The brain is usually considered as the most relevant organ of schizophrenia, but evidence suggests that peripheral tissues also contribute to the disease
Scientists in China have unearthed further evidence that a malfunction of the immune system contributes to the development of schizophrenia.
Schizophrenia is a severe mental illness, which affects around 1% of the world’s population. It is traditionally thought to be exclusively caused by problems in the brain. However, there is a growing body of evidence that suggests that the immune system has an important role to play.
Lin He and Chunling Wan from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and their colleagues, identified over 1300 proteins in the blood and then compared the blood of schizophrenic patients with healthy blood using mass spectrometry. They found that 27 proteins were different in the schizophrenic patients and that all of these proteins were involved in the complement system.
See the full article in Chemistry World
Or read the Molecular BioSystems paper:
Label-free quantitative proteomic analysis reveals dysfunction of complement pathway in peripheral blood of schizophrenia patients: Evidence for the immune hypothesis of schizophrenia
Yang Li, Kejun Zhou, Liya Sun, Jinglei Yang, Ming Zhang, Baohu Ji, Kefu Tang, Zhiyun Wei, Guang He, Linghan Gao, Lun Yang, Peng Wang, Ping Yang, Guoying Feng, Lin He and Chunling Wan
Mol. Biosyst., 2012, DOI: 10.1039/C2MB25158B
