STUDIES OF HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT IN SCHIZOPHRENIA

最近，我们对Genain四胞胎进行了39年的随访研究，这是一组独特的女性-同卵四胞胎-所有人都在20岁出头时患上了精神分裂症。 多年来，这对姐妹篇一直是精神分裂症研究人员和遗传学家相当感兴趣的主题。 我们对这对姐妹篇进行了一系列测试，其中一些测试是在20世纪50年代末进行的，以绘制出她们在过去40年中在注意力测试中的表现轨迹。虽然其中一个姐妹篇患有痴呆症，并被限制在疗养院，但其余三个姐妹并没有表现出明显的恶化，并且表现得比20世纪50年代首次出现时更好。尽管患有精神分裂症45年，但他们的认知能力相对较好地保留了下来，这一事实对这种疾病的进程不可避免地、无情地走下坡路的信念提出了质疑。该报告被《精神分裂症公报》接受发表，并发表在最近一期上（Mirsky等，A 39-year followup of ther Genain Quadruplets，Schizophrenia Bulletin，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).