Igor Nenadic, MD, Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Jena University Hospital, Jena, Germany; Rachel A. Yotter, PhD, Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Jena University Hospital, Jena, Germany, and Section of Biomedical Image Analysis, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA; Heinrich Sauer, MD, Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Jena University Hospital, Jena, Germany; Christian Gaser, PhD, Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy and Department of Neurology, Jena University Hospital, Jena, Germany.
Br J Psychiatry. 2015 Jun;206(6):479-83. doi: 10.1192/bjp.bp.114.148510. Epub 2015 Feb 5.
Alterations of cortical thickness have been shown in imaging studies of schizophrenia but it is unclear to what extent they are related to disease phenotype (including symptom profile) or other aspects such as genetic liability, disease onset and disease progression.
To test the hypothesis that cortical thinning would vary across different subgroups of patients with chronic schizophrenia, delineated according to their symptom profiles.
We compared high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging data of 87 patients with DSM-IV schizophrenia with 108 controls to detect changes in cortical thickness across the entire brain (P<0.05, false discovery rate-adjusted). The patient group was divided into three subgroups, consisting of patients with predominantly negative, disorganised or paranoid symptoms.
The negative symptoms subgroup showed the most extensive cortical thinning, whereas thinning in the other subgroups was focused in prefrontal and temporal cortical subregions.
Our findings support growing evidence of potential subtypes of schizophrenia that have different brain structural deficit profiles.
精神分裂症的影像学研究表明皮质厚度发生了改变，但尚不清楚其与疾病表型（包括症状特征）或其他方面（如遗传易感性、发病和疾病进展）的关系程度。
检验如下假设，即根据症状特征对慢性精神分裂症患者进行分组后，各组患者的皮质变薄情况存在差异。
我们对比了 87 名 DSM-IV 精神分裂症患者和 108 名对照者的高分辨率磁共振成像数据，以检测全脑皮质厚度的变化（P<0.05，经假发现率校正）。将患者组分为三组，分别为以阴性症状、紊乱症状或偏执症状为主的患者亚组。
以阴性症状为主的患者亚组表现出最广泛的皮质变薄，而其他亚组的变薄则集中在前额叶和颞叶皮质子区域。
我们的发现支持精神分裂症存在不同脑结构缺陷特征的潜在亚型的证据不断增加。
