Heritability of Trail Making Test performance in multiplex schizophrenia families: implications for the search for an endophenotype

The impairment of the Trail Making Test (TMT) performance as a measure of executive function deficits has been found both in patients with schizophrenia and in their unaffected first-degree relatives, suggesting that it might be considered as a familial vulnerability marker, but its heritability est...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:European archives of psychiatry and clinical neuroscience 2009-12, Vol.259 (8), p.475-481
Main Authors: Quiñones, Raúl Mendoza, Calderín, Yuranny Cabral, Domínguez, Mayelin, Bravo, Tania M., Berazaín, Adnelys Reyes, García, Alexander, Caballero, Antonio, Reyes, Migdyrai Martín
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent
Adult
Aged
Analysis of Variance
Cognition Disorders - diagnosis
Cognition Disorders - etiology
Executive Function - physiology
Family - psychology
Female
Humans
Male
Medicine
Medicine & Public Health
Middle Aged
Neurosciences
Original Paper
Phenotype
Psychiatry
Schizophrenia - complications
Schizophrenia - genetics
Schizophrenic Psychology
Trail Making Test
Young Adult
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Summary:The impairment of the Trail Making Test (TMT) performance as a measure of executive function deficits has been found both in patients with schizophrenia and in their unaffected first-degree relatives, suggesting that it might be considered as a familial vulnerability marker, but its heritability estimates are not well known. This study investigated the genetic heritability of impairments in TMT performance using a sample of 80 schizophrenia patients, 145 unaffected first-degree relatives and 127 healthy controls from families with multiple members with schizophrenia. Consistent with previous reports in the literature, relatives performed in between healthy controls and schizophrenia patients. Based on these results, a variance component-analysis provided small, but significant additive heritability estimates for performance indices relating performance in TMT-version A to TMT-version B. These results showed that this significant but small evidence of heritability on the one hand suggests an association with genetic predisposition to schizophrenia, but that TMT performance is also associated with epigenetic or environmental factors.
ISSN:0940-1334
1433-8491
DOI:10.1007/s00406-009-0012-6