A Study of Obstetric Complications and Minor Physical Anomalies in Sibling and Sporadic Schizophrenics / 신경정신의학

ABSTRACT

The authors hypothesized that sporadic schziophrenic patients had more chances of receiving environmental insults during the fetal neural development compared with familial schizophrenics. We tested our hypothesis by comparing obstetric complications(OCs), minor physical anomalies(MPAs) and other clinical features, and examining the correlation between OCs and MPAs in schziophrenic patients who had one or more sibling with schizophrenia(sibling group) and sporadic schizophrenics(sporadic group) and normal controls. OCs were evaluated by the scale of Lewis, and MPAs were measured by the Waldrop scale. There were no significant differences in OCs and MPAs between schizophrenic and control groups. Sporadic group had significantly higher fetal distress, total Waldrop score and Waldrop score for mouth than sibling group. And there was a tendency that the number of subjects having the Waldrop score over 4 points was greater in the sporadic group. No significant correlation was observed between OCs and MPAs. The scores of initial psychopathology and post-treatment functioning were much higher in the sporadic group, but the other clinical features showed no differences. Although male patients had more OCs than female patients in sibling group, no sex differences were observed as a whole. Our results suggest that, if the methodological weakness were complemented, OCs and MPAs would be useful tools in the search for the cause of schizophrenia.