Exploring comorbidities in addiction

Psychiatric comorbidities complicates the course and prognosis of addiction, being a diagnostic and therapeutic challenge. The presence of two or more diagnoses isoften associates with poor intervention outcomes and eventually to the failure of attendace. Mechanisms of comorbidity appearance are basically unknown, as well as the cause of therapeutic failure in this complicated patients.Comorbidity diagnosis is associated with difficulties in the stratification and treatment of patients. One of the major challenges in clinical practice of addiction psychiatry is the lack of objective biological markers that indicate the degree of consumption, severity of addiction, level of toxicity and response to treatment. These potential biomarkers would be fundamental players in the diagnosis, stratification, prognosis and therapeutic orientation in addiction. The present structured session explores different approaches to the identification of biomarkers, and will serve as examples for discussion of its relevance in clinical practice in addiction medicine settings.