MD Magazine (8/22, Walter) reports, “By mapping the brain of” patients with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder and their “family members, investigators have learned different patterns in the brain that could help lead to better diagnosis practices.” After conducting “a meta-analysis of global and subcortical brain measures of 6008 participants, 1228 of which are first-degree relatives of patients with schizophrenia (FDR-SZ), 852 of which are first-degree relatives of patients with bipolar disorder (FDRs-BD), 2246 control subjects, 1016 patients with schizophrenia and 666 patients with bipolar disorder from 34 schizophrenia and/or bipolar disorder family cohorts using standardized methods,” researchers “found that the first-degree relatives of bipolar patients had significantly larger intracranial volume (d = +.16, q < .05 corrected), while the first-degree relatives of schizophrenia patients had smaller thalamic volumes than the control subjects (d = −0.12, q < .05 corrected).” The findings were published online June 13 in Biological Psychiatry: A Journal of Psychiatric Neuroscience and Therapeutics. Related Links:
— “Relatives of Patients with Psychotic Disorders Have Distinct Brain Abnormalities, “Kenny Walter, MD Magazine, August 22, 2019