Choroid plexus calcification: clinical, neuroimaging and histopathological correlations in schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is recognized as a psychiatric disorder that causes the most pronounced disturbances of cognition and social integration. In the etiopathogenesis of the disease, genetic, neurobiological and vascular factors are involved. Functional integrity of the brain can be correlated with the integrity of the blood-brain barrier (BBB), and the dysfunction of this barrier is an indicator that suggests neurodevelopmental abnormalities, injuries of various etiologies and dysfunctions within the small vessels of the brain that disrupt the calcium homeostasis. Neuroimaging shows that in patients with poor evolution, cognitive dysfunction and therapeutic resistance, the presence of choroid plexus calcification associated with hippocampal, frontal, temporoparietal and cerebellar atrophies. Antipsychotics with high capacity to block D2 dopamine receptors (haloperidol model) can aggravate apoptotic mechanisms of the brain areas involved in cognition and disrupts the functional integrity of the BBB due to decreased of choroid plexus blood flow because of the narrowing of cerebral small vessels. Choroid plexus calcification may be a predictive indicator of poor evolution or of a neurodegenerative type.