Neuropsychological performance and spectrum personality traits in the relatives of patients with schizophrenia and affective psychosis

Neuropsychological deficits are found in both schizophrenic patients and th eir relatives, and some studies have shown similar, but less severe, defici ts in affective psychotic patients and their relatives. We set out to estab lish: (a) whether schizophrenia spectrum personality traits are more common in the relatives of schizophrenic patients than, in the relatives of affec tive psychotic patients; and (b) what the relation is between spectrum pers onality traits and neuropsychological deficits in these relatives. Relative s were interviewed using the International Personality Disorder Examination (IPDE), and also completed the National Adult Reading Test (NART), the Tra il Making Test (TMT; Parts A and B) and Thurstone's Verbal Fluency Test (TV FT). Spectrum personality traits were equally common in 129 relatives of sc hizophrenic patients and 106 relatives of affective psychotic patients, but the performance of the former group was inferior to that of the latter on the NART and the TVFT. Relatives with high paranoid traits had lower NART s cores than relatives without such personality traits; similarly, those with high schizoid traits took longer to complete the TMT, part B, than those w ithout such traits; and relatives with high schizotypal traits generated si gnificantly fewer words: on the TVFT than those without such traits. We con clude that relatives of schizophrenic and affective psychotic: patients sha re a propensity to schizophrenia spectrum traits, but relatives of the form er have poorer neuropsychological performance. Furthermore, there exists an association between neuropsychological deficits and spectrum traits in bot h groups of relatives; in particular those with high paranoid traits have l ower IQ scores than their. loss paranoid counterparts, (C) 2001 Elsevier Sc ience Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.