Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-4hhp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-12T18:58:24.663Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Risk of neurological, eye and ear disease in offspring to parents with schizophrenia or depression compared with offspring to healthy parents

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 April 2018

Elin Dianna Gunnarsdóttir ,
Jonas Hällgren ,
Christina M Hultman ,
Thomas F McNeil ,
Milita Crisby  and
Sven Sandin
Elin Dianna Gunnarsdóttir
Affiliation:
University of Akureyri, Solborg, Nordurslod, Akureyri, Iceland
Jonas Hällgren
Affiliation:
Department of Neurobiology, Care Sciences and Society, Division of Family Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden
Christina M Hultman
Affiliation:
Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden
Thomas F McNeil
Affiliation:
School of Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences, University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia
Milita Crisby
Affiliation:
Department of Neurobiology, Care Science and Society, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden
Sven Sandin*
Affiliation:
Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden Department of Psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, USA Seaver Autism Center for Research and Treatment, New York, NY, USA
*
Author for correspondence: Sven Sandin, E-mail: sven.sandin@ki.se
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Background

Neurological, visual and hearing deviations have been observed in the offspring of parents with schizophrenia. This study test whether children to parents hospitalized with schizophrenia have increased the likelihood of childhood neurological disorder.

Methods

Among all parents in Sweden born 1950–1985 and with offspring born 1968–2002: 7107 children with a parent hospitalized for schizophrenia were compared to 172 982 children with no parents hospitalized for schizophrenia or major depression, as well as to 32 494 children with a parent hospitalized for major depression as a control population with another severe psychiatric outcome. We estimated relative risks (RR) and two-sided 95% confidence intervals calculated from Poisson regression.

Results

Children to parents with schizophrenia were more likely than controls to have been hospitalized before the age of 10 with a diagnosis of cerebral palsy, RR = 1.76 (95% CI: 1.15–2.69); epilepsy, RR = 1.78 (95% CI: 1.33–2.40), combined neurological disease, RR = 1.33 (95% CI: 1.11–1.60) and certain diseases of the eye, RR = 1.92 (95% CI: 1.17–3.15) and ear, RR = 1.18 (95% CI: 1.05–1.32). Similar disease-risk-pattern was found for children to parents hospitalized with a diagnosis of major depression. A specific risk increase for strabismus RR = 1.21 (95%CI: 1.05–1.40) was found for off-spring with parental depression.

Conclusions

Compared with children to healthy parents, children to parents with schizophrenia have increased risk of a variety of neurological disorders as well as visual and hearing disorders at an early age. The risk increase was not specific to schizophrenia but was also seen in children to parents with a diagnosis of major depression.

Keywords

Ear diseaseepidemiologyeye diseasemajor depressionneurodevelopmentneurological diseaseoffspringpopulation basedSchizophrenia
Type
Original Articles
Information
Psychological Medicine , Volume 48 , Issue 16 , December 2018 , pp. 2710 - 2716
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Balogh, Z, Benedek, G and Kéri, S (2008) Retinal dysfunctions in schizophrenia. Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology & Biological Psychiatry 32(1), 297–300.Google Scholar
Cadenhead, KS, Serper, Y and Braff, DL (1998) Transient versus sustained visual channels in the visual backward masking deficits of schizophrenia patients. Biological Psychiatry 43(2), 132–138.Google Scholar
Cantor-Graae, E, Ismail, B and McNeil, TF (1998) Neonatal head circumference and related indices of disturbed fetal development in schizophrenic patients. Schizophrenia Research 32(3), 191–199.Google Scholar
Dalman, C, Broms, J, Cullberg, J and Allebeck, P (2002) Young cases of schizophrenia identified in a national inpatient register--are the diagnoses valid? Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology 37(11), 527–531.Google Scholar
Danielyan, A and Nasrallah, HA (2009) Neurological disorders in schizophrenia. The Psychiatric Clinics of North America 32(4), 719–757.Google Scholar
Erlenmeyer-Kimling, L (2000) Neurobehavioral deficits in offspring of schizophrenic parents: liability indicators and predictors of illness. American Journal of Medical Genetics 97(1), 65–71.Google Scholar
Fish, B (1957) The detection of schizophrenia in infancy; a preliminary report. The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 125, 1–24.Google Scholar
Fish, B (1959) Longitudinal observations of biological deviations in a schizophrenic infant. The American Journal of Psychiatry 116, 25–31.Google Scholar
Green, MF, Nuechterlein, KH, Breitmeyer, B and Mintz, J (2006) Forward and backward visual masking in unaffected siblings of schizophrenic patients. Biological Psychiatry 59(5), 446–451.Google Scholar
Haraldsson, HM, Ettinger, U, Magnusdottir, BB, Sigmundsson, T, Sigurdsson, E and Petursson, H (2008) Eye movement deficits in schizophrenia: investigation of a genetically homogenous Icelandic sample. European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience 258(6), 373–383.Google Scholar
Henriksson, KM, Wickstrom, K, Maltesson, N, Ericsson, A, Karlsson, J, Lindgren, F et al. (2006) A pilot study of facial, cranial and brain MRI morphometry in men with schizophrenia: part 2. Psychiatry Research 147(2–3), 187–195.Google Scholar
Holm, S (1979) A simple sequentially rejective multiple test procedure. Scandinavian Journal of Statistics 6, 65–70.Google Scholar
Liang, K-Y and Zeger, SL (1986) Longitudinal data analysis using generalized linear models. Biometrika 73(1), 13–22.Google Scholar
Lichtenstein, P, Björk, C, Hultman, CM, Scolnick, E, Sklar, P and Sullivan, PF (2006) Recurrence risks for schizophrenia in a Swedish national cohort. Psychological Medicine 36(10), 1417–1425.Google Scholar
Lichtenstein, P, Yip, BH, Björk, C, Pawitan, Y, Cannon, TD, Sullivan, PF et al. (2009) Common genetic determinants of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder in Swedish families: a population-based study. Lancet 373(9659), 234–239.Google Scholar
Mäkikyrö, T, Karvonen, JT, Hakko, H, Nieminen, P, Joukamaa, M, Isohanni, M et al. (1998) Comorbidity of hospital-treated psychiatric and physical disorders with special reference to schizophrenia: a 28 year follow-up of the 1966 northern Finland general population birth cohort. Public Health 112(4), 221–228.Google Scholar
McGrath, J, Saha, S, Welham, J, Saadi, OE, MacCauley, C and Chant, D (2004) A systematic review of the incidence of schizophrenia: the distribution of rates and the influence of sex, urbanicity, migrant status and methodology. BMC Medicine 2, 13.Google Scholar
McNeil, TF, Cantor-Graae, E, Nordström, LG and Rosenlund, T (1993) Head circumference in “pre schizophrenic” and control neonates. The British Journal of Psychiatry: The Journal of Mental Science 162, 517–523.Google Scholar
Morgan, VA, Croft, ML, Valuri, GM, Zubrick, SR, Bower, C, McNeil, TF et al. (2012) Intellectual disability and other neuropsychiatric outcomes in high-risk children of mothers with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and unipolar major depression. The British Journal of Psychiatry: The Journal of Mental Science 200(4), 282–289.Google Scholar
Multi-generation register (2011) A description of contents and quality – Statistiska centralbyrån (n.d.). Statistiska Centralbyrån.Google Scholar
Neelam, K, Garg, D and Marshall, M (2011) A systematic review and meta-analysis of neurological soft signs in relatives of people with schizophrenia. BMC Psychiatry 11, 139.Google Scholar
Prasad, KM, Sanders, R, Sweeney, J, Montrose, D, Diwadkar, V, Dworakowski, D et al. (2009) Neurological abnormalities among offspring of persons with schizophrenia: relation to premorbid psychopathology. Schizophrenia Research 108(1–3), 163–169.Google Scholar
Rehn, AE and Rees, SM (2005) Investigating the neurodevelopmental hypothesis of schizophrenia. Clinical and Experimental Pharmacology & Physiology 32(9), 687–696.Google Scholar
Schubert, EW, Henriksson, KM and McNeil, TF (2005) A prospective study of offspring of women with psychosis: visual dysfunction in early childhood predicts schizophrenia-spectrum disorders in adulthood. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica 112(5), 385–393.Google Scholar
Schubert, EW and McNeil, TF (2004) Prospective study of neurological abnormalities in offspring of women with psychosis: birth to adulthood. The American Journal of Psychiatry 161(6), 1030–1037.Google Scholar
Schubert, EW and McNeil, TF (2005) Neuropsychological impairment and its neurological correlates in adult offspring with heightened risk for schizophrenia and affective psychosis. The American Journal of Psychiatry 162(4), 758–766.Google Scholar
Silverstein, SM and Rosen, R (2015) Schizophrenia and the eye. Schizophrenia Research: Cognition. 2(2), 46–55.Google Scholar
Torrey, EF and Yolken, RH (2017) Schizophrenia and infections: the eyes have it. Schizophrenia Bulletin 43(2), 247–252.Google Scholar
Viertiö, S, Laitinen, A, Perälä, J, Saarni, SI, Koskinen, S, Lönnqvist, J et al. (2007) Visual impairment in persons with psychotic disorder. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology 42(11), 902–908.Google Scholar
Weber, NS, Cowan, DN, Millikan, AM and Niebuhr, DW (2009) Psychiatric and general medical conditions comorbid with schizophrenia in the National Hospital Discharge Survey. Psychiatric Services 60(8), 1059–1067.Google Scholar
Williams, HJ, Owen, MJ and O'Donovan, MC (2009) Schizophrenia genetics: new insights from new approaches. British Medical Bulletin 91(1), 61–74.Google Scholar
Yeap, S, Kelly, SP, Sehatpour, P, Magno, E, Javitt, DC, Garavan, H et al. (2006) Early visual sensory deficits as endophenotypes for schizophrenia: high-density electrical mapping in clinically unaffected first-degree relatives. Archives of General Psychiatry 63(11), 1180–1188.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: PDF

Gunnarsdóttir et al. supplementary material

Gunnarsdóttir et al. supplementary material 1

Download Gunnarsdóttir et al. supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 49.7 KB