CE Burgess, K Lindblad, E Sidransky, Q-P Yuan, RT Long, T Breschel, CA Ross, M McInnis, P Lee, EI Ginns, M Lenane, S Kumra, L Jacobsen, JL Rapoport, M Schalling

Previous studies of neuropsychiatric disorders have identified an association between schizophrenia and trinucleotide repeat expansions (TREs). Childhood-onset schizophrenia (COS) is a severe variant of schizophrenia with onset of psychotic symptoms prior to age 12. Children meeting DSM-IIIR criteria for schizophrenia and showing a resistance to typical neuroleptics were analyzed for TREs using the Repeat Expansion Detection (RED) method. An increased incidence of large CAG/CTG repeats was found in this population confirming previous findings which identified an association between adult onset schizophrenia and TREs. However, in contrast with some previous studies, the association of large repeats with the COS sample seems confined to the male population. Further studies will need to be performed to confirm these results.

Contact author:

Martin Schalling
Center for Molecular Medicine
Karolinska Institute
Stockholm, Sweden
tel: +46-8-5177-4481
FAX: +46-8-5177-3909
[email protected]

Pre-prints of this article may be obtained from Julie A. Vianello (Tel: 301-496-6979; FAX: 301-402-1561; [email protected])

This article will be published in the July 1998 (Volume 3, no. 4) issue of Molecular Psychiatry, a peer-reviewed medical journal published by MacMillan Press-Stockton-Press.