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This page is an AI-assisted Turkish summary of the study presented at the 26th World Congress of Psychiatry. The study belongs to the presenting authors; please refer to the original source when citing it.

EV1248

Cortisol levels in patients with schizophrenia

THE CORTISOL CONCENTRATION IN PATIENTS WITH SCHIZOPHRENIA

Morning blood cortisol levels were found to be lower in patients with schizophrenia whose symptoms had subsided following treatment with an atypical antipsychotic than in healthy controls.

The study aimed to examine whether cortisol levels in patients diagnosed with schizophrenia differ from those in healthy individuals. This case-control study compared 3 female patients whose diagnoses were confirmed using ICD/DSM criteria with 3 healthy women without a psychiatric diagnosis. The patients were taking an atypical antipsychotic (olanzapine), were assessed using the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS), and showed no prominent clinical signs of schizophrenia at enrollment; blood samples were collected between 07:30 and 08:00 in the morning, before breakfast and oral hygiene. The poster described total PANSS scores in the patient group as ranging from 30 to 40 (asymptomatic baseline); PANSS was not administered to the control group. Rather than individual measured cortisol values, the poster reported an expected low range of 5.0 to 12.0 µg/dL for the patient group and an expected normal morning peak range of 13.0 to 23.0 µg/dL for the control group; no statistical test results or p-values were reported. The authors state that cortisol levels in treated patients are lower than in the general population, which may reflect both the subsidence of psychotic symptoms and the direct suppressive effects of atypical antipsychotics on the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. The clinical implication is that cortisol levels in a clinically stable patient receiving treatment may be markedly lower than those in a healthy individual taking no medication, even in the absence of pathology unrelated to medication. The sample size of 3 participants per group severely limits the interpretation of the findings.

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