0000000000637714
AUTHOR
F. Bertolini
Factors associated with first- versus second-generation long-acting antipsychotics prescribed under ordinary clinical practice in Italy
Background For many years, long-acting intramuscular (LAI) antipsychotics have been prescribed predominantly to chronic and severe patients, as a last resort when other treatments failed. Recently, a broader and earlier use of LAIs, particularly second-generation LAIs, has been emphasized. To date, few studies attempted to frame how this change in prescribing took place in real-world practice. Therefore, this study aimed to describe the clinical features of patients prescribed with LAIs, and to explore possible prescribing differences between first- and second-generations LAIs under ordinary clinical practice in Italy. Methods The STAR Network "Depot" Study is an observational, longitudinal…
Comparing Long-Acting Antipsychotic Discontinuation Rates Under Ordinary Clinical Circumstances: A Survival Analysis from an Observational, Pragmatic Study
Background Recent guidelines suggested a wider use of long-acting injectable antipsychotics (LAI) than previously, but naturalistic data on the consequences of LAI use in terms of discontinuation rates and associated factors are still sparse, making it hard for clinicians to be informed on plausible treatment courses. Objective Our objective was to assess, under real-world clinical circumstances, LAI discontinuation rates over a period of 12 months after a first prescription, reasons for discontinuation, and associated factors. Methods The STAR Network ‘Depot Study’ was a naturalistic, multicentre, observational prospective study that enrolled subjects initiating a LAI without restrictions …
Application of SNP reduction approaches and random forest for the identification of population informative markers in cosmopolitan and local cattle breeds
In livestock, single nucleotide polymorphism genotyping arrays have been used to differentiate breeds and populations for several downstream applications, including breed allocation of individuals, breeds of origin of crossbred animals, authentication of mono breed products, comparative analyses of selection signatures among several other uses. We already tested a combination of principal component analysis (PCA), used as preselection method, and random forest (RF) used as classification method to assign cosmopolitan Italian breeds with no or very low error rate. In this work, we increased the number of breeds and approaches, to have a more comprehensive view of the strategies available and…
Prevalence and correlates of QTc prolongation in Italian psychiatric care: cross-sectional multicentre study.
Aims.In recent years several warnings have been issued by regulatory authorities on the risk of electrocardiogram abnormalities in individuals exposed to psychotropic drugs. As a consequence of these warnings, monitoring of the QT interval corrected for heart rate (QTc) has become increasingly common. This study was conducted to measure the frequency of QTc prolongation in unselected psychiatric patients, and to document the associated factors using a cross-sectional approach.Method.The study was carried out in 35 Italian psychiatric services that are part of the STAR (Servizi Territoriali Associati per la Ricerca) Network, a research group established to produce scientific knowledge by col…