Thinning of central foveal thickness in the retina of patients with schizophrenia

The neural retina shares a common embryonic origin with the brain and yields pathological changes like that in the brain in various neuropsychiatric disorders, including schizophrenia. Non-invasive examination by optical coherence tomography (OCT) revealed retinal structure abnormalities in patients with schizophrenia. This study investigated retina structures in 29 patients with schizophrenia and 25 healthy controls in a Chinese Han ethnic population with spectral domain OCT. Measurements of central foveal thickness (CFT) as well as other retinal structures in macular and peripapillary subregions were performed. Associations between OCT parameters and clinical features, including severity of positive and negative symptoms, disease duration and antipsychotic dosage were analyzed. With controlling for age and sex, patients showed significantly thinner CFT, thinner central macular thickness, and thinner total retinal thickness in subregions of the central, inner superior, inner temporal, and inner nasal macula of both eyes, thinner ganglion cell complex in a subregion of the left eye, as well as larger cup volume in the peripapillary region of the right eye. In addition, CFT also negatively correlated with severity of negative symptoms. These findings suggest that CFT has the potential to be a disease biomarker of schizophrenia.