A neurodegenerative perspective on schizophrenia

Abstract

Background The issue of neurodegeneration in schizophrenia is a controversial one. The early descriptions by Kraepelin (1929) pointing to neurodegenerative features were supported by Alzheimer, who found evidence of cortical neuron loss and by Southard, who described cerebral atrophy. During the remainder of the past century though, the evidence produced by several investigators rendered the involvement of neurodegenerative processes highly unlikely, with absence of gliosis being the major distinguishing feature of it from classical neurodegenerative disorders, where gliosis is prominent. Thus all research work reframed schizophrenia as a neurodevelopmenta disorder and this is currently the prevailing hypothesis. The latter promotes insight into several features of the disorder, but nevertheless fails to account for a number of its cardinal features, such as the protracted period of symptomatic dormancy, the progressive clinical deteriration, affecting a significant subgroup of patients and recent evidence for changes in ventricular and cortical brain stuctures. New datasuggest that a neurodegenerative perspective could hold true filling the gaps of the neurodevelopmental model. In our poster we critically review work from the relevant domains and present the findings pertinent to a neurodegenerative involvement