Schizophrenia: The drug fasudil may help reverse key symptoms (medicalnewstoday.com)
"The current study authors theorized that inhibiting this particular enzyme would result in a reduction of schizophrenia manifestations. So, they gave mice the drug fasudil to test this hypothesis.
They found the mice they gave fasudil to showed significant improvements in two key areas.
First, the mice exhibited improved spine density of a specific brain area that was previously reduced. Second, the mice showed improvement in cognitive function that was previously impaired.
The results indicate that rho-kinase may play a key role in schizophrenia and that inhibiting this enzyme may lead to improvements.
“The [researchers] gave the mice with the genetic mutation a drug which reduces Rho-kinase and found, that indeed, the mice given the drug had less of the brain and cognitive abnormalities than similar mice injected with a neutral substance indicating that the increase in Rho-Kinase activity was responsible for the schizophrenia-like brain and cognition abnormalities,” Dr. Feifel explained."