In 2024, the article “The Signature Biobank: History and perspectives of a longitudinal project investigating the biological, psychological, and social signatures of patients visiting the emergency of the Institut universitaire en santé mentale de Montréal” was published. Robert-Paul Juster, expert in gender and sex analysis and member of the Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, Sex and Gender sub-committee of the Unité de soutien SSA Québec, is co-author.
Members of the team
- Enzo Cipriani a,b,c, M.Sc.
- Philippe Kerr a,b,c, Ph.D.
- Cécile Le Page b, Ph.D.
- Charles-Édouard Giguère b, M.Sc.
- Sonia Lupien a,b, Ph.D.
- Stéphane Guay b,d , Ph.D.
- Robert-Paul Juster a,b,c, Ph.D.
Consortium Signature b
a: Department of Psychiatry and Addiction, Faculty of Medicine, Université de Montréal
b: Research Centre of the Institut universitaire en santé mentale de Montréal (IUSMM)
c: Centre for Studies on Sex*Gender, Allostasis and Resilience (CESAR)
d : School of Criminology, Université de Montréal
Cipriani, E., Kerr, P., Le Page, C., Giguère, C.-É., Lupien, S., Guay, S., Juster, R.-P. & Consortium Signature (2024). Biobanque Signature : origines et perspectives d’un projet longitudinal évaluant les signatures biologiques, psychologiques et sociales des patients visitant les urgences de l’Institut universitaire en santé mentale de Montréal. Santé mentale au Québec, 49(2), 173–201. https://doi.org/10.7202/1114410ar
Context
This article is part of the special issue of the Revue Santé Mentale au Québec celebrating 150 years of the Institut Universitaire en santé mentale de Montréal (IUSMM). The Signature Biobank stores administrative biological and psychosocial data collected from patients visiting the IUSMM’s emergency departments between 2012 and 2020. The same biological and psychosocial data were collected from a control group with no psychiatric history.
The aim of this article is to present the origins of the Signature Biobank, the context surrounding its emergence, the methods used in the project, some of the biobank’s achievements, and the social profile of the participants.
Method
More than 2,000 patients who had visited the IUSMM’s emergency department were invited to participate in the Signature Biobank. This involved collecting blood, saliva and hair samples and answering a series of questionnaires measuring psychiatric symptoms (e.g. anxiety, depression, psychotic symptoms), substance use (e.g. alcohol, tobacco, cannabis), tragic life experiences, psychosocial profile (e.g. marital status), and so on.
In addition, information from the patients’ medical records was retrieved, such as medical and psychiatric diagnoses and the type of treatment received. The socio-demographic profile of the participants was analysed by comparing the different variables available in this field according to the participants’ diagnostic category. As mentioned earlier, a control group of 149 participants with no psychiatric history provided the same biological samples and completed the same psychosocial questionnaires.
All of this information was collected on several occasions during the course of the patients’ care:
- during the emergency visit
- at discharge from hospital
- during outpatient follow-up
- 12 months later or at remission
Results
The Signature Biobank includes a wide variety of biomarkers from different biological systems (inflammatory, hormonal, metabolic, cardiovascular, genetic, etc.), a unique longitudinal inpatient protocol, a wealth of psychological, psychiatric and social measures, and a wide variety of derived data. To date, these data have enabled 16 scientific articles to be published in indexed international journals, 5 psychosocial questionnaires to be validated in a psychiatric population, and several derived variables to be created, including a composite sociocultural gender score.
With regard to the social profile of the participants, we found that the patients as a whole had a more disadvantaged socio-economic profile than the Quebec population from the Hochelaga-Maisonneuve district where the participants mainly come from. Their average annual salary was significantly lower, they were less likely to be married, and they were more likely to have no qualifications. These results are consistent with the current literature, which presents people with a psychiatric diagnosis as having greater socio-economic difficulties than the general population.
Conclusion
The Signature Biobank is one of the jewels in the IUSMM’s crown, currently being used to a fraction of its full potential and offering a wealth of data unequalled in North America. Its data are compatible with various working methods in psychopathology and psychiatry (e.g. diagnostic category approach), including transdiagnostic and transdisciplinary methods such as the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) or the Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP), for example. This Biobank therefore offers a rich and unprecedented space for exploration and study for researchers from Quebec and around the world. The Signature Biobank is open to all researchers. Visit www.banquesignature.ca for more information.