Brain morphology in schizophrenia: a 2- to 5-year CT scan follow-up study.

In order to investigate whether structural brain changes in schizophrenia are static or progress in time, 17 schizophrenic patients were examined by computed tomography (CT) between 2 and 5 years after the initial scan. There was no change in cerebral ventricular size or degree of cortical atrophy over this period. The stability of CT scan measures of cerebral atrophy in individual schizophrenic patients confirms the hypothesis of the early appearance of structural brain abnormalities in schizophrenia as formulated in previous cross-sectional studies. Furthermore, the pathological process responsible for the CT finding of cortical or central atrophy does not seem to progress nor to reverse itself in young schizophrenic patients.