Exploration of the Effect of Demographic and Clinical Confounding Variables on Results of Voxel-Based Morphometric Analysis in Schizophrenia

Brain morphometric abnormalities have been extensively reported in schizophrenia. In this research report, we used a voxel-based morphometry (VBM) approach to identify the effect of various confounding factors on gray matter (GM) volume changes in patients with schizophrenia in comparison to healthy control subjects. Our findings highlight the importance of accounting for all possible confounding factors during study design and analyses, as well as setting appropriate statistical significance thresholds while reporting results in brain morphometric studies of schizophrenia.