The existence of categorically different subtypes may help to explain some of the inconsistencies in findings from prior studies of patients with schizophrenia. "One of the reasons we haven't been successful in identifying 'the cause' of schizophrenia," says lead researcher Bruce Turetsky, M.D., "may be because we are studying mixed groups of individuals who don't really have the same thing wrong with them. I suspect that studying such heterogeneous samples has been a very large barrier to progress."
"There is no laboratory test or X-ray that can tell you if a person has schizophrenia," he continues. "Because it's so variable, clinical subtypes, such as paranoid, catatonic, etc., have always been included as part of the DSM diagnosis. What has never been clear is whether these clinical subtypes represent different physiological problems or causes."
"Our results," Turetsky concludes, "indicate that there are different neurobiological profiles associated with different presentations of schizophrenia. We may be dealing with more than one disease." Researchers hope next to study whether these subtypes are stable over the course of schizophrenic illness. If they are, he adds, "then knowledge of these subtypes would facilitate both diagnosis and neurobiological research. Ultimately, this may allow us to target specific treatments to different groups of patients."
Medication can now fairly effectively quell hallucinations and delusions. A new understanding of schizophrenia's cognitive impairments and underlying brain abnormalities may help reduce the remaining problems -- the long-term social and occupational disabilities that can so profoundly disrupt the lives of people with schizophrenia.
Article: "Memory-Delineated Subtypes of Schizophrenia: Relationship to Clinical, Neuroanatomical, and Neurophysiological Measures," Bruce I. Turetsky, M.D.; Paul J. Moberg, Ph.D.; Lyn Harper Mozley, Ph.D.; Stephen T. Moelter, Ph.D.; Rachel N. Agrin, B.A.; Ruben C. Gur, Ph.D.; and Raquel E. Gur, M.D.; University of Pennsylvania; Neuropsychology, Vol. 16, No. 4.
The full text is available from the APA.
---American Psychological Association
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