Schizophrenia Diagnosis From Blood Changes

According to medicalnewstoday, researchers have identified epigenetic changes in the blood of patients with schizophrenia.  They also associated differences depending on the patients age when they developed the disease. and if they had taken various drugs.
Schizophrenia is a very common psychiatric diseases that affects 1% of the population.  It is already known that the risk of developing schizophrenia increases if one has close family members who have had the disease.  Studies on twins have shown that 50% of the disease risk can be explained by genetic factors.  This shows that environmental factors, which include epigenetic changes to the genome are the reason for the remaining 50% of the cause of the disease.


The current study shows that the methylation levels in DNA in the white blood cells from individuals who suffer from schizophrenia lower than they normally are.  The degree of methylation is related to the age the patient got the disease and how bad it is. The researchers also compared the degree of methylation in samples from patients who had been treated with various types of drugs. It emerged that treatment with one type of antipsychotic drug could influence the levels of DNA methylation in the blood cells towards more normal levels.

In the future this new knowledge may be used to develop a simple test to diagnose patients with schizophrenia.  This can potentially help people determine whether or not they have schizophrenia, leading to better treatment and coping abilities.

http://www.bioportfolio.com/news/article/996823/Schizophrenia-Diagnosis-Via-Epigenetic-Changes-In-Blood.html