Rücklab – Psychiatry research at Karolinska Institutet

Volen Ivanov publicly defended his thesis “Never let go! : the etiology, clinical presentation and treatment of hoarding disorder” last Friday. The defense and opposition by Professor Kiara Timpano was a true celebration of science. Congratulation Volen to your well-deserved PhD!

Last monday we had some important guests from Denmark, Norway and USA for an OCD genetics meeting at Villa Källhagen in Stockholm.

Patrick Sullivan, professor at MEB, KI, gav an excellent presentation on the big picture of psych genetics. See his Stockholm psychiatry lecture from 2015 here.

Ellinor Karlsson did a talk on dog genetics and dog OCD or canine compulsive syndrome (CCD). She runs the Karlsson lab at Broad and collects DNA samples through Darwin’s dogs.

We also got updates on DNA collection from the Swedish and the Norwegian side of the project, great discussion and input on how to improve recruitment at this point of the study.

All in all, a great day for genome research in the OCD field.

Christopher LaLima, psychologist from Hofstra University who was with us in our group in 2015-16 very successfully defended his thesis “Therapist-Guided, Internet-Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Body Dysmorphic Disorder – English Version (BDD-NET): A Feasibility Study” today at Hofstra University, NY. Congrats Chris! Chris was even nominated for the H. Alan Robinson Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award! Good luck! 

WeMind Ångest och Depression Stockholm är den senaste och tionde kliniken som ansluter sig till studien. I OCD genetikstudien ämnar vi att samla in 5000 DNA-prover från personer med tvångssyndrom, dysmorfofobi, samlarsyndrom, tics eller Tourettes syndrom. För att nå detta mål behöver vi samarbeta med mottagningar där de här personerna finns.

Vi är mycket glada att få samarbeta med just WeMind då de håller hög kvalitet gällande bedömning, diagnostik och behandling. De har också väl etablerade rutiner för att mäta och utvärdera behandlingsresultat vilket är ett viktigt bidrag till studien. Vi tänker nämligen inte bara analysera DNA, utan samlar också in en stor mängd fenotypdata, eller kliniska data. Det bidrar till att öka vår kunskap om saker som hur de här patienterna har de och hur de svarar på behandling.

Du kan läsa mer om studien här.

This week, our latest study on hoarding symptoms in young people was published in Plos One. In this study, we used data from the Swedish Twin Registry  on twins in 3 samples (ages 15, 18 and 20-28 years). We had access to data for more than 16 000 twins (largest sample to date) and estimated the heritability at every age and also conducted longitudinal analyses on twins with data at ages 15 and 18. Our results showed that hoarding symptoms were heritable at all ages although the heritability decreased somewhat with age. Symptoms of hoarding were also moderately stable between ages 15 and 18, and this stability was largely due to genetic factors while non-shared environmental factors had a time-specific effect.

Follow the link below to access the publication:

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0179541

Dagens Nyheter har en artikelserie om BDD där flera av våra medarbetare är med.

Läs här (IntrenetKBT med Jesper Enander) eller här (BDD och män med Christian Rück).

Jesper Enander today received his PhD after successfully defending his thesis today. Congratulations Jesper!

Our collaborator Manuel Mattheisen, Associate Professor at Århus University, is now officially affiliated to Karolinska Institutet and our group.  He studied medicine at the University in Bonn and went on to be a research follow at Harvard Medical School before moving to Denmark. We are fortunate to enjoy his deep expertise in genetical methods. Check out his quite spectacular publication list here.

Jesper Enander just nailed his thesis to a plank at the Karolinska library. This means that the thesis is now open to the public and will be publicly defended May 5th.

Our treatment study of Body Dysmorphic Disorder published in the BMJ was yesterday awarded the best publication of the year by the Department of Clinical Neuroscience at Karolinska Institutet!