Twin and family studies of ventricular enlargement in schizophrenia

Abstract

Most, but not all, computerised tomographic (CT) scan studies have found ventricular enlargement (VE) in schizophrenia.[1] Overall, perhaps 25% of schizophrenics have some degree of enlargement. Whilst many researchers have attempted to correlate various clinical variables with scan abnormalities, there have been relatively few twin or family studies, which are particularly suited to unravel the relative contributions of genetics and environment in the causation of VE.