Abstract
Background: Psychotic disorders can be conceptualised as a spectrum of severe disorders of reality perception. Increasing evidence suggests that immunological and inflammatory dysfunction may be important across the psychotic spectrum. In this study, we investigated whether there is a difference between different diagnostic groups, in which psychosis is the common pathway, and healthy controls in markers of peripheral inflammation, such as platelet-lymphocyte ratio (PLR), neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio (NLR), systemic inflammatory response index (SIRI) and systemic immune-inflammatory index (SII), determined by haemogram.
Methods: The electronic records and file information of patients followed up at a university hospital were analysed in this retrospective study. The study sample consisted of patients diagnosed with schizophrenia(n=62), affective disorder(n=54), autism spectrum disorder(n=56), schizoaffective disorder(n=44), who had a history of psychotic episodes. The healthy controls were organ donors with no psychiatric disorder(n=61). The haemogram results of the patients during the remission period were recorded and PLR, NLR, SIRI, SII values were calculated. Groups were compared by one-way ANOVA, and group differences in age and sex were controlled by ANCOVA. Significance level was p<0.050.
Results: There was no statistically significant difference in PLR between the groups. After correction for age and sex; NLR and SIRI showed a significant difference between the healthy control group and all groups of patients with psychosis (respectively F=9.324, p<0.001;F=5.190, p<0.001), SII only showed a significant difference between the autism spectrum disorder group and the healthy control group (F=2.686, p=0.032). When the psychosis groups were compared with each other, the PLR, NLR, SIRI and SII levels were similar.
Conclusions: Our results have contributed to the view that inflammation is a transdiagnostic phenomenon in psychotic disorders.