STUDIES OF HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT IN SCHIZOPHRENIA

最近，我们对Genain四胞胎进行了一项长达39年的跟踪研究，这是一组独特的女性--完全相同的四胞胎--她们都在20岁出头时患上了精神分裂症。多年来，这对姐妹一直是精神分裂症研究人员和遗传学家感兴趣的话题。我们对这对姐妹进行了一系列测试，其中一些测试是在20世纪50年代末进行的，以绘制她们在过去40年中在注意力测试中的表现轨迹。尽管姐妹中的一个患有痴呆症，住在养老院，但剩下的三个没有明显的恶化，而且比上世纪50年代第一次看到的情况要好。尽管他们患有45年的精神分裂症疾病，但他们的认知能力相对保持得很好，这一事实引发了人们对这种疾病过程不可避免地、无情地走下坡路的看法的质疑。该报告被接受发表在精神分裂症公报上，并发表在最新一期(Mirsky等人)上。《精神分裂症公报》，26(3)：699-708,2000)。

Recently, we conducted a 39-year followup study of the Genain Quaduplets, a unique group of women--identical quadruplets--all of whom developed schizophrenia by their early 20s. The sisters have been the subject of considerable interest over the years from schizophrenia researchers and geneticists. We administered a battery of tests to the sisters, some of which had been given to them in the late 1950s, to plot the trajectory of their performance on attention tests over the last four decades. Although one of the sisters is demented, and confined to a nursing home, the remaining three have not shown significant deterioration, and are performing better than when first seen in the 1950s. The fact that their cognitive capacities are relatively well preserved, despite 45 years of a schizophrenic illness, raises questions about the belief that the course of the disorder is inevitably and inexorably downhill. The report was accepted for publication in the Schizophrenia Bulletin and was published in the most recent issue (Mirsky et al. A 39-year followup of ther Genain Quadruplets, Schizophrenia Bulletin, 26(3):699-708, 2000).