The “late” developmental model attempts to explain the onset in the second decade of life by invoking brain maturational events in adolescence, but, of course, cases with

such an onset remain a minority. People develop schizophrenia throughout adult life into old age, and late-onset patients show relatively normal premorbid adjustment.137 Furthermore, according to Howard et al,138 the relatives of late-onset psychosis cases seem to carry less genetic loading for schizophrenia and are at higher risk for affective disorders. Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical A potential explanation is that patients with late-onset schizophrenia may in fact have a different illness, possibly with etiological factors in common with affective psychosis; a second possibility Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical is that the symptoms may arise from brain degeneration.139 What factors influence the age of onset, of psychosis? Onset is generally earlier in males than in females.137,140 Furthermore, those patients with a family history of schizophrenia Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical tend to have an earlier

age of onset than cases with less genetic risk,141,142 regardless of their gender.143 As noted earlier, OCs may also be associated with early onset,36,-45,144 as are other indicators of aberrant neurodevelopment, such as premorbid cognitive and behavioral deficits, minor physical anomalies, smaller brains, and larger cerebral ventricles.145,146 One may conclude that the role of neurodevelopmental impairment is most, Pazopanib manufacturer marked in early-onset schizophrenia, but it becomes progressively less obvious in patients with increasing age of onset. In other words, only a proportion of the variance in liability to schizophrenia can

be attributed to Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical impaired brain development. Is schizophrenia more than a brain disorder? The role of social Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical risk factors The view that, schizophrenia, is simply a brain disorder remained unchallenged from the late 1970s to the late 1990s. Thus, the simple neurodevelopmental model selleck implied that, schizophrenic symptoms are simply a consequence of the development of aberrant neural networks.147 However, there is increasingly robust evidence that social risk factors play a crucial role in the development, of schizophrenia (Figure 2).30 However, for most social risk factors, while there is a clear association with schizophrenia, the direction of causality has not been demonstrated. Entinostat Figure 2. The cascade of increasingly abnormal function that culminates in the onset of full-blown psychosis, including the main risk factors for psychosis over life.30 Could an adverse upbringing convey higher risk for schizophrenia? In the British 1946 Birth Cohort, those 4-year-old children rated as having a poor mother-child relationship had a 6-fold increase in risk for schizophrenia, later in life.