Brain Scans May Predict Schizophrenia

December 7, 2006 – 7:12 pm | posted in MRI / PET / Ultrasound, Neurology / Neuroscience, Schizophrenia

A small study on people identified as high risk for schizophrenia because two or more family members had the illness suggests certain changes occur in brain structure prior to onset.

Scientists used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to monitor the brain tissue of 65 young people about every 18 months over a ten-year period. The youngsters were part of a group of 200 being followed by the Medical Research Council (MRC) funded Edinburgh High Risk project.

The study is published today in BioMed Central Medicine.

Dr Dominic Job of the University of Edinburgh led the team who analysed the MRI scans. They found that a 13 per cent risk of developing shizophrenia rose to 60 per cent for some people whose brain tissue underwent change during the monitoring period. The changes occured in the grey matter of the brain.

Dr Job said:

“Although there are no preventative treatments for the illness, an accurate predictive test could help researchers to assess possibilities for prevention in the future. Current methods are good for predicting who won’t develop schizophrenia but not who will. By combining brain imaging with traditional clinical assessments it might be possible to detect people who are at highest risk of the illness early.”

Dr Job also emphasised the need for further larger scale studies to confirm these results.

Schizophrenia is a condition where a person has difficulty in distinguishing reality from his or her “inner world”. It is wrong to call it a “split personality” disorder. Less than 1 per cent of the UK population is at risk, on average, of developing schizophrenia and the vast majority of those who do are not a danger to others.

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