Research published in JAMA Psychiatry assessed measurable differences in the retinal morphology of patients with schizophrenia.
Talk about the study.
Investigators from the NIHR Moorfields Biomedical Research Center performed a cross-sectional analysis using data from a retrospective cohort of 101,416 patients (40+ years) from the AlzEye study.
Within this cohort, there were 100,931 individuals (165,400 eyes) without schizophrenia and 485 individuals (747 eyes) with schizophrenia.
How were the main outcomes measured?
Retinovascular and optic nerve indices were calculated from color fundus photography, while macular retinal nerve fiber layer (RNFL) and ganglion cell-inner plexiform layer (mGC-IPL) thicknesses were measured using optical coherence tomography (OCT).
To examine the association between schizophrenia and retinal biomarkers, investigators used linear mixed-effects models.
Findings?
Investigators observed that individuals with schizophrenia were more likely to have diabetes (75.1%) and hypertension (83.9%) in comparison to patients who did not have schizophrenia (48.0% and 27.6%, respectively).
Additionally, they discovered that patients with schizophrenia had notable differences in the neural and vascular integrity of the retina—specifically, significantly thinner mGC-IPL (-4.05 μm), which may indicate a higher risk of neurodegeneration.
Within the schizophrenia group, this persisted only in patients without diabetes (-3.99 μm) and in patients 55 years and younger (-2.90 μm).
Anything else?
When evaluating vascular variables, retinal fractal dimension was reduced in patients with schizophrenia (-0.14 units); however, this was not present when excluding patients with diabetes.
Significance?
Investigators noted that further research into the use of retinal biomarkers from multimodal imaging (oculomics) is warranted to “help characterize disease course, predict treatment response, or even risk-stratify those patients most at risk of developing cognitive decline, cardiovascular disease, and other devastating sequelae of schizophrenia.”