Reduced white matter integrity in schizophrenia patients

By Mark Cowen

Patients with schizophrenia show widespread reductions in white matter integrity, particularly in fronto-temporal regions, researchers report.

In a whole-brain, voxel-based diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) study, schizophrenia patients showed significantly lower white matter fractional anisotropy (FA) values in the left and right superior longitudinal fasciculus than mentally healthy individuals.

Schizophrenia patients also showed significantly lower FA values in the left and right inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus and genu of the right internal capsule than controls.

There were no regions of reduced FA values in controls compared with schizophrenia patients, note Kazue Nakamura (University of Toyama Graduate School of Medicine and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Japan) and team.

The researchers also found that, in schizophrenia patients, FA values in the anterior part of the corpus callosum significantly negatively correlated with the Scale for the Assessment of Negative Symptoms avolition score.

This finding remained significant after accounting for age, illness duration, and medication dose and duration.

In total, 58 schizophrenia patients (38 men), aged an average of 27 years, and 58 age-, gender-, and handedness-matched controls participated in the study.

A number of previous standard magnetic resonance imaging studies have indicated subtle volume reductions in total as well as regional white matter areas, note the authors in Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging.

"Our [DTI] findings indicate that schizophrenic patients have lower FA values, especially in fronto-temporal and various tract regions, compared with age- and gender-matched healthy controls, supporting the disconnectivity model of schizophrenia," the researchers conclude.

They add: "These FA changes are associated with the severity of negative symptoms in the anterior part of the corpus callosum, suggesting that the regional disconnectivities are, at least in part, responsible for the clinical symptomatology of schizophrenia."

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