Diao Henan, Wang Hui, Jia Wenjia, Han Gangqiang, Liu Qinyi, Li Xue, Wei Kunlin
Beijing Key Laboratory of Behavior and Mental Health, School of Psychological and Cognitive Sciences, Peking University, Beijing, China.
Key Laboratory of Machine Perception (Ministry of Education), Peking University, Beijing, China.
Sci Rep. 2025 Jul 1;15(1):22151. doi: 10.1038/s41598-025-06590-w.
Motor abnormalities, including extrapyramidal symptoms (EPS) induced by antipsychotic medication, are of prognostic value for clinical outcomes for individuals with schizophrenia. Instrumental methods for quantitative assessment of motor abnormalities in schizophrenia are still underdeveloped, with current assessments relying on observations and subjective scales. This study aimed to develop easy-to-implement and reliable instrumental methods to measure motor abnormalities in youth with schizophrenia who started their medication. Three motor tasks, including upper-limb weight holding, quiet standing, and level-ground walking, were instrumentally evaluated to capture essential aspects of motor abnormalities, such as akathisia, dyskinesia, and Parkinsonism. We recruited adolescents with schizophrenia (SZ group), an age-matched healthy control group (NC group), and a group of age-matched patients with depression (DP group). The SZ and DP groups were both newly exposed to antipsychotic drugs, and their comparisons were to determine if motor abnormalities are schizophrenia-specific. SZ patients indeed performed significantly worse with more upper-limb tremors and walking abnormalities. While no group difference was found in standing stability, the SZ group's postural stability measures correlated with clinic scale scores. With motor features from these instrumental methods, a simple linear classifier classified the three participant groups with decent accuracy. Our findings suggest that instrumental motor tasks hold promise for sensitive detection and differentiation of motor abnormalities in adolescents with newly diagnosed schizophrenia and antipsychotic intake. Further developments of these instrumental methods are promising for improving motor assessment and treatment outcomes in clinical practice.
运动异常，包括抗精神病药物引起的锥体外系症状（EPS），对精神分裂症患者的临床预后具有预测价值。用于定量评估精神分裂症运动异常的仪器方法仍不发达，目前的评估依赖于观察和主观量表。本研究旨在开发易于实施且可靠的仪器方法，以测量开始服药的精神分裂症青年患者的运动异常。对三项运动任务进行了仪器评估，包括上肢负重、安静站立和在平地上行走，以捕捉运动异常的基本方面，如静坐不能、运动障碍和帕金森症。我们招募了精神分裂症青少年患者（SZ组）、年龄匹配的健康对照组（NC组）和年龄匹配的抑郁症患者组（DP组）。SZ组和DP组均为新使用抗精神病药物的患者，对他们进行比较以确定运动异常是否为精神分裂症所特有。SZ组患者确实表现得更差，上肢震颤和行走异常更多。虽然在站立稳定性方面未发现组间差异，但SZ组的姿势稳定性测量值与临床量表评分相关。利用这些仪器方法所获得的运动特征，一个简单的线性分类器能够以相当高的准确率对三个参与者组进行分类。我们的研究结果表明，仪器运动任务有望灵敏地检测和区分新诊断的精神分裂症及服用抗精神病药物的青少年患者的运动异常。这些仪器方法的进一步发展有望改善临床实践中的运动评估和治疗效果。
