ArticlePsychological medicine2018
Interferon-α induces negative biases in emotional processing in patients with hepatitis C virus infection: a preliminary study.
Article in Psychological medicine, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers.
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Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed, 19 citations in OpenAlex.
- An experimental medicine study of the effects of simvastatin on emotional processing, reward learning, verbal memory, and inflammation in healthy volunteers.Psychopharmacology · 2022Trial
- The effects of atorvastatin on emotional processing, reward learning, verbal memory and inflammation in healthy volunteers: An experimental medicine study.Journal of psychopharmacology (Oxford, England) · 2021Trial
- Peripheral inflammation and neurocognitive functioning in early psychosis: Specific associations of TNF-α and IL-6 with social cognition.European psychiatry : the journal of the Association of European Psychiatrists · 2025Article
- Article
- Interleukin 6 associates with reduced grey matter volume and resting-state connectivity in the anterior cingulate cortex in bipolar patients.Brain, behavior, & immunity - health · 2022Article
- Associations Between Statin Use and Negative Affective Bias During COVID-19: An Observational, Longitudinal UK Study Investigating Depression Vulnerability.Biological psychiatry · 2022Observational
- Relationship Between Sensitivity to Disgust and Irritable Bowel Syndrome: A Study on Healthy Individuals.Clinical neuropsychiatry · 2022Article
- Perceived Stress in Hepatitis C Virus Infected Patients under the DAA-Based Therapy.Diagnostics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- Extracellular vesicle associated and soluble immune marker profiles of psychoneurological symptom clusters in men with prostate cancer: an exploratory study.Translational psychiatry · 2021Observational
- The Interplay Between Stress, Inflammation, and Emotional Attention: Relevance for Depression.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2019Review
- Dynamic Effects of Early Adolescent Stress on Depressive-Like Behaviors and Expression of Cytokines and JMJD3 in the Prefrontal Cortex and Hippocampus of Rats.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2018Article
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundTreatment of medical patients with the inflammatory cytokine, interferon-α (IFN-α), is frequently associated with the development of clinical depressive symptomatology. Several important biological correlates of the effect of IFN-α on mood have been described, but the neuropsychological changes associated with IFN-α treatment are largely unexplored. The aim of the present preliminary study was to assess the effect of IFN-α on measures of emotional processing.
methodWe measured changes in emotional processing over 6-8 weeks in 17 patients receiving IFN-α as part of their treatment for hepatitis C virus infection. Emotional processing tasks included those which have previously been shown to be sensitive to the effects of depression and antidepressant treatment, namely facial expression recognition, emotional categorisation and the dot probe attentional task.
resultsFollowing IFN-α, patients were more accurate at detecting facial expressions of disgust; they also showed diminished attentional vigilance to happy faces. IFN-α produced the expected increases in scores on depression rating scales, but there was no correlation between these scores and the changes in emotional processing.
conclusionsOur preliminary findings suggest that IFN-α treatment produces negative biases in emotional processing, and this effect is not simply a consequence of depression. It is possible that increased recognition of disgust may represent a neuropsychological marker of depressive disorders related to inflammation.
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