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Published on: December 18, 2016
Meta-analysis of postmortem studies of Alzheimer's disease-like neuropathology in schizophrenia
R J Baldessarini1, J D Hegarty, E D Bird
1Department of Psychiatry and Neurology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Mass, USA. rib@mrc309.mclean.org
Objective:
To evaluate the hypothesis that patients with schizophrenia who have been treated with neuroleptics have a high rate of Alzheimer's disease-like neuropathology.
Method:
Neuropathological studies indicating the presence or absence of Alzheimer's disease-like neuropathology in the postmortem brains of patients with schizophrenia, normal comparison subjects, and comparison subjects who had affective disorder were evaluated with Mantel-Haenszel chi-square and odds ratio analyses.
Results:
Ten studies with relevant data were reviewed; none of eight with comparisons indicated that Alzheimer's disease-like neuropathology was more likely to be found in the brains of patients with schizophrenia than in the brains of comparison subjects.
Conclusions:
Suggestions that cerebral plaques and neurofibrillary tangles are more common in schizophrenia in association with neuroleptic treatment were not supported.
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