Three Teams from the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science Present Posters at Women in Medicine Research Day

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.