title: Psychoses in twins - a longitudinal study. Introductory clinical report.
abstract: A sample of psychotic and prepsychotic twins is presented, based on 9000 patients born during 1930--1946 and admitted to psychiatric departments in Scania, Sweden, during the 1960's. All twins of the same sex (76 pairs) were registered and their records examined. Twenty-three complete pairs, where one or both twins showed psychotic or prepsychotic symptoms, were carefully examined with regard to different clinical, genetic, biochemical, and psychophysiological parameters. A fairly young sample was chosen in order to include a sufficient number of discordant pairs to be followed prospectively and thus making it possible to study a group of individuals exposed to a very high risk of developing psychoses. Of the 23 pairs, eight pairs were monozygotic, which is somewhat less than expected and may be due to the very careful diagnoses of zygosity which also included analysis of HL-A antigens. An account is given of material and methods, principles of sampling, and clinical data of all twin pairs. No less than 17 complete pairs were judged to be discordant for serious mental disturbance at the time of the examination. Brief histories of the monozygotic twin pairs are included.
mesh_terms: D004200:Diseases in Twins; D005260:Female; D006680:HLA Antigens / Q000032:analysis; D006801:Humans; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008297:Male; D011247:Pregnancy; D011618:Psychotic Disorders / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D013548:Sweden; D014430:Twins, Monozygotic
chemical_list: D006680:HLA Antigens