (TST) strongly decrease the effects of desynchronization of descending discharges and accompanying phase cancellation that follow TMS and offers a more sensitive method to quantify motor evoked potentials (MEPs). New method Using the TST,...

Background Fear of falling is highly prevalent in older adults and associated with numerous negative health events. The main objective of this study was to validate a scale to assess fear of falling, based on performance in real situation (Perform-FES), in a hospitalized geriatric population. Methods In this cross-sectional study, 55 patients (mea...

Idiopathic Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus (iNPH)-the leading cause of reversible dementia in aging-is characterized by ventriculomegaly and gait, cognitive and urinary impairments. Despite its high prevalence estimated at 6% among the elderlies, iNPH remains underdiagnosed and undertreated due to the lack of iNPH-specific diagnostic markers and limi...

Introduction Les chutes sont extrêmement fréquentes chez le sujet âgé et associées à la survenue de nombreux événements défavorables, y inclus la fracture. L’avancée en âge s’accompagne d’une dégénérescence progressive du rachis, résultant typiquement en une détérioration de l’équilibre global, avec la mise en jeu de mécanismes de compensation. Le...

The mentalizing network (MN) treats social interactions based on our understanding of other people's intentions and includes the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), temporoparietal junction (TPJ), posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), precuneus (PC), and amygdala. Not all elders are equally affected by the aging-related decrease of mentalizing abilities....

Background: Stroke in the course of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) was associated with higher severity of respiratory symptoms and mortality, but little knowledge exists on older populations. We aimed to investigate the incidence, characteristics, and prognosis of acute stroke in old patients hospitalized with COVID-19. Methods: Monocentric retrosp...

The older patients have been the most affected by the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. In addition, this infection has been responsible for high mortality rate in this population. In this article we wanted to describe the clinical findings we encountered in older people with COVID-19 and share some of the issues and challenges we faced during the COVID-19 pand...

Background Impulsivity and novelty preference are both associated with an increased propensity to develop addiction-like behaviors, but their relationship and respective underlying dopamine (DA) underpinnings are not fully elucidated. Methods We evaluated a large cohort (n=49) of Roman high-(RHA) and low-(RLA) avoidance rats using single photon em...

Assessment of amyloid deposits is a critical step for the identification of Alzheimer disease (AD) signature in asymptomatic elders. Whether the different amyloid processing methods impacts on the quality of clinico-radiological correlations is still unclear. We directly compared in 155 elderly controls with extensive neuropsychological testing at...

Objective: This randomized controlled trial (RCT) aimed to demonstrate the noninferiority of mandibular 2-implant overdentures (IODs) on a CAD-CAM milled bar with long distal extensions against conventional IODs on retentive anchors. Methods: Forty edentulous participants already rehabilitated with a maxillary conventional denture and a mandibula...

Objective To determine predictors of in-hospital mortality related to COVID-19 in older patients. Design Retrospective cohort study. Setting and Participants Patients aged 65 years and older hospitalized for a diagnosis of COVID-19. Methods Data from hospital admission were collected from the electronic medical records. Logistic regression and C...

It was with great interest that we read the study of Knight and colleagues regarding risk stratification of patients with COVID-19 according to the 4C mortality score [1]. The authors considered eight predictors of in-hospital mortality: age, sex, number of comorbidities, respiratory rate, peripheral oxygen saturation, Glasgow coma scale, urea leve...

Background The topic of false memory in schizophrenia has been well documented in earlier research contributions. To date, there is no study exploring the implications of specific neural networks during this phenomenon in patients suffering from schizophrenia. Methods We compared 17 patients suffering from psychosis (SCZ) to 33 healthy controls (H...