Prenatal cerebral development in individuals at genetic risk for psychosis: head size at birth in offspring of women with schizophrenia.

Previous investigation has shown preschizophrenics to have disproportionately small head circumferences (HC) (in relation to body length) at birth, providing further evidence of disturbed prenatal cerebral development among preschizophrenics. This reduced HC at birth appeared to have resulted from some factor(s) other than genetic risk for schizophrenia, as reduced HC was significantly related to an absence of family history of psychosis. A re-test of the finding that genetic risk for schizophrenia is not associated with reduced HC at birth was performed in the current high-risk study, which compared HC: body length ratios at birth in 31 offspring born to women with a history of schizophrenia vs. 38 demographically comparable control offspring. The genetically high-risk offspring were highly similar to control offspring of HC: body length ratios, supporting the previous findings that disturbed prenatal cerebral development, as measured by disproportionately small HC, is not a function of genetic risk for schizophrenia.