Schizophrenia is a devastating mental illness that is characterized by hallucinations, delusions and changes in outlook and personality. Currently there are no biological markers that can be used to establish a diagnosis or reliably predict response to treatment or how the disease will progress.
Although the prevailing theory has been that schizophrenia is caused by an imbalance in neurotransmitter molecules that help send messages between nerve cells in the brain, scientists recently have begun to investigate whether lipids, small fatty molecules such as cholesterol and triglycerides, also may play a role in the disease and in response to therapy.
The researchers, in collaboration with Lipomics Technologies, measured 300 different lipids in blood drawn from 50 patients with schizophrenia before and after treatment with the atypical antipsychotic drugs olanzapine, risperidone or aripiprazole. Lipomics specializes in diagnostic discovery with an emphasis on lipid metabolism. Atypical antipsychotics, a newer group of prescription medications used to treat psychiatric conditions, have fewer side effects than the older antipsychotics, but several still induce weight gain and diabetes.
Schizophrenic patients were found to have lower levels of the lipids used to make membranes involved in storing and communicating information in the brain. These lipid changes were partially reversed in patients treated with antipsychotic medications, said Joseph McEvoy, M.D., associate professor of biological psychiatry and study co-investigator.
"This technique allows us to identify the specific metabolic changes that are caused by the most commonly used drugs for schizophrenia," McEvoy said.
"This study is extremely important because it is giving us more information about how these drugs work," added Ranga Krishnan, M.D., chairman of psychiatry and senior study investigator. "Now we can begi
'"/>
Contact: Marla Vacek Broadfoot
marla.broadfoot@duke.edu
919-660-1306
Duke University Medical Center
15-May-2007