Doctors map schizophrenia progression
By NORRA MACREADY

 LOS ANGELES, Sept. 24 (UPI) -- Severe, early onset schizophrenia starts as
a subtle alteration in a small part of the brain and progresses as a wave of
destruction that engulfs portions responsible for movement, vision and
reasoning, Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles said.

 These findings, found in the Sept. 25 issue of the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences, shed new light on the development and course
of schizophrenia and may help doctors design more effective therapies for
it, said Dr. Paul Thompson, assistant professor of Neurology at UCLA and the
study's lead investigator.

 "Once the damage is set, you can observe it, but there's not much else you
can do," said Dr. Ron Kikinis of Brigham & Women's Hospital in Boston.

 Kikinis, also an associate professor of radiology at Harvard Medical
School in Cambridge, Mass., said the data, while still preliminary, have
"great potential" for allowing doctors to develop treatments that can stop
the damage in its tracks.

 Using a scanning technique called magnetic resonance imaging, Thompson and
colleagues followed 12 young schizophrenic patients and 12 normal subjects
over a five-year period. The participants were approximately 14 years old at
the time of their first scan and the schizophrenic and comparison groups
were carefully matched, not just for age but for sex, social background and
height.

 To control for any effects of the powerful drugs schizophrenic patients
take, the investigators also studied a third group: Young people who took
the same drugs at similar doses, not for schizophrenia but for other
diagnoses, such as mood or behavioral disorders. They were matched according
to age, sex and social background to the other subjects in the study.

 Each teen in the study underwent three MRI scans: the initial or baseline
scan, another scan approximately two years later and the final scan about
three years after the second one.

 In the schizophrenic patients, doctors found a "striking accelerated loss"
of gray matter of more than 5 percent per year, Thompson said. The normal
adolescents also experienced some loss of gray matter during the study
period, 0.9 percent to 1.4 percent per year, much less than seen in the
schizophrenics.

 The non-schizophrenic patients who were on medication for other reasons
lost gray matter more quickly than the normal subjects, but not as fast as
the schizophrenics.

 The tissue loss began in a small area of the brain that controls logical
thinking and then spread in a wave across the brain, correlating with
increasing severity of symptoms, such as delusions and hallucinations,
Thompson said.

 These findings raise new questions about the development and progression
of schizophrenia, he added. "Perhaps some event during the teen years
triggers this massive loss of tissue."

 People who do not display schizophrenic symptoms until adulthood may
experience a similar loss of brain tissue, but at a later age, Thompson
said. He and his associates now are studying adult schizophrenics to see if
their scans reveal a similar pattern of loss.


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