Buğçe N, Özçelik V
[PS-06] What is the real meaning of ventricular enlargement in schizophrenia?
Schizophrenia usually starts during adolescence or young adulthood but tends to persist throughout life. Even at the time that the concept of schizophrenia was first defined, it was thought to be a brain disease. Before the development of brain imaging techniques, post-mortem brain examinations were performed. It was reported that patients had frontal atrophy and less brain weight than the normal population. After the development of computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging techniques, the number of the studies in this field increased.
Structural MRI imaging studies indicated that brain abnormalities were present at the onset of the disease. One strong piece of evidence indicating that schizophrenia is a neurodevelopmental disorder derives from the fact that many types of brain abnormalities are present at the time of the first episode off illness. These include decreased cerebral size, decreased frontal and temporal lobe sizes, decreased thalamic size, decreases in gray matter and white matter volumes and enlargement of the ventricles. These findings support the likelihood that this illness arises because of aberrations in the complex neurodevelopmantal processes that modulate brain maturation during the adolescent and young adult period.
Lateral ventricular enlargement is one of the most consistent findings in patients with schizophrenia. However whether progressive ventricular dilatation occurs during the course of the illness has been controversial. Some findings suggest that there is progressive ventricular enlargement with no significant effect of age of onset, duration of illness or age at the baseline scan. In some longitudinal studies there was evidence that negative symptoms have an association with increases in total CSF volume and in the ventricles as indicated by the ventricular–brain ratio. Patients who achieve longer periods of remission have less expansion of the CSF, although, some findings support the premise that there is a subgroup of patients with neuroprogression.