Hand functions in patients with schizophrenia: A clinical comparison with bipolar disorder and healthy subjects.

Objective: Failure to achieve expected level of motor functioning may be a significant contributor to social withdrawal and further attenuation of life quality in patients with schizophrenia. Hand functioning is one of the most crucial entities in that manner. This study aimed to reveal this question by means of comparing patients with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder who are receiving similar antipsychotic psychopharmacological agents along with healthy control subjects.

Methods: 99 patients with schizophrenia were compared to 40 patients with bipolar disorder matched according to the received pharmacotherapy comprising similar antipsychotics and 81 medication-free socio-demographically matched healthy control subjects. The materials were Hand Functional Index (HFI), Duruoz Hand Index (DHI), Scale for the Assessment of Negative Symptoms (SANS), Scale for the Assessment of Positive Symptoms (SAPS) along with clinical characteristics.

Results: Difference in total scores of DHI and HFI between schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and control groups were extremely significant (p < 0.001). Further post-hoc subgroup analysis revealed that patients with schizophrenia demonstrated higher scores of HFI indicating worse performance when compared to both bipolar disorder and control group. Significantly higher scores of DHI in patients with schizophrenia than healthy controls were noted.

Conclusion: Independent from the impact of the medication use, impairment in hand functions was found to be more frequently seen in schizophrenia when compared to patients with bipolar disorder and healthy subjects. It is evident that hand function impairment is seen independent from psychopharmacological side effect, and is recommended to be assessed as a possible preventable and retractable manifestation of schizophrenia.