Schizotypal personality in healthy adults is related to blunted cortisol responses to the combined dexamethasone/ corticotropin-releasing hormone test.

Hiroaki Hori, Toshiya Teraishi, Yuji Ozeki, Kotaro Hattori, Daimei Sasayama, Junko Matsuo, Yumiko Kawamoto, Yukiko Kinoshita, Teruhiko Higuchi, Hiroshi Kunugi

Department of Mental Disorder Research, National Institute of Neuroscience, National Center of Neurology and Psychiatry, Tokyo, Japan. hori@ncnp.go.jp

Neuropsychobiology 2011

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Schizotypy is viewed as a dimensional trait ranging from healthy people to schizophrenic spectrum patients. Stress activates the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, and accumulated evidence suggests that schizophrenia is associated with altered HPA axis function; however, HPA axis function in relation to schizotypal personality has not been well documented. We examined the relationship between schizotypal traits as assessed with the Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire (SPQ) and cortisol responses to the combined dexamethasone/corticotropin- releasing hormone test in 141 healthy volunteers. Subjects were divided into three groups based on their cortisol responses to the dexamethasone/corticotropin-releasing hormone test: incomplete suppressors, moderate suppressors, and enhanced suppressors. SPQ scores were compared between these three groups using the analysis of covariance, controlling for age and sex. The analysis of covariance showed significant main effects of the suppressor status on the ideas of reference and suspiciousness/paranoid ideation subscales and cognitive-perceptual factor. Post-hoc analyses with Bonferroni correction revealed that the enhanced suppressors scored significantly higher than the moderate suppressors on these SPQ indices. These results indicate that nonclinical schizotypal traits in healthy adults are associated with blunted cortisol reactivity, potentially suggesting a shared neuroendocrinological mechanism across schizophrenia spectrum pathology. Copyright © 2011 S. Karger AG, Basel.

Citation

Hiroaki Hori, Toshiya Teraishi, Yuji Ozeki, Kotaro Hattori, Daimei Sasayama, Junko Matsuo, Yumiko Kawamoto, Yukiko Kinoshita, Teruhiko Higuchi, Hiroshi Kunugi. Schizotypal personality in healthy adults is related to blunted cortisol responses to the combined dexamethasone/ corticotropin-releasing hormone test. Neuropsychobiology. 2011;63(4):232-41