Schizophrenia Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Schizophrenia, including details on paranoia, symptoms, treatment, depression, medication.

Schizophrenia in the offspring of antenatally depressed mothers in the northern Finland 1966 birth cohort: relationship to family history of psychosis.

Mäki P, Riekki T, Miettunen J, Isohanni M, Jones PB, Murray GK, Veijola J

Department of Psychiatry, Institute of Clinical Medicine, University of Oulu, P.O. Box 5000, FIN-90014 Oulu, Finland. pirjo.maki@oulu.fi

OBJECTIVE: Maternal depression is relatively common during pregnancy. The authors examined whether maternal antenatal depressed mood increased the risk of schizophrenia and other psychoses among offspring with and without a familial history of psychosis. METHOD: In the Northern Finland 1966 birth cohort, mothers of 12,058 children were asked at mid-gestation at the antenatal clinic if they felt depressed. The offspring were followed for over 30 years, and subsequent schizophrenia and other psychoses were detected using the Finnish Hospital Discharge Register, which was also used for identifying psychosis in the parents. Familial risk for psychosis was considered as a genetic risk factor and mothers' depressed mood as an environmental or genetic risk factor. RESULTS: The risk for schizophrenia was higher in the offspring with both maternal depressed mood during pregnancy and parental psychosis (OR=9.4, 95% CI=4.2-20.9 adjusted for sex and perinatal complications) than in those with a depressed mother but without parental psychosis (OR=1.0, 95% CI=0.6-1.8) or those without maternal depression and with a psychotic parent (OR=2.6, 95% CI=1.2-5.4). The reference group was birth cohort members without maternal antenatal depression and without parental psychosis. CONCLUSIONS: Maternal depressed mood during pregnancy per se is unlikely to increase the risk for schizophrenia in the offspring but may affect subjects with a family history for psychosis. This finding could be an example of a gene-environment or possibly a gene-gene interaction in the development of schizophrenia. Mothers' antenatal depression may act as additive factor for subjects vulnerable to schizophrenia.

Published 13 January 2010 in Am J Psychiatry, 167(1): 70-7.
Full-text of this article is available online (may require subscription).

Articles on Schizophrenia published 11 January 2010:

Basic emotion recognition and psychopathology in schizophrenia.   J Nerv Ment Dis, 198(1): 79-81.

Socio-emotional competence is a key aspect of schizophrenia, both in terms of psychopathological vulnerability and outcome. In this respect, current research increasingly emphasizes the importance of deficits in facial expression recognition. The focus of the present study is the performance in recognizing 6 basic emotions (sadness, anger, happiness, fear, disgust, surprise) which play an essential role in shaping daily function and interpersonal interactions. A group of 20 patients diagnosed ... [Abstract] [Full-text]

Depression and depressive symptoms in first episode psychosis.   J Nerv Ment Dis, 198(1): 67-71.

The aims of this study were to examine the prevalence and pattern of lifetime Diagnostic and Structural Manual of Mental Disorders (fourth version) major depressive episodes, and the relationship between patient characteristics and current severity of depressive symptoms in first episode psychosis patients (FEPP). A total of 122 FEPP from the ongoing longitudinal thematically organized psychosis research study were included at first treatment. A total of 58 patients (48%) had experienced one or ... [Abstract] [Full-text]

Intrinsic motivation as a mediator of relationships between symptoms and functioning among individuals with schizophrenia spectrum disorders in a diverse urban community.   J Nerv Ment Dis, 198(1): 28-34.

This study investigated intrinsic motivation as a mediator of the relationship between clinical symptoms and functioning. The mediation model was tested with a sample of 166 adults with schizophrenia spectrum disorders attending psychosocial rehabilitation programs in a diverse urban community. Ethnic minority status was examined as a moderator of the mediation model. Motivation was measured using items reflecting intrapsychic drive. Symptoms were assessed with the expanded Brief Psychiatric ... [Abstract] [Full-text]

Articles on Schizophrenia published 5 January 2010:

Decreased frontal serotonin2A receptor binding in antipsychotic-naive patients with first-episode schizophrenia.   Arch Gen Psychiatry, 67(1): 9-16.

CONTEXT: Postmortem investigations and the receptor affinity profile of atypical antipsychotics have implicated the participation of serotonin(2A) receptors in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia. Most postmortem studies point toward lower cortical serotonin(2A) binding in schizophrenic patients. However, in vivo studies of serotonin(2A) binding report conflicting results, presumably because sample sizes have been small or because schizophrenic patients who were not antipsychotic-naive were ... [Abstract] [Full-text]

Articles on Schizophrenia published 24 December 2009:

Postnatal NMDA receptor ablation in corticolimbic interneurons confers schizophrenia-like phenotypes.   Nat Neurosci, 13(1): 76-83.

Cortical GABAergic dysfunction may underlie the pathophysiology of psychiatric disorders, including schizophrenia. Here, we characterized a mouse strain in which the essential NR1 subunit of the NMDA receptor (NMDAR) was selectively eliminated in 40-50% of cortical and hippocampal interneurons in early postnatal development. Consistent with the NMDAR hypofunction theory of schizophrenia, distinct schizophrenia-related symptoms emerged after adolescence, including novelty-induced ... [Abstract] [Full-text]

Articles on Schizophrenia published 9 December 2009:

Functional neuroanatomy of visual masking deficits in schizophrenia.   Arch Gen Psychiatry, 66(12): 1295-303.

CONTEXT: Visual masking procedures assess the earliest stages of visual processing. Patients with schizophrenia reliably show deficits on visual masking, and these procedures have been used to explore vulnerability to schizophrenia, probe underlying neural circuits, and help explain functional outcome. OBJECTIVE: To identify and compare regional brain activity associated with one form of visual masking (ie, backward masking) in schizophrenic patients and healthy controls. DESIGN: Subjects ... [Abstract] [Full-text]

Articles on Schizophrenia published 27 November 2009:

Glutamatergic deficits and parvalbumin-containing inhibitory neurons in the prefrontal cortex in schizophrenia.   BMC Psychiatry, 9: 71.

BACKGROUND: We have previously reported that the expression of the messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) for the NR2A subunit of the N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) class of glutamate receptor was decreased in a subset of inhibitory interneurons in the cerebral cortex in schizophrenia. In this study, we sought to determine whether a deficit in the expression of NR2A mRNA was present in the subset of interneurons that contain the calcium buffer parvalbumin (PV) and whether this deficit was associated ... [Abstract] [Full-text]

Copy-number variants in neurodevelopmental disorders: promises and challenges.   Trends Genet, 25(12): 536-44.

Copy-number variation (CNV) is the most prevalent type of structural variation in the human genome. There is emerging evidence that copy-number variants (CNVs) provide a new vista on understanding susceptibility to neuropsychiatric disorders. Some challenges in the interpretation of current CNV studies include the use of overlapping samples, differing phenotypic definitions, an absence of population norms for CNVs and a lack of consensus in methods for CNV detection and analysis. Here, we ... [Abstract] [Full-text]

© 2004-2010 Schizophrenia Research Today. All Rights Reserved.