Global white matter abnormalities in schizophrenia: a multisite diffusion tensor imaging

Background: Emerging evidence implicates white matter (WM) abnormalities in the pathophysiology of schizophre-nia. However, there is considerable heterogeneity in the presentation of WM abnormalities in the existing studies. The object of this study was to evaluate WM integrity in a large sample of patients with first-episode (FE) and chronic schizophrenia in comparison to matched control groups. Our goal was to assess whether WM findings occurred early in the illness or whether these abnormalities developed with the illness over time.Methods: Participants included 114 patients with schizophrenia (31 FE and 83 chronic patients) and 138 matched controls. High-resolution structural and diffusion tensor images were obtained on all participants. Measures of fractional anisot-ropy (FA) were calculated for the 4 cortical lobes and th