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. 2023 Oct 4;13(10):e069427.
doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2022-069427.

Swedish multimodal cohort of patients with anxiety or depression treated with internet-delivered psychotherapy (MULTI-PSYCH)

Julia Boberg  1 , Viktor Kaldo  2   3 , David Mataix-Cols  2 , James J Crowley  2   4 , Bjorn Roelstraete  5 , Matthew Halvorsen  4 , Erik Forsell  2 , Nils H Isacsson  2 , Patrick F Sullivan  4   5 , Cecilia Svanborg  2 , Evelyn H Andersson  2 , Nils Lindefors  2 , Olly Kravchenko  2 , Manuel Mattheisen  2   6 , Hilda B Danielsdottir  2 , Ekaterina Ivanova  2 , Magnus Boman  7   8 , Lorena Fernández de la Cruz  2 , John Wallert #  2 , Christian Rück #  2
Affiliations

Swedish multimodal cohort of patients with anxiety or depression treated with internet-delivered psychotherapy (MULTI-PSYCH)

Julia Boberg et al. BMJ Open. .

Abstract

Purpose: Depression and anxiety afflict millions worldwide causing considerable disability. MULTI-PSYCH is a longitudinal cohort of genotyped and phenotyped individuals with depression or anxiety disorders who have undergone highly structured internet-based cognitive-behaviour therapy (ICBT). The overarching purpose of MULTI-PSYCH is to improve risk stratification, outcome prediction and secondary preventive interventions. MULTI-PSYCH is a precision medicine initiative that combines clinical, genetic and nationwide register data.

Participants: MULTI-PSYCH includes 2668 clinically well-characterised adults with major depressive disorder (MDD) (n=1300), social anxiety disorder (n=640) or panic disorder (n=728) assessed before, during and after 12 weeks of ICBT at the internet psychiatry clinic in Stockholm, Sweden. All patients have been blood sampled and genotyped. Clinical and genetic data have been linked to several Swedish registers containing a wide range of variables from patient birth up to 10 years after the end of ICBT. These variable types include perinatal complications, school grades, psychiatric and somatic comorbidity, dispensed medications, medical interventions and diagnoses, healthcare and social benefits, demographics, income and more. Long-term follow-up data will be collected through 2029.

Findings to date: Initial uses of MULTI-PSYCH include the discovery of an association between PRS for autism spectrum disorder and response to ICBT, the development of a machine learning model for baseline prediction of remission status after ICBT in MDD and data contributions to genome wide association studies for ICBT outcome. Other projects have been launched or are in the planning phase.

Future plans: The MULTI-PSYCH cohort provides a unique infrastructure to study not only predictors or short-term treatment outcomes, but also longer term medical and socioeconomic outcomes in patients treated with ICBT for depression or anxiety. MULTI-PSYCH is well positioned for research collaboration.

Keywords: Anxiety disorders; Depression & mood disorders; EPIDEMIOLOGY; GENETICS.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests: DMC receives royalties for contributing articles to UpToDate, Inc, outside this work. LFC receives royalties for contributing articles to UpToDate, Wolters Kluwer Health and for editorial work from Elsevier, outside the submitted work.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
MULTI-PSYCH data structure and research aims. GWAS, genome wide association study; ICBT, internet-based cognitive-behaviour therapy; SNP, single nucleotide polymorphism.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Data sources. LISA, longitudinal integrated database for health insurance and labour market studies; VAL, Stockholm County healthcare register; IPSY, internet psychiatry clinic.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Available data. The number of individuals providing data from different data sources.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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