Anthropometry in antipsychotic-naïve first-episode psychosis patients: An exploratory approach to the role of environmental early life events in two independent samples.

Background: Patients with schizophrenia exhibit a reduced life expectancy mainly due to medical-related pathologies which might have been initiated due to stressful events during fetal development. Indeed, intra-uterus growth patterns predict anthropometric measures in adulthood, describing risk factors for schizophrenia and metabolic disorders. We aim to evaluate anthropometric values in two cohorts of antipsychotic-naïve first-episode episode psychosis (FEP) and correlated them with surrogate markers of the fetal environment such as birth weight (BW) and season of birth.
Methods: BW, season of birth, and anthropometric values from 2 cohorts of FEP patients (Barcelona and Santander) were evaluated. In cohort B, 91 patients, and 110 controls while in cohort S, 644 and 235 were included respectively.
Results: Patients were shorter, slimmer, and with lower BMI compared with controls. In both cohorts, patients, and female patients born in winter displayed the shortest height. Regarding BW, height was significantly associated with the interaction of diagnosis and BW in the whole sample and the male subsample.
Conclusions: Our results confirm reduced anthropometric features in FEP at onset while suggesting the influence of winter birth and BW, highlighting the role of early life events in the later outcome of FEP with sex differences.
Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest CG-R has received honoraria/travel support from Abbot, Angelini, Cassen-Recordati, Janssen-Cilag, Lundbeck. BC-F has received unrestricted research funding from Instituto de Salud Carlos III, MINECO, Gobierno de Cantabria, Spanish Network for Research in Mental Health (CIBERSAM), from the 7th European Union Framework Program and Lundbeck. He has also received honoraria for his participation as a consultant and/or as a speaker at educational events from Janssen Johnson & Johnson, Mylan, Lundbeck, and Otsuka Pharmaceuticals. BK declare travel and/or consulting fees: WCG Clinical Services, Lundbeck, Acadia, Otsuka, Sumitomo, Karuna, Minerva Neurosciences, Guidepoint, and Decision Resources Group. CEO and part owner of Quantic Innovations, which provides services related to digital phenotyping. Honoraria and travel support from MedAvante/ProPhase for training pharmaceutical company raters on the BNSS Consulting fees and travel support from Minerva Neurosciences, Acadia Pharmaceuticals, and ProPhase LLC. Consulting fees from Goldman Sachs, from anonymized pharmaceutical companies through Decision Resources, Inc., from an anonymized investment capital company through Guideposts, and Walsh Medical Media for editorial services. CEO and part owner of Quantic Innovation, a company providing consulting services to the pharmaceutical industry. MG has received CME-related honoraria, or consulting fees from Ferrer, Janssen-Cilag, Lundbeck, Lundbeck/Otsuka, and Viatris, with no financial or other relationship relevant to the subject of this article. MB has been a consultant for, received grant/research support and honoraria from, and been on the speakers/advisory board of ABBiotics, Adamed, Angelini, Casen Recordati, Janssen-Cilag, Menarini, Rovi and Takeda. EFE has received consultancy honoraria from Boehringer-Ingelheim (2022), Atheneum (2022) and Rovi (2022–23), speaker fees by Adamed (2022–23), Otsuka (2023) and Viatris (2024) and training and research material from Merz (2020). JV-B has received unrestricted research funding from Instituto de Investigación Marqués de Valdecilla (IDIVAL). He has also received honoraria for his participation as a consultant and/or as a speaker at educational events from Janssen-Cilag and Lundbeck. MG-R, CO, LC-H, JMvS, NG-T declare no conflicts of interest in their participation in the study.
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