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了痴呆症，当时被关在疗养院里，但其余三个姐妹并没有出现明显的恶化，而且比20世纪50年代首次出现时表现得更好。患有痴呆症的妹妹去年去世，试图取回她的大脑进行解剖研究的努力没有成功。人们希望，将来有可能找回至少一个，甚至更多的剩余姐妹篇的大脑。尽管患有精神分裂症45年以上，但他们的认知能力相对较好地保留了下来，这一事实引发了人们对这种疾病的过程不可避免地和无情地走下坡路的信念的质疑。该报告被《精神分裂症公报》接受发表，并发表在最近的一期上（Mirsky等人，Genain Quadruplets的39年随访，精神分裂症公报，26（3）：699-708，2000）。最近提交了一份关于精神分裂症早期干预的文本的邀请章节，目前正在印刷中。

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 was demented, and confined to a nursing home at the time, the remaining three have not shown significant deterioration, and are performing better than when first seen in the 1950s. The sister who was demented died last year, and efforts to retrieve her brain for anatomical studies were not successful. The hope is that it will be possible to retrieve at least one, and possibly more, of the brains of the remaining sisters in the future. 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 a recent issue (Mirsky et al. A 39-year followup of the Genain Quadruplets, Schizophrenia Bulletin, 26(3):699-708, 2000). An invited chapter for a text on early intervention in schizophrenia was submitted recently and is in press at this time.