Odor identification, eye tracking and deficit syndrome schizophrenia.
BACKGROUND
Deficit syndrome (DS) schizophrenia patients have smooth pursuit eye movement (SPEM) dysfunction. We examined if they also had smell identification deficits, since social affiliation is related to olfaction in other mammals.


METHODS
Sixty-seven patients had DS assessments: 31 patients had SPEM and 50 had Smell Identification Test (SIT) assessments, and 14 patients had both measurements.


RESULTS
DS patients had worse SPEM and SIT performance than the non-DS patients. Areas under the receiver-operator characteristic (ROC) curves for SIT and SPEM were both fairly accurate in identifying the DS. The odds ratio (OR) for the DS for impaired versus normal SPEM was 6.21 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.21, 32.25) and for microsmia versus normosmia was 10.4 (95% CI: 1.23, 88.18). Further analyses showed that the association of SIT with both SPEM and the DS could account for the SPEM-DS association.


CONCLUSIONS
We found a strong association between the DS and SIT scores suggesting that the neural substrates of olfaction may be related to social affiliation in humans, as they are in other mammals. These data further support the notion that the DS defines a homogeneous subgroup of schizophrenia patients and further suggest that dysfunction in the neural circuitry of olfaction may contribute to its pathophysiology.
Malaspina
Dolores
D
New York State Psychiatric Institute, Columbia University Department of Psychiatry, 1051 Riverside Drive, New York, NY 10032, USA.
Coleman
Eliza
E
Goetz
Raymond R
RR
Harkavy-Friedman
Jill
J
Corcoran
Cheryl
C
Amador
Xavier
X
Yale
Scott
S
Gorman
Jack M
JM
D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009812:Odorants; D000857:Olfaction Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000453:epidemiology*; D012438:Saccades / Q000502:physiology*; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000503:physiopathology*; D012720:Severity of Illness Index