New studies illuminate roots of schizophrenia

February 5, 8:18 AMScience News ExaminerMeg Marquardt

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Schizophrenia appears to be February's hot topic.  Two important stories about the disease have surfaced in the past few days, and both offer hope for better treatment.

Schizophrenia is a notoriously difficult disease to diagnosis and treat.  It can manifest in any number of ways, from severe mental decline to extreme paranoid hallucinations.  There is also a struggle to find a universally effective medication.  As of now, treatments work in a rough law of thirds: drugs are completely effective for a third of schizophrenic patients, are mildly effective for another third, and are completely ineffective for the last third.

The worst aspect of schizophrenia is that it strikes with little to no warning.  But scientists are working to change that.  By finding genetic and behavioral precursors to the onset of the disease, researchers hope to find a more effective and timely treatment.

The first study comes from Johns Hopkins University.  Drawing from an extensive participant pool that included those afflicted by schizophrenia, family members of the patients, and unrelated non-affected volunteers, scientists studied genetic factors that may be associated with the disease.  Focusing on chromosome 10, which has been shown previously to contain genes related to schizophrenia, the team investigated more than 1,400 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) to see if there were common genetic mutations in those affected by Schizophrenia that didn't appear in those who were not.

 "They found three SNPs strongly associated with delusions, and all three SNPs are located in the neuregulin 3 gene. In fact, of the team's top 20 most significant SNPs, 13 of them are located at or near this gene, but rather than being associated with delusion, the other SNPs are associated with scholastic, disorganization and hallucination factors." [EurekAlert]  While much work still needs to be done on this front, isolating particular genetic mutations that may cause schizophrenia can eventually lead to an earlier diagnosis of the mental illness as well as better drugs to treat it.

The second study was conducted at Tel Aviv University in Israel.  Instead of working on the genetic level, this experiment took a holistic view of the brain via brain mapping.  Professor Talma Hendler of Tel Aviv's Department of Psychology used photographs of so-called "funny faces," images of faces which have been distorted, to indentify differences in the normal brain and the schizophrenic one.  The basic principle behind that study is that "healthy minds respond with selective activity within the brain, sounding the alarm that there is something disturbing about the image" while schizophrenic brains will not. [American Friends of Tel Aviv University (AFTAU)]

By monitoring brain reactions to the photographs with imaging equipment, the research has shown that in a normal person "the visual areas of the brain are highly connected to other areas…but in schizophrenic patients, there is a diminished connection between the various parts, leading to disturbed integration of information — and thus to distorted experiences." [AFTAU]  If a detailed map of a schizophrenic brain could be created, early diagnosis would be possible.  While it is not feasible to apply this technology to the world at large, it could be used to screen those who are at high risk, such as children of people afflicted by the disease.  

While both studies are still a long way off from being put to therapeutic use, they are steps in the right direction.  As Hendler states, “Current drugs treat the abnormal behavior, not the brain disorder that is causing the behavior. We want to be able to develop more specific treatments based on objective brain markers, which are the actual characteristics of the disease.” [AFTAU]