Clinical subtypes and age at onset in schizophrenic siblings

This study examines the concordance of clinical subtypes and age at onset of schizophrenia in 42 sibships of multiply affected schizophrenic patients. Subtypes were defined by four major diagnostic systems (DSM-III, DSM-III-R, ICD-10, and Tsuang-Winokur criteria) and rated both for the first hospitalization and long-term diagnosis. When a sibship method was used, no concordance for subtypes was found in siblings. Age at onset, analyzed as a continuous variable with the intraclass correlation method, was found to be correlated in siblings. This finding suggest that the search for continuous traits distributed in families of schizophrenic patients might constitute an alternative to discrete category-based family studies.