Häfner H, an der Heiden W, Behrens S, Gattaz W F, Hambrecht M, Löffler W, Maurer K, Munk-Jørgensen P, Nowotny B, Riecher-Rössler A, Stein A
Schizophrenia Research Unit, Central Institute of Mental Health, Mannheim, Germany.
Schizophr Bull. 1998;24(1):99-113. doi: 10.1093/oxfordjournals.schbul.a033317.
The ABC (age, beginning, course) schizophrenia study was commenced in 1987 to generate and test hypotheses about pathogenic aspects of schizophrenia. One of the main branches of the study focused on how gender influences the age distribution of onset, symptomatology, illness behavior, and early course in schizophrenia. Proceeding from one of the rare, strikingly deviating, consistent findings--the gender difference in age at first admission--we launched a systematic search for explanations by generating and testing hypotheses in a series of substudies. We moved from the epidemiological to the neurobiological and finally to the clinical level. The present article is an attempt to provide a brief overview of the individual stages of the ABC study and the different levels of investigation involved in formulating and testing the estrogen hypothesis in animal experiments and in demonstrating its applicability to human schizophrenia. From these results, three hypotheses were formulated and tested on data from an ABC study sample of 232 first-episode cases of schizophrenia. The analyses described here represent the latest stages of the ABC study.
ABC（年龄、起病、病程）精神分裂症研究始于1987年，旨在提出并检验关于精神分裂症致病因素的假设。该研究的一个主要分支聚焦于性别如何影响精神分裂症的起病年龄分布、症状学、患病行为及早期病程。基于一项罕见、显著偏离且一致的发现——首次入院年龄的性别差异，我们通过在一系列子研究中提出并检验假设，展开了系统的解释探寻。我们从流行病学层面深入到神经生物学层面，最终进入临床层面。本文旨在简要概述ABC研究的各个阶段，以及在动物实验中提出并检验雌激素假设、证明其适用于人类精神分裂症所涉及的不同研究层面。基于这些结果，我们提出了三个假设，并在来自ABC研究样本的232例精神分裂症首发病例的数据上进行了检验。此处描述的分析代表了ABC研究的最新阶段。
