Schizophrenic disorders in childhood are rare: 0.1-1 percent of all schizophrenic disorders manifest themselves before age 10, and 4 percent before age 15. There is, however, a remarkable increase in schizophrenia during adolescence. Age and developmental stage also influence symptoms, course, and outcome. The evidence for a male preponderance in the very early-onset group (< 14) does not apply for adolescents over age 14. The presence of positive and negative precursor symptoms can be demonstrated in child and adolescent schizophrenia before the first clinical manifestation leading to inpatient treatment. With regard to pharmacologic treatment, atypical neuroleptics such as clozapine can be used successfully. As to outcome, schizophrenic psychoses with early manifestation have a poor prognosis. The patients' premorbid personality also seems to be of great importance: A poor prognosis can be found in patients who were cognitively impaired, shy, introverted, and withdrawn before the beginning of their psychotic state.

This paper describes the long-term course of 76 patients who had been consecutively admitted to the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Philipps University, between 1920 and 1961 with a suspected diagnosis of childhood-onset schizophrenia. By means of a consensus analysis of available data in accordance with ICD-10 criteria, the diagnosis of schizophrenia was confirmed in only 50% of the original sample (n = 38, childhood-onset schizophrenia group); whereas the rest of the sample were allotted other diagnoses (n = 38, non-schizophrenia group). A follow-up investigation was conducted, interviewing all available patients, if possible, or their first-degree relatives or doctors. In the childhood-onset schizophrenia group, age at onset (mean +/- S.D.) was 12.7 +/- 2.5 (range 5-14) years and age at follow-up was 55.0 +/- 4.8 (range 42-62) years. The outcome of this group was poor. According to the Global Assessment Scale (GAS), only 16% had a good (GAS score 71-100) and 24% had a moderate (GAS score 41-70) outcome. In the 16 childhood-onset schizophrenia patients who could be personally investigated at follow-up, 10 (62.5%) displayed severe or moderate depressive symptoms according to the BPRS depressive score. The death rate (including suicide) was significantly higher in the schizophrenia group (n = 15; 39.5%) than in the non-schizophrenia group (n = 7; 18.4%). A comparison of the life-time diagnoses of the total sample (n = 76) at follow-up with the ICD-10 diagnoses made retrospectively revealed a diagnostic stability in 69 (91%) and a change of diagnosis in 7 (9%) cases, among them 4 who were originally diagnosed as having childhood-onset schizophrenia.

Keywords:X-ray computed tomography of soil Image analysis Soil pore space Soil spatial variability Long-range dependence Multifractal analysis Hurst exponent A correct statistical model of soil pore structure can be critical for understanding flow and transport processes in soils, and creating synthetic soil pore spaces for hypothetical and model testing, and evaluating similarity of pore spaces of different soils. Advanced visualization techniques such as X-ray computed tomography (CT) offer new opportunities of exploring heterogeneity of soil properties at horizon or aggregate scales. Simple fractal models such as fractional Brownian motion that have been proposed to capture the complex behavior of soil spatial variation at field scale rarely simulate irregularity patterns displayed by spatial series of soil properties. The objective of this work was to use CT data to test the hypothesis that soil pore structure at the horizon scale may be represented by multifractal models. X-ray CT scans of twelve, water-saturated, 20-cm long soil columns with diameters of 7.5 cm were analyzed. A reconstruction algorithm was applied to convert the X-ray CT data into a stack of 1480 grayscale digital images with a voxel resolution of 110 microns and a cross-sectional size of 690 x 690 pixels. The images were binarized and the spatial series of the percentage of void space vs. depth was analyzed to evaluate the applicability of the multifractal model. The series of depth-dependent macroporosity values exhibited a welldefined multifractal structure that was revealed by singularity and Rényi spectra. The long-range dependencies in these series were parameterized by the Hurst exponent. Values of the Hurst exponent close to one were observed indicating the strong persistence in variations of porosity with depth. The multifractal modeling of soil macropore structure can be an efficient method for parameterizing and simulating the vertical spatial heterogeneity of soil pore space.

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Weight gain is a major side effect of treatment with clozapine and other antipsychotics. Recent studies suggest an important role of the serotonin type 2C receptor gene (5-HT2CR) in antipsychotic-induced weight gain. However, investigations pertaining to a possible association between a -759C/T polymorphism (C allele) of the 5-HT2CR and weight gain induced by clozapine and/or other antipsychotics have yielded inconsistent results. We investigated the -759C/T polymorphism of the 5-HT2CR in relation to clozapine-induced change in body mass index (BMI) (kg/m) in 97 German patients with schizophrenia and found no association between the -759C allele and weight gain after 12 weeks of clozapine treatment. In addition, confounding effects of initial BMI, age, sex and duration of illness on change in BMI could not be detected by multiple linear regression analysis. Our data do not support an involvement of the -759C/T polymorphism of the 5-HT2CR in clozapine-induced weight gain in German patients with schizophrenia. Further pharmacogenetic studies pertaining to antipsychotic-induced weight gain are warranted.