There is some evidence to suggest that the brain may be ageing faster in schizophrenia.
As individuals with schizophrenia have a greater risk of developing age-related diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease and cardiovascular disease, the idea of accelerated brain ageing is indeed plausible.
If the brain is ageing faster in schizophrenia, what is the most likely brain measurement affected by this process? In other words, what aspect of brain anatomy contributes to the gap between actual age vs brain’s age in patients?
Charlotte Liang assisted the work led by Benicio Frey’s team at McMaster University along with colleagues from the CANBIND network. We utilised the TOPSY study data to answer this question.
Unlike the healthy group whose actual age is linearly related to their brain age, patients with schizophrenia showed a larger brain-age gap. Most of this gap was attributable to the difference in grey matter volume.
To read more, see the original paper in the journal Schizophrenia. The figure below demonstrates that the value of grey matter volume varies with the brain age gap.
