title: Morphometric studies of the entorhinal cortex in neuropsychiatric patients and controls: clusters of heterotopically displaced lamina II neurons are not indicative of schizophrenia.
abstract: Subtle cytoarchitectural abnormalities of the rostral entorhinal cortex have been reported to be characteristic for schizophrenics. A main finding was the heterotopic displacement of clusters of lamina II neurons (which appeared morphologically immature) into layer III. Recent findings suggesting a considerable cytoarchitectural heterogeneity of the normal entorhinal cortex renewed interest in this problem and prompted the question of the extent to which 'aberrantly' located cell clusters are really disease-related. Being blind to the clinical diagnosis, we analyzed quantitatively the amount of entorhinal heterotopias in schizophrenics (n = 31), controls (n = 45) and depressive patients (n = 7). It was revealed that heterotopic cell clusters occurred in schizophrenics and controls with roughly the same frequency (amount of clusters per section). In depressive, there were significantly more heterotopias than in controls (right hemisphere). Our data show that heterotopias are common to the rostral part of the human entorhinal cortex and are not a suitable neuroanatomical marker of schizophrenia.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, University of Magdeburg, Germany. hans-gert.bernstein@medizin.uni-magdeburg.de
authors.forename: H G
authors.initials: HG
authors.lastname: Bernstein
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Krell
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Baumann
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Danos
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Falkai
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Diekmann
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Henning
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Bogerts
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D015415:Biomarkers; D002828:Choristoma / Q000473:pathology*; D003704:Dementia / Q000473:pathology*; D003866:Depressive Disorder / Q000473:pathology; D003937:Diagnosis, Differential; D004292:Dominance, Cerebral / Q000502:physiology; D018728:Entorhinal Cortex / Q000473:pathology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009474:Neurons; D012016:Reference Values; D012307:Risk Factors; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000473:pathology*
chemical_list: D015415:Biomarkers