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Interaction between baseline BMI and baseline disease severity predicts greater improvement in negative symptoms in first-episode schizophrenia

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European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Several studies have reported that baseline symptom severity in patients with schizophrenia (SCZ) is associated with the efficacy of antipsychotic medication. Overweight/obesity is common in SCZ and has also been reported to be correlated with therapeutic response to antipsychotics. This study aimed to evaluate whether baseline body mass index (BMI) and disease severity were associated with improvements in negative symptoms in patients with first-episode and medication-naïve (FEMN) SCZ. A total of 241 FEMN patients were recruited in this study and treated with oral risperidone over 3 months. Clinical symptoms were measured by the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) and BMI was assessed at baseline and 3-month follow-up. We found that baseline BMI was correlated with the baseline severity of symptoms. Baseline BMI or baseline disease severity was associated with improvement in negative symptoms after 3 months of treatment. Linear regression analysis indicated that the interaction of BMI and disease severity at baseline was associated with improvement in negative symptoms in the early stage of SCZ after controlling for sex, age, and dose of risperidone. Our study suggests that the interaction of baseline BMI and disease severity may play a role in predicting negative symptom improvement after 3 months of risperidone treatment.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the participants in the study and their families.

Funding

This study was supported by grants from the Science and Technology Program of Guangzhou (202206060005, 202201010093, SL2022A03J01489), Guangdong Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation Outstanding Youth Project (2021B1515020064), Medical Science and Technology Research Foundation of Guangdong (A2023224), the Health Science and Technology Program of Guangzhou (20231A010036), Scientific research project of traditional Chinese medicine of Guangdong (20211306), Guangzhou Municipal Key Discipline in Medicine (2021-2023), Guangzhou High-level Clinical Key Specialty, and Guangzhou Research-oriented Hospital. The authors report no biomedical financial interests or potential conflicts of interest.

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Author notes

  1. Xiaobing Sun and Ruiqing He contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Jiahui International Hospital (Shanghai), Shanghai, China

    Xiaobing Sun & Ruiqing He

  2. Qingdao Mental Health Center, Qingdao, China

    Yuan Xiao

  3. Beijing HuiLongGuan Hospital, Peking University HuiLongGuan Clinical Medical School, Beijing, China

    Meihong Xiu

  4. North University of China, Taiyuan, China

    Maodi Sun

  5. Department of Psychiatry, The Affiliated Brain Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou, China

    Fengchun Wu & Xiang Yang Zhang

  6. Department of Biomedical Engineering, Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou, China

    Fengchun Wu

  7. Guangdong Engineering Technology Research Center for Translational Medicine of Mental Disorders, Guangzhou, China

    Fengchun Wu

Authors
  1. Xiaobing Sun
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  2. Ruiqing He
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  3. Yuan Xiao
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  4. Meihong Xiu
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  5. Maodi Sun
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  7. Xiang Yang Zhang
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Contributions

XS, FW, and XZ were responsible for study design, statistical analysis, and manuscript preparation. RH, YX, MX, MS, and FW were responsible for recruiting the patients, performing the clinical rating, and collecting the clinical data. FW and XZ were evolving the ideas and editing the manuscript. XS and MHX were involved in writing the protocol and cowrote the paper. All authors have contributed to and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Xiang Yang Zhang.

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Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests. No conflict of interest was disclosed for each author.

Ethics approval and consent to participate

The study was approved by the Medical Ethics Committee of Beijing Huilongguan Hospital. The work on patients was carried out in accordance with the Code of Ethics of the World Medical Association (Declaration of Helsinki). Informed consent was obtained from patients.

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Sun, X., He, R., Xiao, Y. et al. Interaction between baseline BMI and baseline disease severity predicts greater improvement in negative symptoms in first-episode schizophrenia. Eur Arch Psychiatry Clin Neurosci (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00406-024-01763-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00406-024-01763-6

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