Impact of Normal Sexual Dimorphisms on Sex Differences in Structural Brain Abnormalities in Schizophrenia Assessed by Magnetic Resonance Imaging

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Abstract
NUMEROUS STUDIES have demonstrated sex differences in the phenomenology and genetic transmission of schizophrenia (see review by Goldstein and Lewine1). Although one's sex modifies the phenotypic expression of schizophrenia, there is some debate about whether these differences have etiologic implications.1 Recent research has begun to examine whether sex differences in brain abnormalities in schizophrenia contribute to explaining the heterogeneous phenotypic illness expression. This is a reasonable expectation, since other neurodevelopmental disorders have shown sex-mediated neurobehavioral and neuroanatomic consequences.2 One question of interest has been whether sex differences in schizophrenia are similar, but exaggerated, normal sex differences in the brain, or whether one's sex is a risk factor for the illness per se, since there is a slightly but significantly higher incidence among men.3,4