Major research project provides new clues to schizophrenia

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet collaborating in the large-scale Karolinska Schizophrenia Project are taking an integrative approach to unravel the disease mechanisms of schizophrenia. In the very first results now presented in the prestigious scientific journal Molecular Psychiatry, the researchers show that patients with schizophrenia have lower levels of the vital neurotransmitter GABA as well as changes in the brain’s immune cells.

Schizophrenia is one of the most disabling psychiatric diseases and affects approximately one per cent of the population. It commonly onsets in late adolescence and is often a life-long condition with symptoms such as delusions, hallucinations, and anxiety. The disease mechanisms are largely unknown, which has hampered the development of new drugs. The drugs currently available are designed to alleviate the symptoms, but are only partly successful, as only 20 per cent of the patients become symptom-free.

The Karolinska Schizophrenia Project (KaSP) brings together researchers from a number of different scientific disciplines to build up a comprehensive picture of the disease mechanisms and to discover new targets for drug therapy. Patients with an acute first-episode psychosis are recruited and undergo extensive tests and investigations. Cognitive function, genetic variation, biochemical anomalies as well as brain structure and function are analysed using the latest techniques and then compared with healthy peers.

The first results from the project are now presented in two studies published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry. One of the studies shows that patients with newly debuted schizophrenia have lower levels of the neurotransmitter GABA in their cerebrospinal fluid than healthy people and that the lower the concentration of GABA the more serious their symptoms are.

GABA is involved in most brain functions and along with glutamate it accounts for almost 90 per cent of all signal transmission. While glutamate stimulates brain activity, GABA inhibits it, and the two neurotransmitters interact with each other.

Read more at: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2017-03-major-clues-schizophrenia.html#jCp

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some body plz find cure of it …!!!

Are any of the new meds targeting GABA?

This from 2005!

Although there is considerable interest in the potential for novel drugs targeting GABA neurotransmission in schizophrenia [Rudolph and Knoflach, 2011], results from existing compounds in patients have not been promising [Rudolph and Knoflach, 2011; Buchanan et al. 2011]. It is hoped that novel approaches to this system may yield additional benefit [Rudolph and Knoflach, 2011].

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I definitely got less paranoid on clonazepam.

It’s been 12 years… How long does “on the horizon” mean?

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Even if on the horizon means after my death,
I’ll be happy!
I don’t give a damn anymore!
@MeghillaGorilla1

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I don’t give a damn anymore either @Erez_Shmerling. That’s the worst part. They could cure me tomorrow and I wouldn’t know what to do with myself the pain has been too great.
But maybe, just maybe it’s worth hanging on for. What have we got to lose? It can’t get any worse unless we’re dead it can only get better

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