Lithium is more effective than placebo for preventing all relapses in patients with bipolar but not unipolar disorder.
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Biomedical subjects
Peter B Jones
Publications and source records attributed to Peter B Jones.
Obstetric complications and schizophrenia: historical and meta-analytic review.
OBJECTIVE: This paper reviews the literature on obstetric complications as a risk factor for schizophrenia. The authors trace the evolution of this literature through different methods and carry out a quantitative review of the results from prospective, population-based studies. METHOD: Relevant papers were identified by a MEDLINE search, by examination of reference lists of published papers, and through personal contact with researchers in the field. Studies were grouped in chronological order according to common themes or methods. Meta-analytic techniques were used to summarize the findings of prospective population-based studies. RESULTS: The meta-analytic synthesis of the prospective population-based studies revealed that three groups of complications were significantly associated with schizophrenia: 1) complications of pregnancy (bleeding, diabetes, rhesus incompatibility, preeclampsia); 2) abnormal fetal growth and development: (low birthweight, congenital malformations, reduced head circumference), and 3) complications of delivery (uterine atony, asphyxia, emergency Cesarean section). Pooled estimates of effect sizes were generally less than 2. CONCLUSIONS: Current methods of investigating the relationship between obstetric complications and schizophrenia are reaching the limit of their usefulness. Lack of statistical power to measure small and interactive effects and lack of detailed information about the prenatal period are major problems with current approaches. A combination of disciplines and approaches will be needed to elucidate the mechanisms underlying these small but important associations.
Adolescent↗
Perinatal and childhood risk factors for later criminality and violence in schizophrenia. Longitudinal, population-based study.
BACKGROUND: Individuals with schizophrenia appear to be at increased risk for violent and criminal behaviour. Obstetric complications, neuromotor problems and intellectual deficits have variously been reported as increasing the risk for criminality in the general population. AIMS: To investigate whether such risk factors are associated with criminal behaviour in an epidemiological cohort of patients with schizophrenia. METHOD: We identified from health care registers all individuals with schizophrenia born in Helsinki between 1951 and 1960, and used the national criminal register to identify those with a criminal record by 1995. Childhood information was obtained from archived birth and school records. RESULTS: Poor educational attainment, poor grades for attention at school, higher birth weight and larger head circumference were significantly associated with the risk of criminal offending in adulthood in this sample of patients with schizophrenia. An association between labour/delivery complications and later violent offending among male patients was of borderline significance. CONCLUSIONS: Our hypotheses that birth complications and childhood neuromotor problems would increase the risk of criminal offending in schizophrenia were not upheld.
Adult↗