An article published in the September 18th edition of Psychiatric News:By Mark Moran
Metabolic conditions were common but so were such medical conditions as epilepsy and viral hepatitis.
Hospital discharge records of people with a primary diagnosis of schizophrenia showed higher proportions of all comorbid psychiatric conditions and of several general medical conditions than did those of people who did not have schizophrenia.
The general medical conditions included acquired hypothyroidism, obesity, epilepsy, viral hepatitis, type 2 diabetes, essential hypertension, various chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases, and contact dermatitis and other forms of eczema, according to data from the National Hospital Discharge Survey reported in the August Psychiatric Services by researchers in the Department of Epidemiology at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.
The survey data confirm what has been reported before: that patients with schizophrenia have higher rates of morbidity associated with some general medical conditions.
However, the study authors pointed out that virtually all existing studies of comorbid disorders in schizophrenia test hypotheses and have focused on a single comorbid condition in relatively small and nonrepresentative samples. The current study appears to be the first systematic analysis of comorbidity in general with schizophrenia in the U.S. hospitalized population.
"Our study is hypothesis-generating rather than hypothesis-testing, with the main purpose of presenting a systematic review of comorbid conditions," said coauthor Natalya Weber, M.D., M.P.H. "Psychiatrists can see in this very large and representative sample what conditions are more frequently comorbid with a primary diagnosis of schizophrenia compared to any other primary diagnosis among the U.S. hospital discharges."
Weber is health science administrator in the Division of Preventive Medicine at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.
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