Obstetric complications, treatment response and brain morphology in adult-onset and early-onset males with schizophrenia

Abstract

The distinction between early- and adult-onset patients may have important aetiological and treatment implications.

Obstetric Complications and Schizophrenia: Historical and Meta-Analytic Review

“…Some studies found a significant overall effect for obstetric complications (44)(45)(46)(47)(48), others did not (49,50). Some studies had no normal comparison group (51)(52)(53), while others included a sibling comparison group (44,47,49,50,54). Different variations of the Lewis-Murray scale were used, but the results were still presented as total scores.…”

“…Subgroup analyses were common but yielded inconsistent results. Obstetric complications were examined in relation to family history (49,51,(55)(56)(57), premorbid adjustment (51), imaging abnormalities (53,58), age at onset of illness (45,55,59,60), gender (45,56,57,59), neurological abnormalities (49,55), ethnicity (61), and season of birth (56), among others. The search for environmental risk factors for schizophrenia had become an example of "circular epidemiology," namely "the tendency to perseverate at one level of evidence, for example, on one type of study design without moving forward" (62).…”

No effect of obstetric complications on basal ganglia volumes in schizophrenia

“…Neonatal OCs has been associated with larger ventricles in schizophrenia patients . However, two CT studies from the 1990ies did not find an association between OCs and ventricle volume (Reddy et al, 1990;Smith et al, 1998).…”

Minor physical anomalies and obstetric complications in schizophrenia

“…As summarised in 1995, significant increases in OC were found in seven of eight investigations using prospectively recorded information on OC and in nine of 13 studies using retrospective parental recall [22]. Many new and sophisticated studies have been conducted since then, using prospective OC information and patient samples ranging from approximately 75 to over 500 individuals [12,13, 24–30]. Meta‐analyses have also been conducted using major sample aggregations of 700 [31,32] and 854 schizophrenia cases [33], respectively.…”