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Cross-National Diagnosis of Schizophrenia in TwinsThe Heritability and Specificity of Schizophrenia
James Shields;
Irving I. Gottesman, PhD
Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1972;27(6):725-730.
Abstract
An international panel of seven diagnosticians from Japan, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States blindly diagnosed the histories of the 114 twins in the Maudsley schizophrenic twin series. The middle-of-the-road consensus diagnosis of schizophrenia was easily reached. Besides being more reliable, it gave better monozygotic to dizygotic (MZ:DZ) discrimination than attempts to apply broader or narrower diagnostic criteria. A similar standard applied to the other recent schizophrenic twin studies secured reasonable agreement, and the pooled MZ concordance rate from the studies was 46%, higher than sometimes reported. The study vindicates both the diagnosis of schizophrenia and its substantial heritability.
Author Affiliations
London; Minneapolis
From the Institute of Psychiatry, University of London (Mr. Shields) and the Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis (Dr. Gottesman).
Footnotes
Accepted for publication Aug 14, 1972.
A brief version of this article was read before the symposium on the Transmission of Schizophrenia, Fifth World Congress of Psychiatry, Mexico City, Nov 28 to Dec 4, 1971.
Reprint requests to Department of Psychology, Elliott Hall, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis 55455 (Dr. Gottesman).
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