Evaluation of lamina cribrosa thickness and lamina cribrosa curvature index in patients with schizophrenia

PURPOSE: It has been reported that there is a decrease in lamina cribrosa thickness (LCT) in neurodegenerative diseases. However, patients with schizophrenia have not been evaluated before. In the current study, we aimed to assess the LCT and lamina cribrosa curvature index (LCCI) in patients with schizophrenia.
METHODS: The study included 20 eyes of 20 patients with schizophrenia and 20 eyes of 20 healthy controls. After routine ophthalmological examination, the optic nerve head area was scanned using swept-source optical coherence tomography (OCT) (DRI OCT Triton, Topcon Inc., Tokyo, Japan) to examine the lamina cribrosa curvature depth (LCCD) and LCT. To determine the degree of the posterior bending of the lamina cribrosa, LCCI was calculated using the formula, lamina cribrosa curvature depth/curvature width × 100.
RESULTS: The mean age of the patients was 35.4±8.2 years, and there were 18 males. The LCT values were 205.86±21.38 µm in the schizophrenia group and 229.72±25.84 µm in the control group and were found to be statistically significantly lower in the schizophrenia group (p=0.003). The LCCI value in the schizophrenia group was found to be 3.07±0.70 and was similar to the healthy control group (p=0.923). Furthermore, there was no significant difference between the two groups regarding the LCCD or lamina cribrosa curvature width (p=0.396 and 0.362).
CONCLUSION: OCT revealed that the lamina cribrosa was thinner in patients with schizophrenia. LCT can also be used to determine early damage to nerve fibers in these patients.

Keywords: Lamina cribrosa curvature index, lamina cribrosa thickness, neurodegeneration, schizophrenia.