Specifically educational test scores at ages 8, 11, and 15, adjusted for sex and social class, were consistently lower for the preschizophrenia group. Approximately half of future patients were in the lowest tertile of performance on the cognitive tests. Deficits were particularly noted in

verbal, nonverbal, and mathematical skills, and were independent of ratings of behavior. Dunedin multidisciplinary health and development study This study followed a 1-year birth cohort of 1037 children born Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical in Dunedin, New Zealand, from birth to age 26. 30 The authors found that the 36 future patients (defined as individuals with a schizophreniform disorder) performed worse than controls on standard IQ tests at each of five assessments between age 3 and 11 years. The cognitive deficits were present only among children later diagnosed as having schizophreniform disorder, but not in those later diagnosed with other nonpsychotic psychiatric disorders,

and were independent of the effects Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical of socioeconomic and obstetric factors. Philadelphia cohort of the national collaborative perinatal project Seventy-two patients with schizophrenia or schizoaffective Selleck PD0325901 disorder and 7941 controls with no diagnosis were found in Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical a birth cohort (originally collected between 1959 to 1966) whose members had been evaluated with standardized tests of intelligence at 4 and Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical 7 years of age.31 Adult psychiatric morbidity was ascertained via a longitudinal treatment database indexing regional public health service utilization, and diagnoses were made by review of all

pertinent medical records according to DSM-IV criteria. Patients with schizophrenia performed significantly Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical worse than controls on IQ tests at 4 and 7 years of age. Schizophrenia in the 1949 to 1950 Swedish conscript study Another cohort comprised of some 50 000 Swedish male conscripts.32 Baseline assessment of cognitive functioning was collected at conscription. Cases were identified over 13 Oxalosuccinic acid years from the Swedish national register of psychiatric care (International Classification of Diseases, 8th Edition [ICD-8] diagnoses) . One hundred and ninety-five cases of schizophrenia and 192 cases of other psychoses were identified. Cognitive testing at age 18 showed a significant relationship between low IQ scores and later schizophrenia. A similar, yet weaker, association was observed for cases with other psychoses. Cognitive deficits were independent of ratings of social withdrawal, socioeconomic status, drug abuse, or family history of psychiatric disorders. Schizophrenia in the Israeli conscript study A case-control study on schizophrenia was nested within a cohort of male conscripts into the Israeli army between 1985 and 1991.