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The “cytoskeletal protein” CRMP2 played the main role in the analysis of this issue. Not so long ago, scientists found that its indicators will help diagnose schizophrenia in a person by analyzing his blood.
Significance of the study
Schizophrenia is one of the most complex mental illnesses known to the world. Worst of all, it is not amenable to complete treatment. You can only achieve a stable remission, ease the symptoms and maintain your condition with the help of medications. Another difficulty of pathology lies in its diagnosis. All people with schizophrenia who complete the statistics are patients in whom the disease has been diagnosed and confirmed. And how many people in the world are absolutely unaware that a “beast” is lurking inside them, capable of coming out at any moment and ruining their lives.
Timely detection of pathology is a plus not only in order to prepare its carrier for the future, but also to start therapy as soon as possible. Statistics say that only 30% of patients achieve sustainable remission. The rest have to stay in the clinic or undergo treatment at home without the opportunity to return to their former lives.
To increase these indicators, it is important to understand how to detect the beginnings of schizophrenia in a person who does not know that he is ill, and his symptoms are still very mild and can be confused with banal blues, procrastination or fatigue.
What is the essence of the study?
The experiment was based on CRMP2, the “cytoskeletal protein” of CRMP2. This solution was proposed by the best minds from leading universities in the US and Japan. This type of protein should help to recognize the presence of a mental disorder in a patient through a blood test. Why this particular element? The fact is that the activity of this protein, which is also located in the brain and is produced in lymphocytes, can affect neural communication. But, most importantly, this activity is unstable in schizophrenics.
It is also worth noting the fact that in patients with schizophrenia, other substances may additionally be contained in the blood. For example, a well-known fact today is that patients with this disease often smoke. So, it is much easier, faster and easier for doctors to identify nicotine substances in the blood than to understand that a person has any deviations in the brain that lead to the development of pathology. True, it is still possible to identify development, it will simply be used as a result of more innovative and modern computer and technological methods and technologies.
The course and essence of the study
So far, scientists have already conducted a number of experiments. The task was to reveal the balance between this type of protein in its two states — inactive phosphorylated and active non-phosphorylated. Now, the researchers carried out the following manipulations:
- analysis of post-mortem brain tissue;
- study of blood samples of patients with schizophrenia;
- confirmation that the level of protein in mentally unstable recipients is higher than in the control group of subjects.
The course also found abnormal branches in the dendrites of neurons that take over impulses from other nerve cells. This allows us to talk about disorders in the brain of a schizophrenic.
The scientists came to the conclusion that based on measuring the level of inactive and active proteins of this type and their relationship to each other, it is possible to develop a non-invasive method for diagnosing schizophrenia — by a blood test. It also led scientists to discover what regulates the CRMP2 protein in a healthy person and maintains it at the proper level.