Significance of Positive and Negative Syndromes in Chronic Schizophrenia

Abstract

Positive and negative syndromes were studied in relation to demographic, historical, genealogical, clinical, psychometric, extrapyramidal, and follow-up measures of 101 chronic schizophrenic patients. The criterion scales proved to be reliable, normally distributed, and strongly correlated with general psychopathology, but otherwise inversely related to one another. Multiple regression analysis identified sets of 4-6 independent variables that explained 74%-81% of the scales' variance. A positive syndrome was associated chiefly with productive features, family history of sociopathy, more previous hospital admissions, and longer in-patient stay during the 30-month follow-up period. A negative syndrome correlated with deficits in cognitive, affective, social, and motor spheres, higher incidence of major psychiatric illness but less affective disorder among relatives, lower education, and greater cognitive developmental impairment. The results underscore the importance of genetic and biodevelopmental variables for understanding schizophrenic syndromes.

The neurodevelopmental basis of sex differences in schizophrenia

“…Furthermore, a number of studies have found males more likely to exhibit 'negative' features (Kay et al 1986;Goldstein & Link, 1988;Nasrallah & Wilcox, 1989;Haas et al 1989), though not all have concurred (reviewed by Pogue-Geile & Zubin, 1988).…”

Schizophrenia with preserved insight is associated with increased perfusion of the precuneus

“…Clinical characteristics: duration of illness and psychotic symptoms based on the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS). 40 The PANSS was decomposed into 5 factors (positive, negative, hostility-excitation, cognitive and depression factors), which are of specific interest for our study because of their potential link to insight. …”

Is negative schizophrenia a variant of parkinsonism?

“…There is reason to believe, however, that the overlap is not artifactual. Indeed, studies by our group (Kay et al, 1986) have indicated a significant association between negative syndrome and extrapyramidal ratings and the negative score on the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) even though this excludes motor items (Kay et al, 1987). Similarly, Hoffman et al ( 1987) found a strong association between negative symptoms and Parkinsonism which he argued reflected an "underlying pathophysiological relationship" and not merely scale item similarity or difficulty in distinguishing negative symptoms from Parkinsonism.…”