Schizophrenia-Related Gene Linked to Imbalance in Dopamine Pathways
Forms of a gene known to increase risk for schizophrenia may create an imbalance in brain pathways for dopamine, suggests a recent study. The findings could help explain how this key chemical messenger goes awry in the disorder, which affects about one percent of adults.
Early Gene Variant Linked To Schizophrenia
Results from a study published in the February 2007 issue of Molecular Psychiatry indicate a gene implicated in the disease in adults has now also been linked to schizophrenia in children for the first time, strengthening evidence that the gene plays a role in the disease and that the gene variation begins adversely affecting brain development long before the onset of psychotic symptoms.
Significant Weight Gain, Metabolic Changes Associated with Antipsychotic Use in Children
Children and adolescents with mental disorders such as bipolar disorder or schizophrenia spectrum disorder are often treated with antipsychotic medications, especially the newer, second-generation antipsychotics. However, research has shown that these medications have worrisome cardiovascular and metabolic effects on young people, and their long-term effects on growing bodies are unknown.
Schizophrenia Linked to Over-expression of Gene in Fetal Brain
A new study suggests how impaired expression of DISC1 ("disrupted in schizophrenia") might wreak havoc during early critical periods as the developing brain gets wired up. Researchers have discovered that previously unknown shortened forms of the gene were expressed 2.5 times more in the fetal brain than after birth.
Study Probes Environment-Triggered Genetic Changes in Schizophrenia
The first study of its kind to pinpoint environment-triggered genetic changes in schizophrenia has been launched with $9.8 million in funding from NIMH. The five-site study seeks telltale marks in the genome that hold clues to how nurture interacts with nature to produce the illness.
Not All Antipsychotics Are Created Equal: New Analysis Reveals Importance Differences
An analysis of studies on antipsychotics reveals multiple differences among the newer, second-generation antipsychotics as well as the older medications, and suggests the current classification system blurs important differences, rendering it unhelpful.
How Schizophrenia Develops: Major Clues Discovered
Schizophrenia may occur, in part, because of a problem in an intermittent on/off switch for a gene involved in making a key chemical messenger in the brain, scientists have found in a study of human brain tissue.
Brain Chemical Boosts Trust and Short-Circuits Fear
A brain chemical recently found to boost trust appears to work by reducing activity and weakening connections in fear-processing circuitry. The latest findings suggest new approaches to treating diseases thought to involve amygdala dysfunction and social fear, such as social phobia, autism, and possibly even schizophrenia.
Teens with Deletion Syndrome Confirm Gene’s Role in Schizophrenia
A study in youth who are missing part of a chromosome is further implicating a suspect gene in schizophrenia. Youth with this genetic chromosomal deletion syndrome already had a nearly 30-fold higher-than-normal risk of schizophrenia, but those who also had one of two common versions of the suspect gene had worse symptoms.
New Program Expands Genetics Research On Schizophrenia
New research suggests that while genes don't directly encode for the hallucinations, delusions and blunted affect of schizophrenia, there is a very complicated path between a gene's influence on the regulation and function of a protein and such psychiatric phenomena.
Flow of Potassium Into Cells Implicated in Schizophrenia
A study on schizophrenia has implicated machinery that maintains the flow of potassium in cells and revealed a potential molecular target for new treatments. Expression of a previously unknown form of a key such potassium channel was found to be 2.5 fold higher than normal in the brain memory hub of people with the chronic mental illness and linked to a hotspot of genetic variation.
Non-Hereditary Genetic Variations May Help Explain Schizophrenia’s Evolutionary Staying Power
People with schizophrenia from families with no history of the illness were found to harbor eight times more spontaneous mutations – most in pathways affecting brain development – than healthy controls, in a newly-released study. By contrast, no spontaneous mutations were found in people with schizophrenia who had family histories of the illness.
Psychotic Illness is Predictable in up to 80 Percent of High-Risk Kids, Teens and Young Adults
“The message here is that once we identify people as being high risk, we have a very good chance of knowing whether or not they’re likely to develop a serious mental disorder like schizophrenia and that, if they do, it will happen fairly quickly. That’s such a critical window of opportunity for getting them the help they need.”
Violence in Schizophrenia Patients More Likely Among Those with Childhood Conduct Problems
A study was published online on June 30, 2007, in the journal Law and Human Behavior suggests doctors should take into account their patients' histories before deciding on a treatment approach. They should consider specific interventions aimed at preventing further violence, especially among their schizophrenia patients who have a history of childhood conduct problems.
Does Method of Administering Medication When Treating Schizophrenia Make a Difference?
About 1 percent of U.S. adults, or 2.4 million, have schizophrenia, which is among the most serious of mental illnesses. A new clinical trial, beginning in Fall 2006, is addressing a major challenge in the treatment of schizophrenia: how best to encourage long-term treatment and medication adherence.
Research to Test Treatment of Cognitive Dysfunction in Schizophrenia
Although available medications are reasonably effective in treating the positive symptoms of schizophrenia such as hallucinations and delusions, recent research indicates that cognitive impairments in areas such as attention, memory and problem solving are responsible for much of the disability associated with the disease.
Teens With Schizophrenia Lose Gray Matter in Back-to-Front Wave
Brains of teens with early onset schizophrenia are ravaged by a back-to-front wave of gray matter loss that parallels the progression from hallucinations and delusions to thinking and emotional deficits. This loss of critical working brain tissue begins in rear perception processing areas.
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