The Karolinska Schizophrenia Project publishes thier first results in Molecular Psychiatry.
Orange County, CA - March 20th 2017 - Schizophrenia is a severe mental disorder that causes those affected to construe reality in an anomalous way, altering the way a person will think, feel, and behave. As a lifelong disorder some individuals diagnosed have difficulty determining what is genuine and what is fictitious, severely debilitating their quality of life. Though no two cases are alike, many living with the disorder exhibit varying levels of positive, negative, and cognitive symptoms such as delusions, hallucinations, social withdrawal, and poor executive functioning. Though the cause of schizophrenia remains unknown, a general consensus is the disorder stems from a combination of genetics, brain chemistry, and environmental factors.
To help develop a more comprehensive understanding of schizophrenia, researchers from Karolinska Institutet collaborating in the Karolinska Schizophrenia Project (KaSP) came together to study the disorder’s mechanisms. The research will be utilized in the identification of new targets for drug therapy.
The project recruits people with an acute first-episode psychosis to have extensive tests and investigations to analyze their cognitive function, genetic variation, biochemical anomaly, brain structure, and function before comparing that information to that of healthy individuals. The results from the first run of the project have been recently published in two different entries in the journal Molecular Psychiatry.
One study reveals patients with newly exhibited schizophrenia have lower levels of the neurotransmitter GABA in their cerebrospinal fluid than that of their healthy peers. The research also determined than increase in symptom severitys as the concentration of GABA falls. GABA inhibits brain activity and interacts with glutamate which stimulates activity. Together they make up around 90% of all brain signal transmission. Animal studies have suggested this connection before, but this is the first clinical study to give validation to the theory.
The second study used positron emission tomography (PET), a type of imaging, to demonstrate lower levels of translocator protein, a mitochondrial protein responsible for immune response, in those living with untreated schizophrenia. The translocator protein is then expressed on immune cells.
"Our interpretation of the results is an altered function of immune cells in the brain in early-stage schizophrenia,” said Simon Cervenka, senior lecturer at Karolinska Institutet's Department of Clinical Neuroscience.
The results of the studies give more insight into the pathological mechanisms of schizophrenia, though this doesn’t indicate whether the changes are cause or consequential of the disease. There is still more research to be done, currently the KaSP has subsequent studies underway examining the cause of the anomalies and how these mechanisms can be altered to change the progression of the disease.
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The Karolinska Schizophrenia Project publishes thier first results in Molecular Psychiatry. Orange County, CA – March 20th 2017 – Schizophrenia is a severe mental disorder that causes those affected to construe reality in an anomalous way, altering the way a person will think, feel, and behave. As a lifelong disorder some individuals diagnosed have difficulty determining […]