Characterizing coronary heart disease risk in chronic schizophrenia: high prevalence of the metabolic syndrome.

Objective: To determine the prevalence and characteristics of coronary heart disease (CHD) risk factors in patients with chronic schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder.

Method: We compared individual CHD risk factors and Framingham risk predictions in a group of 240 patients with a large national sample (Canadian Heart Health Survey) matched for age and sex. In addition, we compared rates of the metabolic syndrome (syndrome X) with recently published rates in the US adult population.