Rücklab – Psychiatry research at Karolinska Institutet
Research on OCD and related disorders, precision psychiatry, psychiatric genetics, suicide prevention, stress and PTSD
Jesper Enander today sucessfully passed the admission seminar to become a PhD student at Karolinska Institutet. His studies will be on Body Dysmorphic Disorder. Christian Rück is main supervisor and co-supervisors are Brjánn Ljótsson, Paul Lichtenstein and David Mataix-Cols.
We were visited today by Luca Montanelli, Lucia Mondini and Giacomo Grassi from Stefano Pallanti’s team at the University of Florence. The aim is to start a pilot of our internetbased CBT for OCD in Italy soon. 
A paper just out in Translational Psychiatry by Lester and collegues exemplifies the ideas of the novel field of therapygenetics – how individual genetic variation impacts psychological treatment response.
In this study, 374 anxiety-disordered children who had completed a standardized cognitive behaviour therapy, were genotyped for single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the nerve growth factor (NGF) (rs6330), brain-derived neurotrophic factory (BDNF) (rs6265) and in the serotonin transporter (5-HTTLPR) gene. These genes are considered important in synaptic plasticity and response to stress, and are expressed in areas in the brain responsible for fear and mood regulation.
Primary outcome measure was simply whether or not the participant fulfilled the anxiety diagnosis criteria post treatment. Treatment response was assessed immediately after treatment and at follow-ups. Lester and colleagues found that participants with one or more copies of the t-allele of NGF rs6330 were significantly more likely to be free of their diagnosis at follow-up. No interactional effect was observed between BDNF rs6265 or the 5-HTTLPR and treatment response. However, the 5-HTLLPR had a significant main effect as a predictor for treatment prognosis.
The authors reason that tyhe findings on NGF could be beneficial in helping to decide whether a child is likely to benefit from standard CBT or if further interventions should be considered.
For more on this topic, read:
This week, members from Rücklab visited the congress on neuropsychiatry “NPF barn och ungdomar, kunskap, insikt och samverkan”. Volen Ivanov and Fabian Lenhard each held a talk on Hoarding Disorder and CBT for children with high-functioning autism. We would like to thank the organizers Göteborgs stad (among others) for giving us the opportunity to speak at the beautiful old cinema theatre “Draken” in front of more than 300 attendants!
Rücklab - Psychiatry research at Karolinska Institutet 