Seidman L J, Faraone S V, Goldstein J M, Goodman J M, Kremen W S, Matsuda G, Hoge E A, Kennedy D, Makris N, Caviness V S, Tsuang M T
Department of Psychiatry at Massachusetts Mental Health Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston 02115, USA.
Am J Med Genet. 1997 Sep 19;74(5):507-14. doi: 10.1002/(sici)1096-8628(19970919)74:5<507::aid-ajmg11>3.0.co;2-g.
Substantial evidence suggests that nonpsychotic relatives of schizophrenia patients manifest subtle abnormalities in communication, eye movements, event-related potentials, and neuropsychological processes of attention, reasoning, and memory. We sought to determine whether adult relatives without psychosis or schizophrenia spectrum diagnoses might also have structural brain abnormalities, particularly in subcortical regions found to be impaired in patients with schizophrenia itself. Subjects were six sisters of schizophrenic patients and eleven normal female controls. Sixty contiguous 3 mm coronal, T1-weighted 3D magnetic resonance images (MRI) of the entire brain were acquired on a 1.5 Tesla magnet. Cortical and subcortical gray and white matter was segmented using a semiautomated intensity contour mapping algorithm. Volumes were adjusted for total brain volumes. Adjusted gray matter subcortical volumes were significantly smaller in relatives than in controls in total hippocampus, right amygdala, right putamen, left thalamus, and brainstem. Relatives had significantly enlarged left and total inferior lateral ventricles. These results, though preliminary, suggest that some never-psychotic relatives of schizophrenic patients have abnormal brain structure. If replicated in a larger sample including both sexes, these results would suggest that the genetic liability to schizophrenia is also expressed as structural brain abnormalities.
大量证据表明，精神分裂症患者的非精神病性亲属在沟通、眼球运动、事件相关电位以及注意力、推理和记忆等神经心理过程中表现出细微异常。我们试图确定没有精神病或精神分裂症谱系诊断的成年亲属是否也存在脑结构异常，特别是在精神分裂症患者中发现受损的皮质下区域。研究对象为6名精神分裂症患者的姐妹和11名正常女性对照。在1.5特斯拉磁体上采集了整个大脑的60个连续的3毫米冠状面T1加权三维磁共振图像（MRI）。使用半自动强度轮廓映射算法对皮质和皮质下灰质及白质进行分割。根据全脑体积对体积进行调整。在总海马体、右侧杏仁核、右侧壳核、左侧丘脑和脑干中，亲属的经调整的皮质下灰质体积显著小于对照组。亲属的左侧和总的下外侧脑室明显扩大。这些结果虽然是初步的，但表明一些精神分裂症患者的从未患过精神病的亲属存在脑结构异常。如果在包括男女两性的更大样本中得到重复验证，这些结果将表明精神分裂症的遗传易感性也表现为脑结构异常。
