Frederikke Elnegaard
DARE: Measuring early signs of schizophrenia
Frederikke Elnegaard is taking a break from her medical studies at Aalborg University to conduct research on the early signs of psychosis and schizophrenia at the world-leading University of California in San Francisco (UCSF).
The fact that people with schizophrenia have a shorter life expectancy than the general population is the motivation behind Frederikke Elnegaard’s research into preventing the development of first-episode psychosis by studying the early stages, including Clinical High Risk of Psychosis (CHR-P).
CHR-P is a prodromal phase during which patients experience psychotic symptoms but recognise they are not real. Roughly 20-30% of people with CHR-P will go on to develop a psychosis. For the rest, the condition and early signs appear intermittently or don’t develop at all.
Elnegaard will analyse electroencephalogram-based (EEG) measurements as potential predictors for CHR-P turning into psychosis. She will work with data from a historic cohort of EEG-data for individuals with CHR-P with a baseline after 1 and 2 years and collect data from a similar North American Prodrome Longitudinal Study 2 (NAPLS) study of presentation days. Once a week, she will shadow Professor Daniel Mathalon of the UCSF Path Program for Early Psychosis and expand her clinical knowledge in the field.
‘In my time studying and working in psychiatry, I have seen the impact that psychosis and CHR-P on quality of life, family dynamics and health in general. I hope my work on CHR-P will serve as a building block and expand our knowledge of schizophrenia and how it develops and highlight the importance of conducting research into this area,’ explains Elnegaard.
Her Danish supervisor is Professor René Ernst Nielsen , Aalborg University. Nielsen is head of the research programme on mortality and morbidity in psychiatry at Aalborg University Hospital. Professor Daniel Mathalon is her American mentor at UCSF. Mathalon is head of the UCSF Path Program for Early Psychosis and has spearheaded the use of EEG-methods to measure brain function during sensory, perceptual and cognitive processes.
