- Gurholt, Tiril P;
- Lonning, Vera;
- Nerland, Stener;
- Jørgensen, Kjetil N;
- Haukvik, Unn K;
- Alloza, Clara;
- Arango, Celso;
- Barth, Claudia;
- Bearden, Carrie E;
- Berk, Michael;
- Bohman, Hannes;
- Dandash, Orwa;
- Díaz-Caneja, Covadonga M;
- Edbom, Carl T;
- van Erp, Theo GM;
- Fett, Anne-Kathrin J;
- Frangou, Sophia;
- Goldstein, Benjamin I;
- Grigorian, Anahit;
- Jahanshad, Neda;
- James, Anthony C;
- Janssen, Joost;
- Johannessen, Cecilie;
- Karlsgodt, Katherine H;
- Kempton, Matthew J;
- Kochunov, Peter;
- Krabbendam, Lydia;
- Kyriakopoulos, Marinos;
- Lundberg, Mathias;
- MacIntosh, Bradley J;
- Rund, Bjørn Rishovd;
- Smelror, Runar E;
- Sultan, Alysha;
- Tamnes, Christian K;
- Thomopoulos, Sophia I;
- Vajdi, Ariana;
- Wedervang-Resell, Kirsten;
- Myhre, Anne M;
- Andreassen, Ole A;
- Thompson, Paul M;
- Agartz, Ingrid;
- ENIGMA-EOP Working Group
Early-onset psychosis disorders are serious mental disorders arising before the age of 18 years. Here, we investigate the largest neuroimaging dataset, to date, of patients with early-onset psychosis and healthy controls for differences in intracranial and subcortical brain volumes. The sample included 263 patients with early-onset psychosis (mean age: 16.4 ± 1.4 years, mean illness duration: 1.5 ± 1.4 years, 39.2% female) and 359 healthy controls (mean age: 15.9 ± 1.7 years, 45.4% female) with magnetic resonance imaging data, pooled from 11 clinical cohorts. Patients were diagnosed with early-onset schizophrenia (n = 183), affective psychosis (n = 39), or other psychotic disorders (n = 41). We used linear mixed-effects models to investigate differences in intracranial and subcortical volumes across the patient sample, diagnostic subgroup and antipsychotic medication, relative to controls. We observed significantly lower intracranial (Cohen's d = -0.39) and hippocampal (d = -0.25) volumes, and higher caudate (d = 0.25) and pallidum (d = 0.24) volumes in patients relative to controls. Intracranial volume was lower in both early-onset schizophrenia (d = -0.34) and affective psychosis (d = -0.42), and early-onset schizophrenia showed lower hippocampal (d = -0.24) and higher pallidum (d = 0.29) volumes. Patients who were currently treated with antipsychotic medication (n = 193) had significantly lower intracranial volume (d = -0.42). The findings demonstrate a similar pattern of brain alterations in early-onset psychosis as previously reported in adult psychosis, but with notably low intracranial volume. The low intracranial volume suggests disrupted neurodevelopment in adolescent early-onset psychosis.