Mystery of schizophrenia is solved
Made an important discovery, which will develop new treatments for schizophrenia and bipolar affective disorder, reported The Independent. Found that these two diseases develop on the basis of the same genetic defects, said the journalist Steve Connor. Meanwhile, traditional psychiatry believes that schizophrenia and bipolar disorder – two different diseases.
Genetic associated with schizophrenia treated by three independent international groups of scientists to survey data of about 15 thousand patients and almost 50 thousand healthy people. “The result revealed that the risk of disease depends on the thousands of miserable genetic mutations – so-called single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP)”, – the newspaper writes. Each mutation increases the risk of schizophrenia by approximately 0,2%, but all mutations are generally accompanied by at least one third of cases.
The most striking thing that one and the same set of SNP variation associated with both schizophrenia and with bipolar disorder (it is also manic-depressive psychosis). “Probably, both disorders are generated by a common defect in brain development. Of course, the key question is why there is some schizophrenia and other bipolar disorder” – suggested Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, which partly sponsored the study.
“Some variations of genes associated with schizophrenia appears to be localized in parts of the genome that controls the immune system” – the newspaper writes. Perhaps this explains why schizophrenia is a little more ill, those who were born in winter or spring, or whose mothers during pregnancy suffered from flu. “It is also found between schizophrenia and variations in DNA in certain genes responsible for growth of nerve cells of the brain and the formation of a certain protein that facilitates the transfer of signals between brain cells,” – says the publication.
According to the newspaper, schizophrenia, sooner or later fall ill every hundredth man. Treatment of schizophrenics cost British taxpayers around £ 2 billion a year. Price for society as a whole – from the costs incurred by relatives of patients to the cost of the judicial system – at least twice “- includes publication.
