Forty percent of chemical changes in the brains of schizophrenia patients also occur in other body parts. Proteomic studies using cells from other parts of the body show that there might be a systemic aspect to the disorder.

"The problem with psychiatric disorders is that you [cannot] take biopsies at different disease stages," said Sabine Bahn, M.D., director of the Cambridge Institute for psychiatric research at the University of Cambridge (UK). "Patients would not be too happy to have pieces of brain taken at different time points."

The scientists, led by Dr. Bahn, are investigating disease markers in tissues such as skin, immune cells, and blood serum to find samples that give a real-time picture of the disease. Their studies of protein expression in fibroblasts (skin cells) on schizophrenia patients' arms have identified systemic problems such as cell-cycle abnormalities.

Peripheral-cell-based diagnostics will be very useful for schizophrenia diagnosis--biomarkers have already been identified in human serum. Dr. Bahn, working with Rules-Based Medicine (RBC; Austin, TX, and Lake Placid, NY, USA) expects that a serum-based test to aid in the diagnosis of schizophrenia will be launched sometime this year (2010). "We've identified a signature of numerous protein biomarkers, which give a very high sensitivity and specificity. [We have] looked at hundreds of samples from patients and controls and other disorders that are related to schizophrenia" she commented. The envisaged test would also help confirm diagnoses made based on conventional methods.

An article describing this study appeared in the January 18, 2010, issue of Chemical & Engineering News, American Chemical Society's (ACS) weekly newsmagazine.

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