PROSPECTIVE STUDY OF CHILDREN OF SCHIZOPHRENIC PARENTS

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This is the final phase of major data collection in the New York High- Risk Project (NYHRP), a multi-trait, multi-measurement, prospective study, in which two independent samples of offspring of schizophrenic, affectively ill and normal parents have been followed with repeated testing and clinical evaluations since ages 7 to 12 in 1971-72 or '77-'79. The initial goal was to identify early neurobiological predictors of schizophrenia. This goal has expanded as the field has evolved to focus on the problem of defining the full phenotypic complement of endophenotypic and clinical traits making up the schizophrenia spectrum. Although we will collect updated clinical, environmental and family history data in this phase, we will concentrate chiefly on rating and synthesizing the data amassed previously and integrating the different domains of variables (e.g., social and neurobehavioral measures) in the extensive analyses that will be needed to resolve the questions and hypotheses posed in this longitudinal study. Specifically, we will 1) rate, from our extensive files, accumulated social, environmental and psychological data on the approximately 350 offspring and their approximately 160 recently examined siblings; 2) prepare lifetime profiles on the offspring, using all sources of data; 3) array family pedigrees of the physical/mental (including Axis l diagnoses and Axis Il features) health histories on the parents, offspring, and second-degree relatives. We will collect additional data with: 4) mailed questionnaires to obtain "psychosis- proneness" and schizotypy scales on the offspring; 5) final Axis I and II diagnostic interviews with the younger sample (Sample B) and selected Sample A subjects; 6) blood samples to preserve DNA and for use in an assessment of serum anti-bodies for the heat-shock protein (hsp 60); and Z) continued annual telephone interviews with the offspring to update their own clinical and treatment histories, as well as their family histories of disorders. We will also: J8 continue to offer referral services to subjects seeking assistance. Most of all, we will 9) conduct a large number of data analyses focused on: comparing the potential of specified traits as indicators of the genetic liability to schizophrenia and as predictors of adulthood psychiatric conditions; such analyses will include construction of composite indices of traits and examination of sib-pair and other intra-pedigree comparisons as estimates of familial aggregation and segregation of the aforementioned traits.