Age at onset and the outcomes of schizophrenia: A systematic review and meta‐analysis

The aim of this study was to analyse the effect of age at onset on the long‐term clinical, social and global outcomes of schizophrenia through a systematic review and a meta‐analysis. Original studies were searched from Web of Science, PsycINFO, Pubmed and Scopus, as well as manually. Naturalistic studies with at least a 2‐year follow‐up were included. Of the 3509 search results, 81 articles fulfilled the inclusion criteria. The meta‐analysis was performed in Stata as a random‐effect analysis with correlation coefficients between age at onset and the outcomes (categorized into remission, relapse, hospitalization, positive symptoms, negative symptoms, total symptoms, general clinical outcome, employment, social/occupational functioning and global outcome). There was a statistically significant (P