Absence of neurodegeneration in the thalamus and caudate of elderly patients with schizophrenia

The cognitive and functional deterioration observed in many ‘poor-outcome’ patients with schizophrenia suggests an ongoing neurodegenerative process. Diagnostic neuropathologic studies have excluded known neurodegenerative diseases as the cause of this dementia, and in a previous quantitative invest...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Psychiatry research 2000-03, Vol.93 (2), p.103-110
Main Authors: Falke, Eric, Han, Li-Ying, Arnold, Steven E
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Age Factors
Aged
Aged, 80 and over
Alzheimer Disease - drug therapy
Alzheimer Disease - pathology
Alzheimer's disease
Analysis of Variance
Antipsychotic Agents - therapeutic use
Astrocyte
Biological and medical sciences
Brain - pathology
Case-Control Studies
Caudate Nucleus - pathology
Female
Geriatrics
Gliosis - pathology
Humans
Immunohistochemistry
Male
Medical sciences
Microglia
Neurofibrillary tangle
Neurofibrillary Tangles
Neurons - pathology
Postmortem
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychopathology. Psychiatry
Schizophrenia - drug therapy
Schizophrenia - pathology
Thalamus - pathology
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Summary:The cognitive and functional deterioration observed in many ‘poor-outcome’ patients with schizophrenia suggests an ongoing neurodegenerative process. Diagnostic neuropathologic studies have excluded known neurodegenerative diseases as the cause of this dementia, and in a previous quantitative investigation of neurodegeneration and neural injury in this population we found no abnormalities in the cerebral cortex. However, it is possible that the deterioration observed in these patients could be due to subcortical neurodegenerative processes. Neurodegeneration and neural injury in the caudate nucleus and mediodorsal nucleus of the thalamus were investigated in a postmortem study of 11 prospectively accrued, clinically well-characterized elderly people with schizophrenia, 11 elderly control subjects with no neuropsychiatric illness, and 12 subjects with Alzheimer's disease. Traditional and immunohistochemical staining and unbiased computerized counting methods were used to quantify common markers of neurodegeneration and neural injury (neuron loss, neurofibrillary tangles, astrocytosis, microgliosis). No statistically significant differences were found between schizophrenia and control subjects for the densities of any markers. There is no evidence that abnormal neurodegeneration occurs in these two important subcortical structures.
ISSN:0165-1781
1872-7123
DOI:10.1016/S0165-1781(00)00104-9