Lateral ventricular size, psychopathology, and medication response in the psychoses

Using computed tomography, lateral ventricular size was determined in 45 schizophrenic and 22 affective disorder patients, and was found in both patient groups to be greater than that of 62 similarly aged headache controls. While drug-free, the 15 schizophrenics with ventricles 1 standard deviation greater than the age-corrected control mean tended to have less positive symptomatology than the 30 schizophrenics with smaller ventricles. There were no differences between these two schizophrenic groups in negative symptomatology. Amongst the depressed affective disorder patients, those with larger ventricles tended to be diagnosed as psychotic more often than those with smaller ventricles. Response to neuroleptic treatment was assessed in the 35 schizophrenics who had received conventional neuroleptics for at least 5 weeks. Those schizophrenics with ventricles 2 standard deviations greater than the age-corrected control mean showed less improvement than those with smaller ventricles and on some measures appeared to deteriorate. No such relationship between ventricle size and drug response could be detected in the affective disorder patients.