Clinical and metabolic comparison of negative schizophrenia and unipolar depression

Patients with negative schizophrenia and patients with unipolar depression were assessed by the rating scales SANS and HRSD. Items suicidal impulses, early insomnia, work and activities, somatic anxiety, genital and hypochondric symptoms do not significantly differ in the two groups measured by the Hamilton scale. Almost all the items on the SANS rating scale are present in schizophrenic as well as in depressive patients, but they are more pronounced in schizophrenia than in depression. Associations between items on the HRSD and SANS were found for both psychiatric disorders. For the two groups of patients it was found that in the brain regions of interest measured by the SPECT method the metabolic pattern is highly similar in 24 regions. In both groups a phenomenon of hypofrontality was found. RCBF in gyrus frontalis superior is in negative correlation with the global SANS items of affective flattening, apathy, attention, anhedonia and associality.