[Family picture studies in patients with paranoid psychoses]

Among the first-degree relatives of 77 patients with delusional functional psychoses the authors found 13 schizophrenics (3.10%), 8 manic-depressives (1.91%) and 14 cases with atypical psychoses (3.34%), following ICD-9 criteria. These figures were compared with the figures in the literature on the genetics of paranoid schizophrenics and nonschizophrenic paranoids, regarding the different composition of the samples. Subdivision of the original 77 patients, using the concept of the axial syndromes, was able to form two homogeneous subgroups of first-degree relatives: one with a schizophrenia prevalence of 6.52% (uncorrected) and without any manic-depressive secondary cases (endogenomorphic-schizophrenic axial syndrome) and another with a manic-depressive illness (MDI) prevalence of 6.58% (uncorrected) without any secondary cases with schizophrenia or atypical psychosis. The first-degree relatives of the patients with an 'organomorphic' axial syndrome (usually excluded in other studies) had an increased rate of manic-depressive secondary cases (3.57%, uncorrected) and the highest rate of atypical psychosis (7.14%) without any schizophrenics, according to the etiopathogenetic heterogeneity of this group. 37 of the 77 patients were not assignable to any of the axial syndromes. In the first-degree relatives of these patients--best comparable to Kendler's criteria for 'delusional disorder'--an increased rate of schizophrenics and atypical psychoses was found (3.59 and 3.08%, uncorrected); the figures for MDI were within normal limits. Our results suggest that the axial syndromes are a useful diagnostic instrument in identifying--from the genetic standpoint--in part very homogeneous subgroups. This allows the conclusion that they are indicators for hypothetical basic disturbances.