Recently, we conducted a 39-year followup study of the Genain Quaduplets, a unique group of women--identical quadruplets--all of whom developed schizophrenia by their early 20s. The sisters have been the subject of considerable interest over the years from schizophrenia researchers and geneticists. We administered a battery of tests to the sisters, some of which had been given to them in the late 1950s, to plot the trajectory of their performance on attention tests over the last four decades. Although one of the sisters is demented, and confined to a nursing home, the remaining three have not shown significant deterioration, and are performing better than when first seen in the 1950s. The fact that their cognitive capacities are relatively well preserved, despite 45 years of a schizophrenic illness, raises questions about the belief that the course of the disorder is inevitably and inexorably downhill. The report was accepted for publication in the Schizophrenia Bulletin and was published in the most recent issue (Mirsky et al. A 39-year followup of ther Genain Quadruplets, Schizophrenia Bulletin, 26(3):699-708, 2000).
