(15th May, 2014); Researchers have shown that neurons generated from the skin cells of people with schizophrenia behave unfamiliar in early developmental stages. They used new stem cell research technology for same and they believe that this research may provide new ideas to detect and potentially cure the disease early.
Over 1.1 percent of the world's population has schizophrenia out of which almost three million cases in the US alone. Scientists still know very little about its underlying causes, and it is still unknown which cells in the brain are affected and how. In 2002, Americans spent nearly $63 billion on treatment and managing disability and 10 percent of those with schizophrenia are driven to commit suicide by the burden of coping with the disease.
Prior, researchers had only studied brains of death schizophrenic patients. And it is well known that age, stress, medication or drug abuse had often altered or damaged the brains of these patients which making it more difficult to find out details of disease. But Fred Gage and his team were avoided this problem by taking skin cells from patients and coaxed them to stem cell and encouraged them to grow into very early-stage neurons (dubbed neural progenitor cells or NPCs). These NPCs are same as cells in the brain of a developing fetus.
They generated NPCs from the skin cells of 4 patients with schizophrenia and 6 normal human beings. Then researchers tested the cells in two different assays. In first one, they looked at how far the cells moved and interacted with particular surfaces and in the second one, they looked at stress in the cells by imaging mitochondria.
And in both assays, the team of scientists found that NPCs from people with schizophrenia differed in significant ways from those taken from unaffected people. In particular, cells predisposed to schizophrenia showed unusual activity in two major classes of proteins: those involved in adhesion and connectivity, and those involved in oxidative stress. Neural cells from patients with schizophrenia tended to have aberrant migration (which may result in the poor connectivity seen later in the brain) and increased levels of oxidative stress (which can lead to cell death).
These findings are consistent with a prevailing theory that events occurring during pregnancy can contribute to schizophrenia, even though the disease doesn't manifest until early adulthood. Past studies suggest that mothers who experience infection, malnutrition or extreme stress during pregnancy are at a higher risk of having children with schizophrenia. The reason for this is unknown, but both genetic and environmental factors likely play a role.
Fred H. Gage, Salk professor of genetics, said, "This study aims to investigate the earliest detectable changes in the brain that lead to schizophrenia. We were surprised at how early in the developmental process that defects in neural function could be detected."
Kristen Brennand, the first author of the paper and assistant professor at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, said, "We realized they weren't mature neurons but only as old as neurons in the first trimester. So we weren't studying schizophrenia but the things that go wrong a long time before patients actually get sick."
The findings of the study were published online in April's Molecular Psychiatry, support the theory that the neurological dysfunction that eventually causes schizophrenia may begin in the brains of babies still in the womb.
