A new study published in the Science Advances journal offers hope for schizophrenia patients. Schizophrenia affects many aspects of a patient, including hallucinations, memory issues, and behavioral problems. Treatment options are limited, with up to 50 percent of patients having a treatment-resistant disease that fails to respond to standard-of-care medications. Professor Murray Cairns, a researcher at the University of Newcastle, emphasized the importance of helping people experiencing psychosis quickly before they withdraw from work and social connections.
Understanding schizophrenia has been difficult in the past, as the main method was to take brain tissue samples from deceased patients, which are limited. This lack of knowledge presents difficulty in treating schizophrenia since little is known about the condition due to the challenges in examining and researching it. However, a study published in November 2023 offers a new technique that could provide hope for identifying early signs of the condition.
In this study, Professor Cairns revealed a method that examined the composition of brain neurons by examining the pockets they release, called vesicles. The study also found a possible blood marker linked to schizophrenia by assessing blood samples from 600 people, including 230 diagnosed with schizophrenia. The team found differences in miRNA in patients with schizophrenia, an important player that controls genes. This technique makes it possible to compare the blood of a healthy adult and a person with schizophrenia, providing the potential for better diagnosis and the development of personalized treatments.