Shuxia Guo, Sarina Iwabuchi, Vijender Balain, Jianfeng Feng, Peter Liddle & Lena Palaniyappan. Cortical folding and the potential for prognostic neuroimaging in schizophrenia
If you are unlucky enough to experience a psychotic disorder such as schizophrenia, you would certainly want to know the extent or severity of your condition, so you and your family can fully participate in treatment decisions. But unfortunately, to date there are no objective tests that aid prognostic prediction in schizophrenia. Historically, clinical outcomes have improved considerably for medical disorders where severity can be quantified reliably (e.g. malignancies, asthma). The ability to identify those who will do well in the long term, has proved to be a great challenge in schizophrenia. Neuroimaging (especially a MRI scan) offers the promise of providing objective measures of clinical utility in managing psychosis. To realise this promise, we need to first establish the ability of MRI scans to provide prognostic information at the single subject level.
In a short report, we presented the initial results supporting the notion that a single anatomical MRI scan (T1-weighted) can reliably discriminate a patient with less severe schizophrenia from one with more severe illness. We used cortical folding patterns to classify the 2 groups with differing illness severity.
If you are unlucky enough to experience a psychotic disorder such as schizophrenia, you would certainly want to know the extent or severity of your condition, so you and your family can fully participate in treatment decisions. But unfortunately, to date there are no objective tests that aid prognostic prediction in schizophrenia. Historically, clinical outcomes have improved considerably for medical disorders where severity can be quantified reliably (e.g. malignancies, asthma). The ability to identify those who will do well in the long term, has proved to be a great challenge in schizophrenia. Neuroimaging (especially a MRI scan) offers the promise of providing objective measures of clinical utility in managing psychosis. To realise this promise, we need to first establish the ability of MRI scans to provide prognostic information at the single subject level.
In a short report, we presented the initial results supporting the notion that a single anatomical MRI scan (T1-weighted) can reliably discriminate a patient with less severe schizophrenia from one with more severe illness. We used cortical folding patterns to classify the 2 groups with differing illness severity.
- First study to investigate the prognostic potential of MRI scans in established schizophrenia
- Published in The British Journal of Psychiatry (IF 7.34)