Tuulio-Henriksson Annamari, Arajärvi Ritva, Partonen Timo, Haukka Jari, Varilo Teppo, Schreck Marjut, Cannon Tyrone, Lönnqvist Jouko
Department of Mental Health and Alcohol Research, National Public Health Institute, Helsinki, Finland.
Biol Psychiatry. 2003 Sep 15;54(6):623-8. doi: 10.1016/s0006-3223(03)00232-4.
The effect of familial loading on neurocognitive deficits in relatives of schizophrenia patients has been detected in family and twin studies. The present study examined this effect among healthy siblings of schizophrenia patients in a Finnish isolate with high prevalence of schizophrenia.
We assessed performance in verbal and visual span tasks, in tests measuring intelligence, and in declarative verbal memory and learning tasks in 31 and 67 healthy siblings from families with one schizophrenia patient, or with two or more patients, respectively. The differences between the groups were tested using linear mixed effects models.
An effect of familial loading was detected in the backward visual span task, measuring immediate visual memory with requirements from the visual domain of working memory. In this task, the healthy siblings from multiply affected families performed worse than those from the singleton families.
The finding that the multiplex vs. singleton differences were selective to the backward visual span task, strengthens the view that the visual domain of working memory may provide a valuable endophenotypic marker for genetic schizophrenia studies.
在家族研究和双生子研究中已检测到家族负荷对精神分裂症患者亲属神经认知缺陷的影响。本研究在精神分裂症患病率较高的芬兰隔离人群中，对精神分裂症患者的健康同胞进行了此项影响的研究。
我们分别评估了来自有一名精神分裂症患者的家庭或有两名或更多患者的家庭的31名和67名健康同胞在言语和视觉广度任务、智力测试、陈述性言语记忆和学习任务中的表现。使用线性混合效应模型检验组间差异。
在反向视觉广度任务中检测到家族负荷的影响，该任务测量即时视觉记忆，对工作记忆的视觉领域有要求。在这项任务中，来自多病例家庭的健康同胞表现比来自单病例家庭的同胞差。
多病例组与单病例组在反向视觉广度任务上存在差异这一发现，强化了以下观点：工作记忆的视觉领域可能为精神分裂症基因研究提供有价值的内表型标记。
