Environmental risk factors and their impact on the age of onset of schizophrenia: Comparing familial to non-familial schizophrenia

Abstract

Certain environmental risk factors for schizophrenia seem to have an impact on the age of onset of psychosis in non-familial schizophrenia, they do not seem to have an impact on familial schizophrenia.

At the Tip of an Iceberg: Prenatal Marijuana and Its Possible Relation to Neuropsychiatric Outcome in the Offspring

“…Collectively, and to the best of our knowledge, longitudinal or cohort studies that would indicate an increased risk of schizophrenia related to maternal marijuana use remain elusive, even though marijuana abuse is a predictor for an earlier onset of schizophrenia in patients with non-familial schizophrenia especially in the presence of predisposing genetic factors (159). Amongst the different pieces of a manifold puzzle, only adolescent but not prenatal THC exposure has so far been identified as environmental predisposition precipitating schizophrenia (160,161).…”

Induced pluripotent stem cells for modeling neurological disorders

“…It is considered to stem from a polygenic basis, with an estimated heritability of approximately 80% [130,132,133] , and genetic and epigenetic processes underlying the disease, as it was observed in a discordant monozygotic twin study [133] . Moreover, environmental stressors like drug use, being cannabis the most frequently studied, birth complications, maternal immune response, among others, may contibute to SCZD [134][135][136][137] . People with SCZD have a lower life expectancy average, mostly to increased health problems and higher suicide rate, and individuals may experience symptoms like hallucinations, delusions, abnormal social behavior (inability to speak, express emotions or find pleasure) and cognitive impairment (deficits in attention, memory and planning) [131,132] .…”

Old Obstacles on New Horizons: The Challenge of Implementing Gene X Environment Discoveries in Schizophrenia Research

“…Such cases tend to result in earlier onset. For Schizophrenia, the earliest cases are known to occur during childhood 15 . Table 1 lists some of the important exposures known to affect the risk of Schizophrenia.…”