Qualitative cerebral morphology in schizophrenia: a magnetic resonance imaging study and systematic literature review

Patients with schizophrenia have larger lateral ventricles, less cerebral substance and smaller mesial temporal lobe structures than groups of normal controls, but it has proved difficult to link these volumetric abnormalities with clinical features of the illness. Such quantitative techniques may overlook qualitative abnormalities of importance. We therefore compared a neuroradiologists' clinical assessment of gross structural abnormalities, generalised 'atrophy' and high intensity signal (HIS) foci, as detected on the first and second echo of a long TR sequence, in 42 patients with schizophrenia (22 treatment responsive, 20 treatment resistant) and 50 normal controls. The schizophrenic group included two (5%) subjects with gross lesions, two (5%) with cerebellar atrophy, 21 (52%) with at least a mild degree of cerebral atrophy, and 15 (38%) with one or more HIS foci; the comparable figures in the controls being 2, 0, 2 and 14%, respectively. Controlling for age, patients with schizophrenia had a substantially elevated rate of cerebral atrophy (odds ratio (OR) = 11.7, p < 0.0001). Treatment-resistant schizophrenics showed a tendency (OR = 2.8, p = 0.06) to greater atrophy than those who were treatment responsive, whereas our previous volumetric study showed no such difference. In contrast, the presence of HIS foci was only related to age. The degree of atrophy was correlated with the number of HIS foci (r = 0.31, p = 0.014). Taken together with previous studies, these findings demonstrate the value of qualitative examination of MRI images in patients with schizophrenia.