Scientists in Finland, including researchers from VTT, have revealed metabolic abnormalities that are associated with schizophrenia, which may be a step towards the development of a diagnostic test.
Schizophrenia is a chronic and severe psychotic disorder that affects around one per cent of the population.
Currently, there is no clinical test for diagnosing schizophrenia and therefore the condition is usually recognised and treated on the basis of patient symptoms.
A study performed by Matej Oresic and colleagues from VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, in collaboration with Jaana Suvisaari from the Finnish National Institute for Health and Welfare, reveals metabolic abnormalities that are associated specifically with schizophrenia, as opposed to other psychotic disorders.
These findings, which were published in 'Genome Medicine' in March 2011, could be an important step towards the development of a clinical diagnostic test for schizophrenia.
The team used metabolomics, a high-throughput method for detecting small metabolites, to produce profiles of the serum metabolites associated with schizophrenia, other non-affective psychosis (ONAP) or affective psychosis.
Its analysis indicates that schizophrenia is associated with elevated serum levels of specific triglycerides, indicative of hyperinsulinemia, and also up-regulation of the serum amino acid proline.
Oresic and the team then combined these metabolic profiles to create a diagnostic model with the potential to discriminate schizophrenia from other psychoses.
This study demonstrates how metabolomics can be a powerful tool for dissecting disease-related metabolic pathways and for identifying candidate diagnostic and prognostic markers in psychiatric research.
