The thought of greater loss of brain tissue in Deficit Syndrome (DS) i.e. subgroup of schizophrenia with enduring primary negative symptoms defined by Carpenter et al.; this has not been verified by recent studies.

Accumulated researches suggest that enlargement in Lateral Ventricles (LV) is related with current negative symptoms and poor prognosis. However, this has not been validated in DS.

Our aim is to study the association between the enduring negative symptoms and LV changes schizophrenia. We included both deficit and non-deficit patients for comparison with controls.

Forty-five patients (18 DS, 27 non-DS) and 37 healthy controls were recruited, evaluated for positive and negative symptoms, depression and extrapyramidal symptoms. Structural magnetic resonance imaging was performed. LV was assessed by MANCOVA (gender, age total brain volume as confounding factors) in 3-dimensional (3D) shape analyses. Correlations between clinical and imaging data were analyzed by Pearson correlation coefficient; P > 0.05 being significant.

LV of patients was found to be greater than controls, especially in regions adjacent to parietal and temporal regions but no significant difference between subgroups was detected. Enlargement in right LV by corpus callosum adjacency was found in DS. There was no correlation between negative symptoms and LV volume.

The idea of greater amount of LV enlargement in patients with predominant negative symptoms could not be observed in 3D analyses. New pathophysiological theories are needed for the explanation of negative symptoms, loss of functioning and poor prognosis rather than only commenting about tissue decrease/loss.

The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.