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Schizophrenia: Initiation and Development

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2018

P. R. J. Burch*
Affiliation:
Department of Medical Physics, The University of Leeds, The General Infirmary, Leeds, LS1 3EX

Extract

According to a recent theory, schizophrenia is confined to people with a particular genetic predisposition and the disorder arises from a specific breakdown in the central part of the system that controls growth (Burch 1964, 1968). We call diseases of this general class autoaggressive. Their pathogenesis has two distinctive phases: initiation and development. Initiation, which is a purely random process, entails a form of spontaneous somatic gene mutation in growth-control stem cells.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1971 

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References

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