• Journal of Korean Neuropsychiatric Association
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• v.57 no.3
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• pp.230-234
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• 2018

A large proportion of patients with schizophrenia show a poor response to first-line antipsychotic drugs, which is termed treatment-resistant schizophrenia. Previous studies found that a different neurobiology might underlie treatment-resistant schizophrenia, which necessitates the development of different therapeutic approaches for treating treatment-resistant schizophrenia. This study reviewed previous studies on the pathophysiology of treatment-resistant schizophrenia and the pharmacological intervention, and forthcoming investigations of treatment-resistant schizophrenia are suggested.

• Korean Journal of Schizophrenia Research
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.45-51
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• 2021

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has drastically impacted our society and health care system. People with schizophrenia are more vulnerable to this burden of illness and related societal changes. In addition, they are more susceptible to the transmission of COVID-19 and have a significantly higher mortality rate compared to the general population. In a recent study, vaccinated patients with schizophrenia showed a greatly decreased mortality level similar to that of the general population. However, patients with schizophrenia were less likely to be vaccinated. Mental health professionals should provide them with appropriate information on prevention strategies against COVID-19 and vaccination. Long-lasting social distancing and social disconnection can make people with schizophrenia more vulnerable to loneliness and depression. Furthermore, patients with schizophrenia may face challenges continuing psychiatric treatment due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Social support and suitable mental health services using novel technologies should be developed and provided to patients with schizophrenia.

• Korean Journal of Biological Psychiatry
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.267-272
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• 2006

Objectives : Schizophrenia is a clinically heterogenous disease with a strong genetic component. Many studies have suggested that brain-derived neurotrophic factor(BDNF) is involved in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia. This study was performed to determine whether there is an association between BDNF Val66Met polymorphism and schizophrenia. Methods : To identify any genetic predisposition to schizophrenia, we investigated the BDNF Val66Met polymorphism in 106 patients with schizophrenia and 147 normal controls with PCR-RFLP method. Statistical analyses were used to test the association between and BDNF Val66Met genotype and Schizophrenia. Results : No association was found between BDNF Val66Met polymorphism and schizophrenia. No significant differences were found comparing the BDNF genotype distributions according to the age of onset, the number of admission and familial loading in schizophrenia. Conclusion : This result indicates that BDNF Val66Met polymorphism is not associated with schizophrenia. However, further studies with a large number of subjects are needed to confirm whether the BDNF gene is related to schizophrenia.

• Sleep Medicine and Psychophysiology
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.67-71
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• 2011

Schizophrenia is a chronic, currently incurable, and devastating syndrome. Although sleep disturbances are not primary symptoms of schizophrenia, they are important aspects of schizophrenia. Difficulties initiating or maintaining sleep are frequently encountered in patients with schizophrenia. Many schizophrenics report low subjective sleep quality. Measured by polysomnography, increased sleep latency as well as reduced total sleep time, sleep efficiency, slow wave sleep, and rapid eye movement sleep latency (REM latency), are found in most patients with schizophrenia and appear to be an important aspect of the pathophysiology of this disorder. Some literatures suggest that worsening sleep quality precedes schizophrenic exacerbations. Co-morbid sleep disorders such as obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and restless legs syndrome (RLS), and sleep-disrupting behaviors associated with schizophrenia may lead to sleep disturbances. Clinicians should screen the patient with sleep complaints for primary sleep disorders like OSA and RLS, and carefully evaluate sleep hygiene behaviors of all patients with schizophrenia who complain of sleep disturbances.

• Korean Journal of Schizophrenia Research
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.58-64
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• 2020

Objectives: In this study, we conducted an exploratory analysis of the current media trends on schizophrenia using text-mining methods. Methods: First, web-crawling techniques extracted text data from 575 news articles in 10 major newspapers between 2018 and 2019, which were selected by searching "schizophrenia" in the Naver News. We had developed document-term matrix (DTM) and/or term-document matrix (TDM) through pre-processing techniques. Through the use of DTM and TDM, frequency analysis, co-occurrence network analysis, and topic model analysis were conducted. Results: Frequency analysis showed that keywords such as "police," "mental illness," "admission," "patient," "crime," "apartment," "lethal weapon," "treatment," "Jinju," and "residents" were frequently mentioned in news articles on schizophrenia. Within the article text, many of these keywords were highly correlated with the term "schizophrenia" and were also interconnected with each other in the co-occurrence network. The latent Dirichlet allocation model presented 10 topics comprising a combination of keywords: "police-Jinju," "hospital-admission," "research-finding," "care-center," "schizophrenia-symptom," "society-issue," "family-mind," "woman-school," and "disabled-facilities." Conclusion: The results of the present study highlight that in recent years, the media has been reporting violence in patients with schizophrenia, thereby raising an important issue of hospitalization and community management of patients with schizophrenia.

• Korean Journal of Schizophrenia Research
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.15-28
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• 2020

Objectives: This study investigated the relationship between clock-drawing test (CDT) performance and neuropsychological functions in patients with chronic schizophrenia. Methods: Thirty-one patients with schizophrenia and 30 healthy controls participated in this study. The CDT was administered in three conditions and analyzed using both quantitative and qualitative scoring systems. Comprehensive neuropsychological tests were administered. Results: The results of the quantitative analysis showed that the schizophrenia group performed significantly worse in all three conditions of the CDT compared with the control group. However, no significant differences were observed between the two groups, when the IQ and educational level were controlled. The qualitative analysis showed that the schizophrenia group exhibited significantly more errors in "graphic difficulty" compared with the control group. In addition, CDT quantitative scores were significantly correlated with visuospatial function, memory, attention and executive functions in patients with schizophrenia. Conversely, each qualitative error type was correlated with specific cognitive domains. Furthermore, "graphic difficulty" and "spatial/planning deficit" were identified as predictors of depression symptoms in patients with schizophrenia. Conclusion: The present study demonstrated that the CDT is useful for assessing cognitive dysfunctions in patients with schizophrenia, while qualitative analyses provide more specific information about cognitive deficits compared with quantitative analyses.

• Korean Journal of Biological Psychiatry
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.74-83
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• 1997

With increasing tendency of incidence and interest for the late onset schzophrenia, concerns about whether this disorder is etiologically or phenomenogically distinctive entity or not have increased also. To clarify the disease entity of the late onset schzophrenia and the role of structural brain changes in its etiology, authors tried to prove following hypothesis : Are there any evidences of structural brain changes in the lateonset schizophrenia? ; If present, are they not different from those of the early-onset schizophrenia or progressive schizophrenia? ; And are they not different from those of senile dementia? Subjects were 6 patients with the late-onset schizophrenia, 6 patients with the early-onset schizophrenia, 6 patients with progressive schizophrenia, 6 patients with Alzheimer's dementia, and 6 controls. We measured regions of interest of the magnetic resonance images by computer assisted planimetry using the AutoCad and digitizer. Our study results may suggest that the third ventricular enlargement and a reversal of normal difference between left and right temporal lobe and left-right difference in posterior lateral ventricle are common brain pathology for all types of schizophrenia including the late onset schzophrenia. And also suggest that brain structural changes of the late onset schizophrenia are related with neurodevelopmental abnormality rather than degenerative change.

• Korean Journal of Schizophrenia Research
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.65-70
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• 2020

Objectives: This study aimed to explore whether common genetic variants that confer the risk of schizophrenia have similar effects between Korean and European ancestries using the polygenic risk score (PRS) analysis. Methods: Study subjects included 713 Korean patients with schizophrenia and 497 healthy controls. The Korea Biobank array was used for genotyping. Summary statistics of the most recent genome-wide association study (GWAS) of the European population were used as baseline data to calculate PRS. Logistic regression was conducted to determine the association between calculated PRS of European patients with schizophrenia and clinical diagnosis of schizophrenia in the Korean population. Results: Schizophrenia PRS was significantly higher in patients with schizophrenia than in healthy controls. The PRS at the p-value threshold of 0.5 best explained the variance of schizophrenia (R²=0.028, p=4.4×10^-6). The association was significant after adjusting for age and sex (odds ratio=1.34, 95% confidence interval=1.19-1.51, p=1.1×10^-6). The pattern of the association remained similar across different p-value thresholds (0.01-1). Conclusion: Schizophrenia PRS calculated using the European GWAS data showed a significant association with the clinical diagnosis of schizophrenia in the Korean population. Results suggest overlapping genetic risk variants between the two populations.

• Sleep Medicine and Psychophysiology
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.39-48
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• 1997

Memory disorder is the most consistent neuropsychological finding in schizophrenia and seems to be a stable trait in it. It is suggested that memory dysfunction found in patients with schizophrenia is primary to biological abnormalities, not secondary to attention deficits they have. Although temporal lobe structures including hippocampus and thalamus have traditionally been thought to be implicated regions for memory disorder in schizophrenia, recent studies indicate the possibility of abnormalities in the frontal lobe and the neural circuits between brain regions. Advanced research methods such as functional imaging technique are expected to produce more detailed informations about memory function in schizophrenia.

• Korean Journal of Biological Psychiatry
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.295-300
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• 1995

Late-onset schizophrenia(LOS) is a controversial entity. It has been thought that onset of schizophrenia is limited to early adulthood, but many European psychiatrists have reported on the occurrence of schizophrenia in late life. DSM-III restricted the diagnosis of schizophrenia to patients with onset of illness before age 45 years. But, DSM-III-R, DSM-IV, and ICD-10 recognize no upper limit to the age at onset of schizophrenia. Patients with LOS have more visual, tactile, and olfactory hallucinations. Patients with LOS have more persecutory delusions, premorbid schizoid personality traits, and less affective blunting. The course of illness was favorable in LOS. We present four cases of LOS. Their detailed clinical features are reported hear with brief review.