Birth seasonality and height in patients with schizophrenia: a multi-institutional cohort study.

Authors

Chih-Wei Hsu, Liang-Jen Wang, Javier Vazquez-Bourgon, Emilio Fernandez-Egea, Felipe Ortuño, Antonio Brugos-Larumbe, Francisco Guillen-Grima, Carsten Hjorthøj, Byron Bitanihirwe, Claudia Rodriguez-Torrella, Nora Guasch-Capella, Clemente Garcia-Rizo, Marina Garriga

Published in

European archives of psychiatry and clinical neuroscience. Aug 22, 2026. Epub Aug 22, 2026.

Abstract

Schizophrenia is a psychiatric condition characterized by different physical liabilities, including reduced height, increased medical comorbidity, and reduced life expectancy. Schizophrenia stems from gene-environment interactions, with winter birth being a widely replicated environmental risk factor associated with more severe outcomes. We aim to investigate the association between winter birth and height in individuals with schizophrenia.
15181 individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia and with recorded height and date of birth, comprising 7414 males and 7767 females from the Chang Gung Research Database from Taiwan, were included.
Winter-born patients were the shortest (161.9 ± 8.8 cm), but the seasonal effect was non-significant after adjusting for sex and age (F = 2.4, p = 0.063). February-born patients were the shortest (161.5 ± 8.8 cm), and the monthly effect was significant after adjusting for sex and age (total sample, p = 0.038; females, p = 0.021). No significant effect was detected in male patients regarding the season/month of birth. After correction for multiple comparisons, the seasonal contrasts were no longer significant, whereas a subset of month-of-birth contrasts persisted.
Our results revealed a descriptive gradient where winter birth (specifically February) was associated with the shortest adult stature, a trend more pronounced among female patients. These findings suggest that winter birth is not only a risk factor for schizophrenia but may also impact anthropometry. Further research needs to examine potential etiologic causes for this association.

PMID:
42631719
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 23 Aug 2026.

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