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 …