Kremen W S, Goldstein J M, Seidman L J, Toomey R, Lyons M J, Tsuang M T, Faraone S V
Harvard Institute of Psychiatry Epidemiology and Genetics, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
Psychiatry Res. 1997 Feb 7;66(2-3):131-44. doi: 10.1016/s0165-1781(96)03030-2.
Some recent studies suggest that men with schizophrenia may have greater neuropsychological deficits than women. It is not known, however, whether similar sex differences may be present in biological relatives of schizophrenic patients. We evaluated neuropsychological functioning of 54 relatives of schizophrenic patients and 72 normal volunteers. It was hypothesized that, if sex differences were present, they would be accounted for largely by deficits in male relatives. We were particularly interested in three neuropsychological functions that we previously identified as putative neuropsychological vulnerability indicators for schizophrenia: (1) abstraction/executive function; (2) verbal memory; and (3) auditory attention. There were significant group x sex interactions for verbal memory and motor function, and trends toward significant interactions for auditory attention and mental control/encoding. However, with the exception of motor function, it was the female relatives who accounted for most of the impairment. A speculative explanation for the findings is that women may have a higher threshold than men for developing schizophrenia. If so, female relatives might be able to withstand greater impairments than men before developing psychotic symptoms. Consequently, in a sample that was limited to non-psychotic relatives--as in the present study--there could be over-representation of both less impaired men and more impaired women. Alternative explanations and limitations of the study are also discussed.
近期的一些研究表明，患有精神分裂症的男性可能比女性存在更严重的神经心理缺陷。然而，尚不清楚精神分裂症患者的生物学亲属中是否也存在类似的性别差异。我们评估了54名精神分裂症患者亲属和72名正常志愿者的神经心理功能。研究假设，如果存在性别差异，那么很大程度上是由男性亲属的缺陷导致的。我们对三种神经心理功能特别感兴趣，我们之前将其确定为精神分裂症可能的神经心理易损性指标：（1）抽象/执行功能；（2）言语记忆；（3）听觉注意力。在言语记忆和运动功能方面存在显著的组×性别交互作用，在听觉注意力和心理控制/编码方面有显著交互作用的趋势。然而，除了运动功能外，大部分损害是由女性亲属造成的。对这些发现的一种推测性解释是，女性患精神分裂症的阈值可能比男性更高。如果是这样，女性亲属在出现精神病症状之前可能比男性能够承受更大的损害。因此，在像本研究这样仅限于非精神病亲属的样本中，可能会出现受损较轻的男性和受损较重的女性比例过高的情况。本文还讨论了该研究的其他解释和局限性。
