BACKGROUND: Childhood-onset schizophrenia (COS) is a severe form of the adult-onset disorder with a high rate of premorbid developmental abnormalities. Early symptoms of pervasive developmental disorder (PDD) have been reported in five independent studies of COS. In this study, we compared evidence for premorbid PDD as a nonspecific manifestation of impaired neurodevelopment seen in Continue Reading »
BACKGROUND: Pre-, peri-, and postnatal obstetric complications (OC) are reported to be more frequent in adult patients with schizophrenia and have been linked to both greater severity and to “earlier” age of onset (before either age 18 or 22) in studies of adult patients. We hypothesized that by extrapolation, patients with childhood-onset schizophrenia (COS), Continue Reading »
Prior cross-sectional anatomic brain imaging studies of the hippocampus in schizophrenia have generally shown loss in total hippocampal volume although the progressive course of these changes remains unknown. We report the first prospective sub-regional maps of hippocampal development in childhood onset schizophrenia (COS), reconstructed from serial brain MRI scans of 29 children with COS Continue Reading »