25. ACCELERATED AGING IN SCHIZOPHRENIA

Abstract

Decades of research have demonstrated evidence of premature mortality and increased physical comorbidity in patients with schizophrenia. This research provides support for the hypothesis that schizophrenia is a syndrome of accelerated aging, indicating patients' vulnerability to experiencing normative aging processes earlier and/or at a more accelerated rate. This symposium presents three distinct approaches to testing the hypothesis of accelerating aging in schizophrenia, spanning biological systems, and exploring the impact of genetic burden and duration of illness on the subsequent findings. Dr. Nenadic will start early in the disease-process, focusing on patients at ultra-high risk for schizophrenia. Using machine-learning, Dr. Nenadic will demonstrate the impact of genetic liability on brain volume trajectories that are known to diverge in schizophrenia, resulting in altered morphometry. Dr. Sheffield will examine the integrity of resting-state functional connectivity networks that support higher-order cognitive ability and are known to exhibit reduced efficiency over the course of healthy aging. This research demonstrates a group by age interaction specific to these cognitive networks, and compares network efficiency in early and chronic psychosis, finding evidence of accelerated efficiency decline over the course of illness. Dr. Czepielewski will further emphasize the role of disease burden in accelerated aging by presenting evidence of shorter telomere length and increased pro-inflammatory marker CCL11 in patients with schizophrenia. These biomarkers are further associated with gray matter volume, memory performance, and duration of illness, elegantly combining multiple age-related systems in a single study. Finally, Dr. Kirkpatrick, a pioneer in the field whose 2007 article, “Is Schizophrenia a Syndrome of Accelerated Aging?”, was the first to outline research on this topic, will present on the current state of the field. He will further advocate for the future of accelerated aging research as one grounded in mechanistic pathways of aging. Topics from all four presentations will be synthesized by Dr. Eyler, an expert on the impact of aging on cognitive and biological processes in the context of schizophrenia, allowing for a discussion of current and future approaches to adjudicating the accelerated aging hypothesis in schizophrenia.