In reply
With this response, we want to clarify and refute most of the issues raised by McDonald et al. Although we regret that a number of minor (mainly typographical) errors have been made in our article, which we will discuss in the following comments, our results and our conclusions stand firmly. The main point by McDonald et al that we overemphasize significant hippocampal volume reduction in first-degree relatives of patients with schizophrenia in our meta-analysis is not warranted on the basis of the available data. We do agree, however, as we stated in our original article, that there is a paucity of research into brain structures other than the hippocampus in relatives and that this deserves more attention in future investigations.