Sintia I. Belangero

Abstract Psychiatric disorders are highly heritable and polygenic, influenced by environmental factors and often comorbid. Large-scale genome-wide association studies (GWASs) through consortium efforts have identified genetic risk loci and revealed the underlying biology of psychiatric disorders and traits. However, over 85% of psychiatric GWAS participants are of European ancestry, limiting the applicability of these findings to non-European populations.

Abstract The impact of social exclusion on psychosis is poorly understood. This study explores how slum living affects some clinical markers of patients in the first episode of psychosis. We hypothesized that living in a slum would lead to a longer duration of untreated psychosis and greater initial psychosis severity, as measured by the positive and negative syndrome scale.

In this study, we analyzed miRNAs of serum extracellular vesicles isolated from adolescent participants with mental health disorders. We were able to characterize EV membrane proteins, identifying the presence of neural markers besides general EV markers in our samples. In the longitudinal analysis, we did not observe associations between trajectories of mental health disorders and miRNA expression.