OBJECTIVES: Patients with schizophrenia are reported to exhibited a reduced level of responsivity to highly arousing negative emotional pictures and to demonstrate a threatening bias to facial stimuli. The aim of this study was to investigate whether patients with schizophrenia show impaired and biased responsivity to threatening emotional words stimuli. METHODS: Eighteen subjects with schizophrenia (M=10, F=8) and 18 healthy controls (M=8, F=10) were involved in this study. Emotional words stimuli (happy, sad, fearful, angry, surprising, and disgusting words) were selected from a Korean affective words list (Kim et al., Unpublished). All subjects were asked to rate feelings elicited by emotional words, using the seven point Likert scale for each of the six basic emotions. RESULTS: Patients with schizophrenia displayed less emotional responsivity to disgusting and angry words as compared to healthy controls, while there were no significant differences in response to happy, sad, or fearful words. Emotional responsivity bias to disgust and happiness was observed in patients with schizophrenia. CONCLUSION: Patients with schizophrenia may show reduced responsivity to disgust and anger words stimuli and biased responsivity to disgust and happiness. These findings are in line with previous findings of reduced reactivity to highly arousing emotional picture stimuli, social threatening bias, and Pollyanna tendencird in schizophrenia.
Anger ; Bias (Epidemiology) ; Happiness ; Humans ; Schizophrenia

The purposes of this study were to test the negative association between schizophrenia and rheumatoid arthritis(RA) and to clarify the role of prolactin and estrogen as protective factors in this association. The author compared the prevalence rate of RA between 561 patients with schizophrenia and 222 patients with mood disorder. For investigating the role of estrogen and prolactin, the author checked the plasma prolactin and estradiol level in 80 patients with paranoid schizophrenia and 77 patients with RA. The results were as follows. 1) Epidemiological data The prevalence rate of RA in the schizophrenic group was 0/561 and that of RA in the mood disorder group was 2/222. To compare these results between two groups, the author applied the Binomial test using the average prevalence rate of RA(0.8%) in the general population as a reference rate. The prevalence rate of RA in the schizophrenic group was significantly lower than that of RA in the general population. However, the prevalence rate of RA in the mood disorder group was not significantly different to that of RA in the general population. 2) Comparison of plasma prolactin and estradiol level between two groups. The plasma level of prolactin in the schizophrenic group was significantly higher than that of prolactin in th RA group(p=0.000). However, the plasma level of estradiol in the schizophrenic group was significantly lower than that of estradiol in the RA group(p=0.017). These results were not consistent across gender. To contrast with the results in the female group, which were consistent with the results in the total subjects, for the male group, the plasma levels of prolactin and estradiol in the schizophrenic group were significantly higher than those of prolactin and estradiol in th RA group. These results support the results of previous studies which confirm the negative association between schizophrenia and RA. These results also suggest that the elevation of plasma prolactin level in the patient with schizophrenia has a antirheumatic effect while the elevation of plasma estradiol level in the patients with RA has a anti-schizophrenic effect, and that these effects act as a possible mechanism in the negative association between two disorders. However, these results suggest that this association is specific to female patients.
Arthritis, Rheumatoid* ; Epidemiology* ; Estradiol ; Estrogens* ; Female ; Humans ; Male ; Mood Disorders ; Plasma ; Prevalence ; Prolactin* ; Schizophrenia* ; Schizophrenia, Paranoid

In order to study the possible vulnerability in the markers of schizophrenia, offsprings of the schizophrenic parents(n=28), offsprings of the alcohol dependent parents(n=18), and offsprings of the psychiatrically normal persons(n=41) were examined for their sustained attention and sensory register by means of Continuous performance test(CPT) and Span apprehension task(SPAN) respectively. The results were as follows: 1) The offsprings of the schizophrenic parents showed a significant deficit in the sustained attention as manifested in the data of CPT by significantly lower hit rate and sensitivity, compared with the offspring of the alcohol dependent parents and those of the psychiatrically normal persons. No difference was evident in the false alarm rate and response bias among three groups. There was no difference in all variables of the CPT between the offsprings of the alcohol dependent parents and those of the psychiatrically normal persons. 2) The deficit in the sustained attention as revealed by lower hit rate and sensitivity was not apparent in the first part of the CPT. However it emerged and aggravated itself as the test continued in the offsprings of the schizophrenic parents only. 3) Proportion of subjects falling in the extreme low sensitivity of lower 10% of the normal controls was significantly higher in the offsprings of the schizophrenic parent group as compared with the offsprings of the alcohol dependent parents and those of the psychiatrically normal persons with a rate of 29%, 17%, and 10% respectively. 4) No significant difference was noted in all variables of MMPI among normal controls, index group, and the extreme low CPT sensitivity subgroup of index group. 5) The offsprings of the schizophrenic parents showed a significantly delayed response in the time to correct and incorrect response in SPAN compared to offsprings of the alcohol dependent parents and those of the psychiatrically normal persons. No difference was evident in the number of correct response, number of incorrect response, and number of no response among three groups. There was no difference in all variables of the SPAN between the offsprings of the alcohol dependent parents and those of the psychiatrically normal persons. These results suggest that a subgroup of the offsprings of schizophrenic parents may suffer from the deficit in the sustained attention which may be a vulnerability marker of schizophrenia.
Automatic Data Processing ; Bias (Epidemiology) ; Humans ; MMPI ; Parents* ; Schizophrenia

OBJECTIVES: The deficit of recognition memory has been found as one of the common neurocognitive impairments in patients with schizophrenia. In addition, they were reported to fail to enhance the memory about emotional stimuli. Previous studies have shown that bilateral eye movements enhance the memory retrieval. Therefore, this study was conducted in order to investigate the memory enhancement of bilaterally alternating eye movements in schizophrenic patients. METHODS: Twenty one patients with schizophrenia participated in this study. The participants learned faces (angry or neutral faces), and then performed a recognition memory task in relation to the faces after bilateral eye movements and central fixation. Recognition accuracy, response bias, and mean response time to hits were compared and analysed. Two-way repeated measure analysis of variance was performed for statistical analysis. RESULTS: There was a significant effect of bilateral eye movements condition in mean response time(F=5.812, p<0.05) and response bias(F=10.366, p<0.01). Statistically significant interaction effects were not observed between eye movement condition and face emotion type. CONCLUSIONS: Irrespective of the emotional difference of facial stimuli, recognition memory processing was more enhanced after bilateral eye movements in patients with schizophrenia. Further study will be needed to investigate the underlying neural mechanism of bilateral eye movements-induced memory enhancement in patients with schizophrenia.
Bias (Epidemiology) ; Eye Movements* ; Humans ; Memory ; Reaction Time ; Schizophrenia*

OBJECTIVE: Patients with bipolar mania have difficulty in recognizing or attending to negatively affective stimuli and have an affective bias, which is congruent with the current mood. However, previous reports have adopted words or facial pictures, not scenic pictures as affective stimuli. In this study, patients with mania performed the word, face and scenic picture-based affective go-nogo tasks respectively. The results were compared to those of patients with schizophrenia and healthy controls. METHODS: Twenty patients with bipolar mania, 20 patients with schizophrenia, and 20 healthy comparison subjects, matched for age, gender and intelligence, performed affective gonogo tasks which contained happy/sad words, facial pictures, and scenic pictures respectively. RESULTS: On the scenic picturebased affective go-nogo task, a significant interaction between subject group and target valence emerged {F (2, 57)=4.86, p<0.05}. Pairwise comparison showed the manic patients required significantly more time to respond to sad than to happy stimuli (t=3.22, df=19, p<0.01), but schizophrenia patents and healthy subjects did not differ in time to respond to happy or sad stimuli (t=1.95, df=19, p=0.07 ; t=-1.23, df=19, p=0.23). CONCLUSION: Manic patients displayed a mood-congruent bias toward affective scenic pictures, but not toward affective word or facial pictures. This finding suggests that complex and scenic stimuli may give a more influence on the affective arousal state and therefore increase the mood-congruent bias in manic patients.
Arousal ; Bias (Epidemiology) ; Bipolar Disorder ; Humans ; Intelligence ; Schizophrenia

OBJECTIVE: Patients with bipolar mania have difficulty in recognizing or attending to negatively affective stimuli and have an affective bias, which is congruent with the current mood. However, previous reports have adopted words or facial pictures, not scenic pictures as affective stimuli. In this study, patients with mania performed the word, face and scenic picture-based affective go-nogo tasks respectively. The results were compared to those of patients with schizophrenia and healthy controls. METHODS: Twenty patients with bipolar mania, 20 patients with schizophrenia, and 20 healthy comparison subjects, matched for age, gender and intelligence, performed affective gonogo tasks which contained happy/sad words, facial pictures, and scenic pictures respectively. RESULTS: On the scenic picturebased affective go-nogo task, a significant interaction between subject group and target valence emerged {F (2, 57)=4.86, p<0.05}. Pairwise comparison showed the manic patients required significantly more time to respond to sad than to happy stimuli (t=3.22, df=19, p<0.01), but schizophrenia patents and healthy subjects did not differ in time to respond to happy or sad stimuli (t=1.95, df=19, p=0.07 ; t=-1.23, df=19, p=0.23). CONCLUSION: Manic patients displayed a mood-congruent bias toward affective scenic pictures, but not toward affective word or facial pictures. This finding suggests that complex and scenic stimuli may give a more influence on the affective arousal state and therefore increase the mood-congruent bias in manic patients.
Arousal ; Bias (Epidemiology) ; Bipolar Disorder ; Humans ; Intelligence ; Schizophrenia

OBJECTIVE: To investigate risk factors for schizophrenia patients with complication of type 2 diabetes mellitus and to provide scientific evidence for prevention and management of this disease. METHODS: Relevant studies on schizophrenia with type 2 diabetes mellitus in China were searched through PubMed, Medline, CBM, CNKI and VIP from 1997 to 2014. Meta-analysis was performed using RevMan 5.2 soft ware. RESULTS: A total of 26 studies involving 6 373 participants (including 957 cases and 5 416 controls) were included. The results of Meta-analysis showed that the risk factors for schizophrenic patients with complication of type 2 diabetes mellitus were: gender (female) (OR=1.28, 95%CI: 1.09-1.50), age (≥ 40 year) (OR=6.02, 95%CI: 4.48-8.09), overweight (OR=2.32, 95%CI: 1.52-2.88), family history of diabetes (OR=6.12, 95%CI: 3.16-11.86), duration of schizophrenia (>10 years) (OR=3.60, 95%CI: 2.39-5.41), triglycerides (MD=0.38, 95%CI: 0.05-0.71). CONCLUSION Male, old age, overweight, family history of diabetes, longer duration and high level of triglycerides are risk factors for schizophrenic patients with complication of diabetes mellitus.
China ; Diabetes Mellitus, Type 2 ; epidemiology ; Female ; Humans ; Male ; Overweight ; epidemiology ; Risk Factors ; Schizophrenia ; epidemiology

Antipsychotic Agents ; therapeutic use ; Cardiovascular Diseases ; epidemiology ; Female ; Humans ; Male ; Metabolic Syndrome ; epidemiology ; Schizophrenia ; drug therapy

Antipsychotic Agents ; therapeutic use ; Cardiovascular Diseases ; epidemiology ; Female ; Humans ; Male ; Metabolic Syndrome ; epidemiology ; Schizophrenia ; drug therapy

In this transcultural study of schizophrenic delusions among patients in Seoul, Shanghai and Taipei, we discovered that both the frequency and content of delusions differed among the three groups; and that these differences could perhaps be explained by varying sociocultural and political situations. Delusional themes that are sensitive to sociocultural or political situations include guilt, love/sex, religion, somatic damage, economy/business and politics. Delusions regarding longevity, love/sex, dysmorphophobia/dysosmophobia, religion or supernatural matters, and espionage/spy stories were most frequent in Seoul patients. Those in Taipei predominantly had delusions about possession, religion or supernatural matters, hypnotism, and mass media/computers. Shanghai patients often had delusions of poisons, being prickled by poisoned needles, their brain and viscera extracted and being a family member of political authorities.
Adult ; China/epidemiology ; Cross-Cultural Comparison ; Delusions/psychology ; Delusions/epidemiology* ; Female ; Human ; Korea/epidemiology ; Male ; Middle Age ; Prevalence ; Religion ; Schizophrenia/epidemiology* ; Taiwan/epidemiology