Familial risk of schizophrenia and ventricular size on CT

Abstract

evidence that patients with schizophrenia as a group have structural brain abnormalities including enlarged ventricles and cortical sulci as well as deficits in cortical gray matter volumes. Whether patients with other psychiaffic disorders have similar structural brain abnormalities has yet to be fully clarified. This study was undertaken to investigate structural brain abnormalities in patients with chronic schizophrenia using MR! and to determine whether a comparison group of patients with bipolar disorder would also differ on the structural brain measures. Twenty-three patients meeting DSM-IlI-R criteria for Chronic Schizophrenia and 14 patients m~ting DSM-IlI-R criteria for Bipolar Disorder were compared to a conerol ~oup consisting of 17 healthy community volunteers. All subjects were scanned using a i.5 Tesla General Electric Signa MR! scanner. A spin echo sequence was used to obtain early and late echo images with 5 nun. thickness and 2.5 ram. intersection skip. A total of 8 axial sections were chosen for this analysis. Axial images were read from computer storage medium into Macintosh workstations and analyzed using NIH Image (Rasband 1992). Images were processed using routines based on the methods of Lira and Pfefferbaum (J Comput Assist Tomogr. 1989). The lateral ventricles were quantified over all sections where they were present. Gray matter, white matter and cerebrospinal fluid volumes were quantified over the upper seven sections. The schizophrenia group had larger cortical sulci than controls (ig.05, one-tailed) while the bipolar group had larger ventricles than controls (p<.05, one-tailed). The schizophrenia group had significant deficits in cortical gray matter volumes compared to controls (p<.05). The results of this MRI study replicate previous work demonstrating increased cortical sulcal volumes with diminished cortical gray matter volumes in patients with schizophrenia as well as increased ventricular volumes in patients with bipolar disorder. Analysis of regional cortical gray matter volumes in these two patient samples will be presented. 379. FAMILIAL RISK OF SCHIZOPHRENIA AND VENTRICULAR SIZE ON CT