Giving Birth to Schizophrenia

Suggests that schizophrenia can be detected in childhood even traced to the womb, according to studies. Performance of children destined to develop the illness; Warning signs of schizophrenia; Why body parts are often malformed in schizophrenic patients.

By Camille Chatterjee, published on November 01, 1999

DEVELOPMENT

Schizophrenia is a debilitating mental disorder that usually manifests itself between the ages of 15 and 30, burdening sufferers with hallucinations and delusions. But two new studies suggest that the illness can be detected in childhood--even traced to the womb.

Mary Cannon, M.D., and colleagues have found that children who will eventually fall prey to the illness perform worse in certain school activities than their peers. Cannon, a clinical lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry in London, tracked down the elementary school files of 400 Finnish residents diagnosed with schizophrenia, and compared their records with those of mentally stable adults. "We did not find that preschizophrenic children performed worse in academic subjects," such as reading, writing and math, Cannon says. "But children destined to develop schizophrenia performed consistently poorer in sports and handcrafts during their early years." Subtle abnormalities in motor development, social behavior and mental ability in childhood may thus be warning signs of schizophrenia, she reports in the Archives of General Psychiatry. Says Cannon: "This finding fits with other work showing that children who later develop [the disorder] are slower at learning to stand and walk."

These malfunctions may be wired into the brain before birth. "There is mounting evidence that schizophrenia reflects aberrations in development rather than a degenerative process that begins in maturity," writes Anthony-Samuel LaMantia, Ph.D., in a recent issue of the journal Biological Psychiatry. LaMantia, associate professor of cell and molecular biology at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, suggests that genetic mutations may disrupt the development of the fetal forebrain during the first trimester of pregnancy, ultimately causing the disordered thoughts characteristic of schizophrenia. The genes that target forebrain formation also induce the creation of the heart, head and limbs, likely explaining why these body parts are often malformed in schizophrenic patients, says LaMantia.

Both studies show "that some of the genes controlling neurodevelopment are involved in schizophrenia," explains Cannon. Genetic glitches may occur when mothers-to-be ingest environmental toxins, alcohol or other chemicals that affect fetal growth making schizophrenia yet another illness that may be prevented during pregnancy.