Department of Psychiatry, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India.
Department of Psychiatry, King George's Medical University, Uttar Pradesh, Lucknow, India.
Indian J Psychiatry. 2013 Oct;55(4):331-7. doi: 10.4103/0019-5545.120543.
Schizophrenia is a devastating psychotic illness which is like the most mental disorders, shows complex inheritance; the transmission of the disorder most likely involves several genes and environmental factors. It is difficult to judge whether a particular person without schizophrenia has predisposing factors for the said disease. A few studies have shown the relative sensitivity and reliability of cognitive and psychophysiological markers of brain function as the susceptibility factors for schizophrenia which may aid us to find people with an increased risk of complex disorders like schizophrenia. The present work is an exploration on cognitive impairments in unaffected siblings of patients suffering from schizophrenia with a framework to explore why a mental disorder occurs in some families but not in others.
This is a single point non-invasive study of non-affected full biological siblings of patients with schizophrenia, involving administration of a battery of neuropsychological tests to assess the cognitive function in the sibling group and a control group of volunteers with no history of psychiatric illness. The control group was matched for age, gender, and education. The siblings were also divided on the basis of the type of schizophrenia their siblings (index probands) were suffering from and their results compared with each other.
The siblings performed significantly poorly as compared to the controls on Wisconsin card sorting test (WCST), continuous performance test (CPT), and spatial working memory test (SWMT). The comparison between the sibling subgroups based on the type of schizophrenia in the index probands did not reveal any significant difference.
These findings suggest that there is a global impairment in the cognition of the non-affected siblings of patients of schizophrenia. Cognitive impairment might be one of the factors which will help us to hit upon people who are predisposed to develop schizophrenia in the future.
精神分裂症是一种严重的精神疾病，与大多数精神障碍一样，具有复杂的遗传特征；这种疾病的传播很可能涉及多个基因和环境因素。很难判断一个没有精神分裂症的特定人是否具有该疾病的易患因素。一些研究表明，认知和心理生理脑功能标记物具有相对敏感性和可靠性，可以作为精神分裂症的易患因素，这可能有助于我们发现具有更高患复杂疾病（如精神分裂症）风险的人群。本研究旨在探讨精神分裂症患者未受影响的兄弟姐妹的认知障碍，旨在探索为什么某些家庭会出现精神障碍，而其他家庭则不会。
这是一项针对精神分裂症患者未受影响的全血缘兄弟姐妹的单点非侵入性研究，涉及一系列神经心理测试，以评估兄弟姐妹组和无精神病史志愿者对照组的认知功能。对照组在年龄、性别和教育程度上与兄弟姐妹组相匹配。根据兄弟姐妹的索引患者所患精神分裂症的类型，兄弟姐妹也进行了分组，然后将他们的结果进行相互比较。
与对照组相比，兄弟姐妹组在威斯康星卡片分类测试（WCST）、连续性能测试（CPT）和空间工作记忆测试（SWMT）中表现明显较差。根据索引患者的精神分裂症类型对兄弟姐妹亚组进行比较，未发现任何显著差异。
这些发现表明，精神分裂症患者未受影响的兄弟姐妹的认知存在全面障碍。认知障碍可能是帮助我们发现未来易患精神分裂症的人群的因素之一。
