• Journal of the Korean Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.66-71
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• 2007

There has been increasing recognition of pediatric bipolar disorder in the psychiatric field during the past 10 years. The clinical presentation of this disorder in preadolescent is greatly debated and few studies have been conducted in Korea. The authors report 3 cases of children with bipolar I disorder whose clinical symptoms were improved after pharmacotherapy. The authors also review current concepts, debates and treatment of pediatric bipolar disorder.

• Korean Journal of Biological Psychiatry
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.134-139
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• 2012

Objectives : Proinflammatory process has been implicated as an underlying mechanism of bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Previous studies have suggested a possible role of lymphotoxin alpha (LTA) gene in the development of schizophrenia and have prompted further investigation in bipolar patients. Association of the LTA +252A/G polymorphism with susceptibility to bipolar I disorder itself as well as with vulnerability among a subset of psychotic bipolar patients were tested. Methods : DNA extraction was done by a standard method and genotyping was carried out by polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP) method in 114 Korean patients with bipolar I disorder and 202 healthy controls. SPSS v18.0 was used for statistical analysis. Comparisons of the genotype and allele distributions in LTA +252A/G polymorphism were made using a chi-square test. The genotype and allele associations were also evaluated using odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence interval (CI). Statistical significance was accepted when p was < 0.05. Results : No significant association was found between the LTA +252A/G polymorphism and bipolar disorder. However, LTA +252G allele was present with significantly higher frequency among bipolar patients with psychotic features compared to those without (${\chi}^2$ = 4.69, p = 0.034, OR = 2.495, 95% CI = 1.069-5.827). Conclusion : The results suggest that the allele LTA +252G of the polymorphism may be associated with the psychotic subset of bipolar disorder but not with bipolar I disorder itself. Adequately powered subsequent studies should be conducted.

• Korean Journal of Biological Psychiatry
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.68-71
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• 2007

Quetiapine is an atypical antipsychotic drug with a benign side effect profile. However, recent studies have reported that thyroid dysfunction is associated with quetiapine treatment. The authors report a patient with DSM-IV bipolar I disorder who developed subclinical hypothyroidism during quetiapine treatment. The patient showed no significant clinical symptoms, but only abnormal thyroid function test findings including antithyroglobulin antibody. The abnormal thyroid function test findings were normalized after discontinuation of quetiapine. The subclinical hypothyroidism developed during quetiapine treatment may be associated with autoimmune process.

• Korean Journal of Biological Psychiatry
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.225-234
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• 2017

Objectives Local gyrification reflects the early neural development of cortical connectivity, and is regarded as a potential neural endophenotype in psychiatric disorders. Several studies have suggested altered local gyrification in patients with bipolar I disorder (BD-I). The purpose of the present study was to investigate the alterations in the cortical gyrification of whole brain cortices in patients with BD-I. Methods Twenty-two patients with BD-I and age and sex-matched 22 healthy controls (HC) were included in this study. All participants underwent T1-weighted structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The local gyrification index (LGI) of 66 cortical regions were analyzed using the FreeSurfer (Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging). One-way analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was used to analyze the difference of LGI values between two groups adjusting for age and sex as covariates. Results The patients with BD-I showed significant hypogyria in the left pars opercularis (uncorrected-p = 0.049), the left rostral anterior cingulate gyrus (uncorrected-p = 0.012), the left caudal anterior cingulate gyrus (uncorrected-p = 0.033). However, these findings were not significant after applying the multiple comparison correction. Severity or duration of illness were not significantly correlated with LGI in the patients with BD-I. Conclusions Our results of lower LGI in the anterior cingulate cortex and the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex in the BD-I group implicate that altered cortical gyrification in neural circuits involved in emotion-processing may contribute to pathophysiology of BD-I.

• Journal of the Korean Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.34-46
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• 1998

This study was designed to develop the scale of paternal parenting attitudes which has become an area of interest in child fostering study recently. Considering various factors extracted from previous Korean and foreign studies, the authors constructed a questionnaire composed of total 57 questions. It was applied to 126 mothers from families with no psychiatric patient in Seoul and Pusan who had at least onechild older than age 12 by random sampling. Then the authors extracted the factors which were able to compose the scale and evaluated the concurrent reliability. Also the authors selected mothers of 47 schizophrenic patients and 29 bipolar I patients diagnosed with the criteria of DSM-IV who have treated in Seoul National Mental Hospital and 46 controls which consisted of randomly selected mothers from normal families for the discriminative validity test. The results were as follows. The authors extracted 5 subscales of active participation, democratic guidance, warmth, hostility, devotion for education and Cronbach’s ${\alpha}$ value of each subscale which shows its internal consistency was .82, .78, .65, .78, .61 respectively. In the discriminative validity test, all subscales except ‘devotion for education’ subscale significantly discriminated between fathers of schizophrenics and control group. Furthermore ‘active participation’ subscale and ‘warmth’ subscale showed significant difference between fathers of control group and resting both father group of schizophrenics and biopolar I patients.

• Korean Journal of Schizophrenia Research
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.43-50
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• 2018

Objectives : Genome-wide association studies (GWASs) and meta-analyses indicate that single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the a-1C subunit of the L-type voltage-dependent calcium channel (CACNA1C) gene increase the risk for schizophrenia and bipolar disorders (BDs). We investigated the association between the genetic variants on CACNA1C and schizophrenia and/or BDs in the Korean population. Methods : A total of 582 patients with schizophrenia, 336 patients with BDs consisting of 179 bipolar I disorder (BD-I) and 157 bipolar II disorder (BD-II), and 502 healthy controls were recruited. Based on previous results from other populations, three SNPs (rs10848635, rs1006737, and rs4765905) were selected and genotype-wise association was evaluated using logistic regression analysis under additive, dominant and recessive genetic models. Results : rs10848635 showed a significant association with schizophrenia (p=0.010), the combined schizophrenia and BD group (p=0.018), and the combined schizophrenia and BD-I group (p=0.011). The best fit model was dominant model for all of these phenotypes. The association remained significant after correction for multiple testing in schizophrenia and the combined schizophrenia and BD-I group. Conclusion : We identified a possible role of CACNA1C in the common susceptibility of schizophrenia and BD-I. However no association trend was observed for BD-II. Further efforts are needed to identify a specific phenotype associated with this gene crossing the current diagnostic categories.