Three teams from the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science
presented posters at the Sixth Annual Women in Medicine Research Day on
April 25, 2012.
Third year residents Jacqueline Decker, DO and
Reena Jaiswal, MD presented a poster on Limbic Encephalitis in the
Context of Early Onset Dementia and Hairy Cell Leukemia in which they
described the case of a man in his mid-fifties with a history of hairy
cell leukemia who presented with symptoms of irritability, homicidal
ideation and disruptions of short term memory and executive function.
MRI studies showed limbic encephalitis, a known cause of cognitive and
behavioral disturbances. Attempts to treat the leukemia and encephalitis
were unsuccessful, suggesting that this patient’s encephalitis may be
caused by a novel neuronal antibody. The researchers suggest that the
onset of cognitive or psychiatric symptoms in patients with hairy cell
leukemia should trigger a thorough neuropsychiatric assessment and
careful monitoring for other neoplastic disorders.
Third year
residents Ami Baxi, MD and Mandana Torabi, MD presented a poster with
their mentor, Gabrielle Carlson, MD, on Weight Changes Associated with
Atypical Antipsychotics. A review of the records of 230 patients between
the ages of 5 and 12 who were admitted to the inpatient psychiatric
service showed that 42% of the children had BMIs at or above the 95th
percentile. Their analysis revealed that a history of taking second
generation antipsychotics (SGAs) accounted for the higher than normal
BMIs. Not all children who were prescribed SGAs, however, gained weight.
In fact 43% actually lost weight and 5% neither gained nor lost weight.
They concluded that further studies are needed to stratify
vulnerability to weight gain and to clarify other factors which may be
involved.
A third team, consisting of Shirley Leong PhD who
recently received her doctoral degree in Applied Mathematics and
Statistics, Roman Kotov PhD and Evelyn Bromet, PhD, compared
participants in the Suffolk County Mental Health Project whose first
hospitalization was at Kings Park with people admitted to community
hospitals or the inpatient unit at Stony Brook ten years after their
first admission. Without adjusting for baseline differences, the Kings
Park cohort had poorer clinical and functional outcomes. However, after
adjustment for demographic and clinical characteristics at baseline,
the differences were not significant except for the rate of
incarceration, which was higher in the Kings Park cohort.
