The Signature Biobank: A longitudinal biopsychosocial repository of psychiatric emergency patients

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

  • Cécile Le Page
  • Charles Édouard Giguère
  • Marie France Marin
  • Claudia Trudel-Fitzgerald
  • Ahmed Jérôme Romain
  • Vincent Taschereau-Dumouchel
  • Isabelle Ouellet-Morin
  • Tania Lecomte
  • Stéphane Potvin
  • Steve Geoffrion
  • Marc Sasseville
  • Lionel Caihol
  • Olivier Lipp
  • Jean François Pelletier
  • Alexandre Dumais
  • Alain Lesage
  • Réal Labelle
  • Marc Lavoie
  • Roger Godbout
  • Philippe Vincent
  • Janick Boissonneault
  • Helen Findlay
  • Sonia J. Lupien
  • Stéphane Guay
  • Robert Paul Juster
  • Signature Consortium

The Signature Biobank is a longitudinal repository of biospecimen, psychological, sociodemographic, and diagnostic data that was created in 2012. The Signature Consortium represents a group of approximately one hundred Quebec-based transdisciplinary clinicians and research scientists with various expertise in the field of psychiatry. The objective of the Signature Biobank is to investigate the multi-faceted underpinnings of psychiatric disorders among patients in crisis. The Signature Consortium is expanding and includes new active members that seek to highlight the contributions made by Signature Biobank since its inception. This article details our research protocol, directions, and summarizes contributions. To date, we have collected biological samples (n = 1,986), and questionnaire data (n = 2,085) from psychiatric emergency patients of the Institut universitaire en santé mentale de Montréal (Quebec, Canada), with a large proportion from whom both data types were collected (n = 1,926). In addition to this, a subsample of patients was followed-up at hospital discharge, and two additional outpatient clinic appointments (n = 958 with at least one follow-up). In addition, a socio-demographically matched comparison group of individuals who were not hospitalized for psychiatric disorders (n = 149) was recruited from the surrounding catchment area. To summarize, a systematic review of the literature shows that the Signature Biobank has contributed to better characterizing psychiatric comorbidities, biological profiles, and psychosocial functioning across some of the most common psychiatric disorders, including psychosis, mood, anxiety, and substance use disorders. The Signature Biobank is now one of the world's largest repositories of data collected from patients receiving care at a psychiatric emergency unit.

Original languageEnglish
Article number115718
JournalPsychiatry Research
Volume332
ISSN0165-1781
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Feb 2024
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 Elsevier B.V.

    Research areas

  • Biobanking, Biological psychiatry, Precision medicine, Psychiatric diagnosis, Psychometrics, Recovery

ID: 393779439