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The British Journal of Psychiatry (2001) 179: 409-414
© 2001 The Royal College of Psychiatrists

Obstetric complications and risk of schizophrenia{dagger},{ddagger}

Effect of gender, age at diagnosis and maternal history of psychosis

HOLLIE V. THOMAS, DPhil

Department of Psychological Medicine, University of Wales College of Medicine, Cardiff

CHRISTINA DALMAN, MD

Community Medicine, Unit for Psychosis Research, Stockholm, Sweden

ANTHONY S. DAVID, FRCPsych

Institute of Psychiatry and GKT School of Medicine, London

JOHAN GENTZ, MD

Sachsska Children's Hospital, Stockholm, Sweden

GLYN LEWIS, FRCPsych

University of Wales College of Medicine, Cardiff

PETER ALLEBECK, MD

Department of Social Medicine, University of Göteborg, Sweden

Correspondence: Dr H. V. Thomas, Psychological Medicine Academic Unit, 2nd Floor Monmouth House, Heath Park, Cardiff CF14 4XN, UK. Tel: 029 2074 3229; fax: 029 2074 6595; e-mail: thomashv{at}cardiff.ac.uk

Declaration of interest No conflict of interest. Support from the Swedish Medical Research Council, the Stanley Foundation, the Söderberg—Königska Foundation and the Torsten and Ragnar Söderberg Foundation.

{dagger} See invited commentaries, pp. 415–416, this issue.

{ddagger} See pp. 403–408, this issue

Background Obstetric complications have been studied frequently as possible risk factors for schizophrenia.

Aims To test the hypotheses that individual obstetric complications are most strongly associated with an increased risk of schizophrenia in males, in patients with an early age at first diagnosis and in subjects with a maternal history of psychosis.

Method Cases of schizophrenia diagnosed between January 1971 and June 1994 were identified in the Stockholm County In-Patient Register. Controls were matched on age, gender, hospital of birth and parish of birth. Obstetric data were recorded blind to case—control status for 524 cases and 1043 controls.

Results This study did not find any large or consistent effect of gender, age at diagnosis or maternal history of psychosis on the risk of schizophrenia associated with individual complications.

Conclusions Future studies should examine these effects using a much larger sample that includes patients with schizophrenia and control subjects whose genetic risk of schizophrenia has been assessed accurately.


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