Obstetric complications in DSM -III schizophrenics and their siblings

A Prospective Cohort Study of Genetic and Perinatal Influences in the Etiology of Schizophrenia

“…Long-term followup of large birth cohorts on which detailed obstetric information is recorded Pollack et al 1966;Pollin and Stabenau 1968;Woerner et al 1971Woerner et al , 1973Jacobsen and Kinney 1980;Parnas et al 1982;Markow and Gottesman 1989;Eagles et al 1990;Bracha et al 1992;Fish et al 1992;O'Callaghan et al 1992;Buka et al 1993;Gunther-Genta et al 1994;Kinney et al 1994;McNeil et al 1994;Torrey et al 1994) in showing that complications representing direct and indirect indicators of fetal hypoxia are associated with an increased risk for schizophrenia. The present results also extend previous findings by demonstrating that odds of schizophrenia increase linearly with an increasing number of such complications.…”

“…Studies using objective measures of prenatal and perinatal history have consistently implicated OCs as risk factors for the disorder, whether the samples were siblings (Lane and Albee 1966;Pollack et al 1966;Woerner et al 1971;Eagles et al 1990;Gunther-Genta et al 1994;Kinney et al 1994) and twins (Pollin and Stabenau 1968;Markow and Gottesman 1989;Bracha et al 1992;Torrey et al 1994) discordant for schizophrenia, adopted children with schizophrenia (Jacobsen and Kinney 1980), offspring of parents diagnosed with schizophrenia (Parnas et al 1982;Fish et al 1992), adults diagnosed with schizophrenia and matched controls (O'Callaghan et al 1992;McNeil et al 1994;Kendell et al 1996;Hultman et al 1997), or representative birth cohorts (Done et al 1991;Buka et al 1993;Dalman et al 1999;Rosso et al, in press). The two studies reporting null results are not outliers in this respect, only in that the 95 percent confidence intervals of their risk estimates included values of 1 (Done et al 1991;Buka et al 1993).…”

Regional Gray Matter, White Matter, and Cerebrospinal Fluid Distributions in Schizophrenic Patients, Their Siblings, and Controls

“…Obstetric effects represent the most plausible such candidate, but results of epidemiological studies demonstrate that obstetric complications are no more common among unaffected relatives of schizophrenics than in the general population, 28 and a history of such complications has been found to predict outcomes of schizophrenia in discordant cotwins and sibling pairs (ie, obstetric complications represent a unique rather than a shared environmental effect). 28,31,32 This study used a multivariate approach to analysis that permitted examination of regional and hemispheric differences among the diagnostic groups. Contrary to the view that neuropathologic changes in schizophrenia are focused inthelefthemisphere,wedetectednosignificanthemispheric differences between patients and controls or between siblings and controls in any of the tissue types.…”

Fetal Hypoxia and Structural Brain Abnormalities in Schizophrenic Patients, Their Siblings, and Controls

“…It involves at least several genes 13 and certain neurally disruptive environmental exposures, such as obstetric complications (OCs). [14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27] Of the many types of OCs found to predict schizophrenia, fetal hypoxia has shown the strongest association, accounting for a greater proportion of liability than exposure to infections during gestation, fetal growth retardation, and other obstetric factors. 27 Because no study using objective birth records has found that hypoxic OCs are more frequent in the first-degree relatives of schizophrenic patients than in the general population, [17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24] these complications do not appear to be consequences of genetic liability to schizophrenia.…”