Study of anticipation in Chinese families with schizophrenia

The anticipation phenomenon is an important aspect in several genetic disorders in which the age at onset (AAO) decreases and the severity of illness increases in successive generations. This phenomenon has been reported in several schizophrenic family studies, and expanded repeat mutations are implicated. In the present study, we investigate the anticipation phenomenon in Chinese schizophrenic families. We compare the AAO between two generations of 38 unilinear schizophrenic families. Intergenerational comparisons show that the AAO was significantly earlier in the offspring generation (mean AAO, 22.2 years) than that in the parental generation (mean AAO, 31.0 years) (P < 0.001). When only including the offspring generation who married, the AAO difference between the two generations was not significant (28.4 years vs 31.0 years, P = 0.151). Our findings suggest that a selection bias in the parental group might greatly impact the study of anticipation in schizophrenia. Other unavoidable biases associated with these analyses are discussed in the text.