The Korean Version of 4th Revision of Schizophrenia Quality of Life Scale: Validation Study and Relationship with PANSS / 신경정신의학

OBJECTIVES: The present study was performed to verify the validity and value of 4th revision of Schizophrenia Quality of Life Scale (SQLS-R4) as an assessment tool in a Korean-language version (SQLS-R4K). METHODS: The subjects for present study were 174 patients with a diagnosis of schizophrenia as defined by DSM-IV. The SQLS-R4K was administered together with self-report Korean version of World Health Organization Quality of Life-Brief Scale (WHOQOL-BREF) to assess validity. A subset of respondents also completed the SQLS-R4K for a second time to assess test-retest reliability. To evaluate the relationship SQLS-R4K and clinical characteristics, psychotic symptoms and general functioning were evaluated using the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) and the Global Assessment of Functioning Scale (GAF) score respectively. RESULTS: All the scales of SQLS-R4K showed good internal consistency reliability. The correlations of items with their scale total revealed that all items were significantly correlated with their own scale score. In test-retest reliability, paired t-tests indicated that responses did not alter significantly between the two assessment. There was moderate correlation between WHOQOL-BREF sub-scores and SQLS-R4K score total. Also relevant correlations between PANSS, current GAF and SQLS-R4K were proved. CONCLUSION: From the results of the testing the reliability and validity of the SQLS-R4K, it is concluded that the SQLS-R4K is a simple and reliable scale for measuring quality of life in schizophrenic patients.

Association of a Polymorphism in the Promoter Region of Apo-1/Fas Gene with Bipolar Disorder

OBJECTIVE: Recently, many experimental evidences have been reported that psychiatric diseases are closely related with neurodevelopmental abnormalities and this can be properly explained by apoptosis. It is known that Apo-1/Fas is one of the genes in charge of apoptosis related with neurodevelopmental abnormalities. In this study, the association between bipolar disorder and functional polymorphism in Apo-1/Fas promoter gene has been investigated. METHOD: For 81 bipolar disorder patients and 217 healthy control subjects, MvaI restriction fragment length polymorphism(RFLP) of Apo-1/Fas promoter gene was analyzed after polymerase chain reaction(PCR) amplification. RESULT: There was a statistical significant difference in genotypic distribution(chi2=16.656, df=2, p=0.0002) and allelic frequencies(chi2=14.225, df=1, p=0.0002) between bipolar disorder patients and healthy control subjects. CONCLUSION: Our results suggest an association between functional polymorphism in Apo-1/Fas promoter gene and bipolar disorder and provide the important genetic information related with the pathogenesis of the disease. Further studies employing larger samples are required to clarify the present results.